Globalization as a Trigger for Emerging New Diseases? Contestations on Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology in Sri Lanka

Abstract

A new kidney disease began to emerge in some farming populations in Dry Zone Sri Lanka since 1990s. This could not be attributed to diabetes, hypertension or any other known causes of renal damage. Over the past thirty years many studies have been conducted in order to isolate the causes of this new disease now reported from a number of dry zone areas in the country but so far no single or multiple disease causing agents have been established in Sri Lanka or any other countries where the disease has been reported even though there are many rival hypotheses contesting with each other. This paper examines the debates and contestations between science, understood as a body of knowledge guided by the scientific method and its outputs in the form of new technology with industrial applications, and the nationalist critique of science postulating on nativist grounds a globalization, including increased use of agro- chemicals as an outcome of globalization, as a trigger for the emergence of this new disease. As for the methodology used, the paper sketches the natural history of the epidemic using available evidence in media reports, scientific writings and a few creative writings about the epidemic. While a broad-based appraisal of globalization processes as to their wide-ranging impact on environment, health, social relations and consumerism is certainly warranted, a narrow nationalist reading, attributing the disease to purely external causes to the neglect of local circumstances and potential role of human behavior as factors contributing to the etiology of the disease is untenable.