The On The Bookshelf Podcast

Antivax: Reframing the Vaccination Controversy

BOOK BIT for WTBF-AM/FM in Troy, Ala. for Jan. 10, 2020

 “Anti/Vax-Reframing The Vaccination Controversy” by Bernice L. Hausman (Cornell University Press)

When I was a pre-school Baby Boomer, I got both kinds of polio vaccines, to my parent’s great relief. When I turned eleven, I got the measles. It worsened my vision significantly. That was followed immediately by the mumps (both sides). I also had the German measles(rubella) and the chicken pox. Happily for my three younger siblings, the vaccine came out about the time I contracted these diseases, and they were able to avoid all but the chicken pox. We have since gotten the shingles vaccine (because the herpes simplex 1 virus causes chicken pox and shingles.) I am a believer in vaccinations, as  is the author, who got her vaccinations as a child and like me, had her children vaccinated.  She became concerned about the anti-vaccination controversy in her capacity as Chair of the Depart. of Humanities at the Penn State University College of Medicine in Hershey, PA. She writes,

 “Illness is one of the fundamental dramas of human life. It’s a reminder of our own mortality and a basic, humbling reminder of embodiment. This book explores the particular vaccination controversies that surround us today. Anti/Vax tries to answer to answer questions that are not currently being asked and, in so doing, to reorient a stalemated public debate.” This can allow us to “move beyond the inflammatory impasse in which we find ourselves.” The author does not take sides but investigates the controversy itself.

For the past nine years, the author has been researching vaccination controversy. One thing that they learned was “vaccination concerns are as old as vaccination itself”, going back to the early cowpox/smallpox inoculations. “Since the 19^th century, vaccination concerns have coalesced around two primary issues: Compulsory vaccination and adverse medical consequences. “ In 1905 the Supreme Court decided that “the government had a right to protect the public’s health, but the individual had the right to be exempted if vaccination posed a risk to his or her health as an individual. After the advent of polio, measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines  in the 1950s and 1960s, vaccine mandates were enacted in the 1970s and enforced through school-entry mandates in order to establish herd immunity against particular diseases and hasten the eradication of some, like measles.”

Vaccination controversy “is a complex problem that is a much social as it is scientific.” Are there people on both sides of the argument who are ignorant of the science involved? Absolutely. However, the media and the court of public opinion has no qualms about very negative insults to “anti-vaxers”. “There already exist ideas that allow us to understand vaccine skepticism, and plenty of scholars and popular writers are talking about them, “ she writes. Dr. Hausman adds, “Everyone would do well to take vaccination controversy seriously…as evidence of deeper and widespread disgruntlement with cultural assumptions about techno-scientific advancements, triumph over infectious disease, and other myriad accomplishments of bio-medicine.”

The current rampant distrust in government adds to the controversy (after all, if we can’t trust our government with our tax-money or our property, why should we trust it with our health concerns?) “The answer”, she concludes, “is science and something else. The humanities can help us rethink the way we use evidence and how we might talk to one another as fellow citizens committee to culturally relevant solutions.”

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