Health Care Alabama

In the spring and summer of 1995, husband and wife photographers Joe and Monica Cook explored the length of the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola rivers by foot and canoe in a rare source-to-sea journey. This 100-day, 540-mile adventure took them through every bend of the river system from its ridge-top spring in the North Georgia mountains, through Atlanta's suburban sprawl, down the Alabama-Georgia border, through the tupelo and cypress swamps of the Florida panhandle, and finally to the Gulf of Mexico. In River Song, the Cooks make a passionate plea for the preservation of this important waterway. Their gorgeous color landscapes, sepia images of the "river people" they meet along the way, and strong personal narrative showcase the beauty and diversity of the Chattahoochee and capture the stories of those who live and work along the river's edge. All elements of the book combine to paint a vivid and fascinating portrait of the river's social and cultural history and the environmental troubles that threaten its survival. During their journey, the Cooks found both spectacular beauty and disturbing degradation -- often in the same bends of the river. Polluted, overdeveloped, dammed, and dredged, the Chattahoochee was named one of the country's 10 most endangered waterways in 1996. Currently some three million people living within the river's tri-state watershed are grappling over how to divvy up this finite resource. Everyone, the Cooks argue, must accept responsibility for the future health of this river system. As they see it, "Individuals hold the real remedy for what ails the Chattahoochee". River Song is an engaging travelogue, a gorgeous photographic portfolio, and a wake-upcall to those who care about this endangered waterway.

In 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service recruited 623 African American men from Macon County, Alabama, for a study of "the effects of untreated syphilis in the Negro male." For the next 40 years -- even after the development of penicillin, the cure for syphilis -- these men were denied medical care for this potentially fatal disease.