MOLLY KALKSTEIN

n the autumn of 2002 I started a master’s degree in printmaking, a discipline the

I boundaries of which I hope to show very little respect for. I’ve never been very
good at limiting myself to a single medium, and wouldn’t even know how to start.
Most of my artistic heroes seem to feel or have felt the same way. Joseph Cornell
combined carpentry and painting with the assemblage of scavenged detritus, while
making collaged films on the side; Mike and Doug Starn take photographs, only to
print them on unusual materials, cut them apart, and put them back together with
masking tape or bind them into books; the Brothers Quay make animated movies
from elaborate fleamarket constructions and eerie orchestrated scores. The ability
of different media to expand and enrich each other when combined has always
astonished and moved me.
Accordingly, the piece on the cover combines wall spackling, paint, tea, gauze,
photocopy transfer, and glass, and deals with two general aspects of the role of
medicine in times of conflict. One facet is the necessity for medical science to act as a
restorative counterweight to the mass injury and death inherent in conflict—
represented here by the ghostly blood-and-gauze figures at the top. The other issue,
perhaps more uniquely contemporary, is the desperate need for inviolability in the face
of biological warfare. The desire for a hermetic safety by way of drugs and vaccines
is implied by the stark lower half of the image, in which isolated figures float
encapsulated within sterile globes.
Molly Kalkstein

hough well over a century has passed since General William Tecumseh

T Sherman uttered his famous dictum, “War is hell”, the intervening years have
done nothing to diminish its truth. But Sherman’s observation has become a
cliché, one that is virtually meaningless to generations of people around the world for
whom conflict is also the only way of life they know.
The real hell of war is the particular way it affects individual people. Although
conflict may originate in a clash of political, economic, or ethnic ideologies, its most
profound effects may be felt in a more circumscribed realm—that of physical and
emotional health, and the ability of people to earn a living, to move freely, to pursue
personal dreams, to make choices. This supplement to The Lancet examines some of
these effects. It makes no attempt to be comprehensive, either conceptually or
geographically. We have cut a wide and idiosyncratic swath through the sadly vast
landscape of conflict. The resulting product is a highly personal, and in many cases,
passionate, view of the effects of war on health and human rights.
Faith McLellan and Virginia Barbour
 Health of countries in conflict

NORTHERN CROATIA ISRAEL KUWAIT RUSSIA CHINA JAPAN

IRELAND 10/7 8/6 13/12 23/17 38/44 5/4
7/6 38 23 68 91 81 1
14 61/68 69/71 65/65 50/61 61/63 71/76
68/71 (59) (9) (31) (19) (5) (5)
(53)
UNITED KOSOVO* IRAQ IRAN TIBET* NORTH
KINGDOM (51) 80/73 44/47 (55) KOREA*
7/6 126 96 (27)
14 53/53 59/59
68/71 (35) (35)
(7,35)

UNITED STATES MYANMAR

OF AMERICA (BURMA)
9/8 111/97
24 139
66/69 48/51
(7,33,37,39) (47)

EL SALVADOR THAILAND
40/33 35/32
87 99
55/60 58/62
(25) (15,47)

PERU CAMBODIA
53/48 136/120
105 148
58/60 46/49
(25) (57)

ARGENTINA EAST
24/20 TIMOR*
39 (23,45)
62/66
(39)

SIERRA DEMOCRATIC RWANDA SOUTH ETHIOPIA SOMALIA AFGHANISTAN

219/199 187/171 221/199 252/249
LEONE REPUBLIC OF AFRICA
185 182 173 168
292/265 THE CONGO 90/78
32/32 37/35 36/35 35/32
191 218/205 160
(17) (43) (23) (23,41)
30/29 174 43/44
(11,15,47) 34/34 (49)
(13,23)
SUDAN ANGOLA BURUNDI TANZANIA* ERITREA PAKISTAN INDIA
124/117 217/198 196/183 (13,15,23) 142/130 120/132 90/99
154 165 179 169 124 134
46/44 36/37 34/33 41/41 50/46 52/52
(21) (23) (13) (43) (29) (29)

Child mortality: male/female per 1000

WHO overall health ranking: range 1–191
Healthy life expectancy in years at birth: male/female
*Data not available
(Supplement page number)