On Immunity: An Inoculation Hardback - 2014

On Immunity: An inoculation is a non-fiction work by essayist and self-described citizen thinker, Eula Biss. It is listed as one of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2014. Prompted by her son’s birth (“My son’s birth brought with it an exaggerated sense of both my own power and my own powerlessness.”), Biss examines the vaccination debate. Enlisting Greek Myth, Dracula and a wealth of literature on immunisation to help with her analysis, Biss explores epidemics, herd immunity, germ theory, the concepts of public health, of body purity, of being vulnerable to contamination vs being dangerous (contagious), women in healing and paternalism in prevention of risk. She learns that “’Vaccination works,’ my father explains, ‘by enlisting a majority in the protection of a minority’”. She explains historical resistance to vaccination, the concept of individual liberty and rights over one’s body, the difference between unvaccinated and under-vaccinated, and the dangers each of these pose, and the use of vaccination as a weapon of war. The myths surrounding vaccination, and their effect, are analysed: “Wealthier countries have the luxury of entertaining fears the rest of the world cannot afford”. She notes that “allowing oneself to remain vulnerable to disease remains a legal privilege today.” Biss presents an articulate, balanced view of the vaccination debate from the perspective of a young, first-time mother with minimal medical knowledge. She states “The debate over vaccination tends to be described by ‘troubling dualisms’ pitting science against nature, public against private, truth against imagination, self against other, thought against emotion, and man against woman” Biss supplements her text with comprehensive, detailed notes, and a list of selected sources. She ends with a metaphor for the immune system that is perhaps the way of the future: “Our bodies are not war machines that attack everything foreign and unfamiliar, this metaphor suggests, but gardens where, under the right conditions we live in balance with many other organisms”. An interesting and thought-provoking read.

a reader