It is interesting how in Ecuador, religion is seamlessly integrated with medical practices. It is extremely common for God and science to exist in the same sentences and practices. Both patients and doctors consult their religion when looking for the best medical advice and practices, something that is not as common in the US. Here, it is not the normal way of life for practitioners to bring religion and spirituality into their practice, but this is not the case everywhere, specifically in this IVF clinic.

It is very interesting that an organization would work so hard to achieve NGO status at the United Nations, but then would launch a campaign that was not backed and proven true before hand. Even though this organization was acting in the best interests, helping to create public uproar about mass executions of homosexuals, they should have done more fact checking of their intel before creating a whole campaign devoted to putting a stop to these executions

As a women living in this political era, the idea of female rights and freedoms is something that resonates with me. It is not the best feeling to believe that rights you currently have could be taken away at any moment, and that there are people out there who are actively fighting to take the rights of women away, both here and all around the world. Even with this, I agree with the author's statement that even during uncertain times women are trying their best to live their best life and make choices that help them as much as possible.

It is so interesting how people are not always transparent with their thoughts or political views, causing one nominee to believe they have public support when in reality people are just saying what they believe to be socially acceptable. This is a great example of front vs. backstage political views as people are public saying and supporting one viewpoint, but behind closed doors they believe something completely different but are not publicly expressing this opinion.

The pharmaceutical industry has its own interests at heart. While they are creating new drugs and medication to be put in clinical trials to help patients, they ultimately are focused on making profits. This term “pharmocracy” is very fitting because these pharmacy industries are influencing health care in order to benefit themselves. On the outside they seem focused on the interests of their patients by working to make these drugs, but they are more focused on how they can get these drugs onto the market in order to make money off of consumers.

It is interesting to think that when an infant dies, the immediate response is to look at what went wrong with the baby internally, but not necessarily consider external factors. While genetics may play a key role in infant mortality rates, this is not always the case. This passage does a good job at bringing this issue to light, explaining that external factors do play a substantial role in infant mortality rates and should not be ignored. When evaluating factors that lead to an infant's passing, internal and external circumstances should be equally evaluated.

It is interesting how patients will first go to a western doctor for acupuncture needs before seeking a licensed acupuncturist. In Western cultures, acupuncture may not be viewed as a legit form of medicine, even though a licensed acupuncturist goes through many years of medical training to get to where they are. Due to this stigma, patients are probably going to their M.D. since they believe this doctor to be "superior" than an acupuncturist, even though this is not the case.

It must have been so interesting to be a doctor during the rise of clinical trials, not knowing what medication to prescribe because the data was constantly changing. It is important to be aware of medical advancements and pick the treatment that is best for the patient, but when medicine is constantly changing, it must not have been easy. Not only was there a lot of clinical trial data being published, it was all seemingly so similar with only the differencce of 1 or 2 patients.

This idea of "appropriate" grief is very interesting. Is there an "appropriate" way for someone, especially a mother, to grieve when then just have lost their child? Why is it that society expects these mothers to act in a certain way when they are grieving, and if expectations aren't met, why does society judge them? Everyone experiences and processes grief different, most of the time two people will have different approaches to grieving. This does not mean that one is more correct than the other, and no one should be judged for how they decide to cope with a loss.

It is interesting to hear that anthropologists will tend to focus on how a culture differs from their own, but will also tend to gloss over similarities. These same anthropologists will write about these cultures as if they are exotic and rare, even if in reality the culture being discussed is very similar to the anthropologists. Miner’s social experiment is valuable as it provides both the general public and anthropologists alike a reality check, and emphasizes the fact that “the other” is not always significantly different in terms of culture, and when writing about these cultures, it is important to focus on differences and similarities. From this experiment, a question comes to mind: are anthropologists intentionally ignoring similarities or does this just implicitly happen? If so, what can anthropologists do to avoid thinking of other cultures as significantly different and focus without any underlying implications or biases?