Illness Metaphors
This site contains AI-generated knowledge about infectious and neglected tropical diseases.
Objectives
Analyze Metaphors: Examine how metaphors are used to describe neglected diseases.
Public Perception: Understand the impact of these metaphors on public awareness and perception.
AI Insights: Utilize AI to uncover preconceptions, biases, and underlying patterns in metaphor usage.
Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag's seminal work, Illness as Metaphor, serves as a foundational text for understanding how illness can be metaphorically framed. This project builds upon her insights to specifically focus on neglected tropical diseases.
What's in this site?
Here you can find information about several neglected tropical diseases. We eventually use this code to generate prompts for text-to-image models. For each disease, we try to capture the following information:
Medical Concepts: Detailed examination of the medical aspects and clinical manifestations associated with the disease.
Pathogen Biology: In-depth exploration of the biological characteristics and life cycle of the pathogen causing the disease.
Historical Context: Analysis of the pre-colonial and colonial history related to the disease, highlighting its impact over time.
Social Factors: Investigation of social dynamics, including stigma, poverty, and other socio-economic factors influencing the disease.
Literary Perspectives: Descriptions of the landscapes and regions where the diseases are endemic, captured through a literary lens.
Artistic Interpretations: Metaphorical associations of the diseases with colors, textures, atmospheres, and other artistic elements to provide a more nuanced understanding.
Based on the text available in this site, we are able to generate images like the following one, where a wetland landscape takes the shape of Schistosoma mansoni pathogen:
Disclaimers
The intention of this repository is to explore the preconceptions, biases, and other underlying patterns captured by artificial intelligence models. Therefore, Ersilia is not responsible for the content provided here. The repository aims to capture the metaphors and associated themes linked with neglected tropical diseases. The content in this repository should not be interpreted as definitive or comprehensive representations of these diseases or the communities affected by them.
About
This project was developed by the Ersilia Open Source Initiative during the June 2024 AI Residency at Konvent. It is part of our ongoing efforts to promote open-source collaboration and advance research in the field of neglected diseases.
To learn more about the context of this project, read this blogpost.
See this slide-deck explaining our first presentation at Konvent.
To use the associated the code, please see the ersilia-os/illness-metaphors GitHub repository.
All results associated with this project are available in this link.
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