Research Post

Last year in September the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine wrote a new report discussing the positives and negatives of establishing a system of prepositioned antibiotics for a possible terroristic anthrax attack in the future. The report begins by analyzing the current system for distributing antibiotics if an anthrax attack were to take place. The current system relies heavily on the ability of the Strategic National Stockpile, which is a vast amount of medical supplies, to be able to quickly and effectively get antibiotics to small state and local stockpiles. From there the local public health authorities have the responsibility of distributing supplies to infected individuals. The report later states that it would prove more effective to create new and increase medical supplies at the local level to increase the effectiveness of antibiotic distribution and cut down on the response time to any anthrax attack. Although it is still early to connect this fully to the book, so far there have been many allusions to some sort of disease that wiped out all of humanity but Snowman. It is possible that if a system like this was in effect in the novel then it is possible that there would have been many more survivors of whatever disease decimated the human population.

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13218


Barzilai, Shuli. "Tell My Story": Remembrance And Revenge In Atwood's Oryx And Crake And Shakespeare's Hamlet." Critique 50.1 (2008): 87-110. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Apr. 2012.
The main topic of this article is to reveal to the reader the parallels that Atwood creates between her novel “Oryx and Crake” and Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. The author of this article, Shuli Brazilai, reveals to the reader how many of the characters in “Hamlet” can be seen in the “Oryx and Crake” such as Hamlet, Gertrude, Claudius, and Horatio. Unfortunately this article goes into great detail on what is going to happen further in the book so it can be said that I have read ahead but one of the key issues of the article is showing how Crake is the tragic hero of the novel and his story is eerily similar to the unfortunate events that befall Hamlet. The article also goes on to say how Snowman is really Horatio and his sole purpose is to relay to others the story of what happened to Crake. What I liked the most of this article is that it went into such detail on each individual subject and incorporated quotes in every possible opportunity. It was highly informative and opened up a new perspective to view the story, with Crake as a possible hero instead of how I have been viewing him, as the villain.


Parry, Jovian. "Oryx And Crake And The New Nostalgia For Meat." Society & Animals 17.3 (2009): 241 256. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Apr. 2012.
The main idea of this article is to analyze the cultural views of meat in the modern world today, and also in the novel “Oryx and Crake”. The article talks of how in today’s society people view animals and meat as two very separate things, as if putting a barrier between the two and trying not to make them related to each other. The article also talks of how people in the novel could be using animals for organs and food as a way to try and reconnect themselves with nature and to also show off the full extent of human dominance over all other animals. While I did not like this article because I found it really hard to follow and felt that it contradicted itself at times, the article did open my eyes to pay more attention to how individual character will view foods, especially meat, as the novel progresses and we read further into the book.