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2007
Haynes Lecturer Tom
Koch Speaks on "Mapping in a Time of
Cholera”
Dr.
Tom Koch presented the 7th annual Haynes Lecture Friday
afternoon, November 15, at the College of Geosciences. Speaking on
the cartographies of disease, Koch discussed maps, mapping and
medicine in his lecture "Mapping
in a Time of Cholera: John Snow and his Contemporaries."
 According to Koch, “The map is the workbench upon which we test our
theories of disease.” A focus of his lecture was to deconstruct the
myths surrounding the work of John Snow and to reconstruct the true
impact of that work.
Photo: Dr. Tom Koch accepts the Haynes plaque
from Dean Kjerfve.
“John
Snow was known as the man who took on death and defeated it at the
pump – the water pump that is,” Koch said. Snow studied an 1854
cholera outbreak in the London neighborhood in which he lived by
mapping all the deaths in a month long period. He concluded from his
map that a contaminated water pump was the source of the bug.
Although Snow is often credited for pioneering the use of mapping to
study disease, Koch said that disease maps had been in use since the
1700s and were a critical part of the tradition of disease studies
long before Snow’s study.
The
Haynes Lecture Series was established by Dr. Daniel Sui, professor
of Geography and holder of the Reta A. Haynes chair in Geosciences.
Many internationally recognized scholars and members of the National
Academy of Sciences have presented lectures for the benefit of the
University community since the series was established in 2000.
Koch has published many books and
articles on the issues of health and illness. In the field of elder
care and disability, he pioneered the use of life narratives as a
vehicle for the examination of the issues of age, fragility, and
change. The first to explore the perspective of the home-based
caregiver, Koch has worked with over 150 caring families and written
about their perspectives and concerns.
Koch is an adjunct
professor of geography (medical) at the University of British
Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; adjunct professor of gerontology, Simon
Fraser University, Vancouver; bioethicist, Canadian Down syndrome
Society and a former member of its board of directors; consultant in
bioethics and gerontology, Copeman Healthcare Centre, Vancouver, and
forum associate at the David Lam Centre for International
Communication, Simon Fraser University.
On
Saturday, November 17, Koch was a keynote speaker at the “Geospatial
Technologies and Public Health: Mapping Disease, Promoting Health”
symposium held at the Annenberg Presidential Conference Center. This
one-day symposium was devoted to discussing the recent developments
in geospatial technologies and their applications. Several leading
researchers and government program officers participated. The
symposium was co-sponsored by the Texas A&M Office of the Vice
President for Research, the U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and
Control (CDC), the Texas A&M School of Rural Public Health & HSC
Faculty Senate, Texas A&M Health Science Center, Texas Cooperative
Extension Service, and the National Center for Foreign Animal and
Zoonotic Disease Defense (FAZD).
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Colloquia 
