On Immunity: an inoculation

On Immunity: an inoculation / Eula Biss 205 pgs.

This is a lovely book that explains so many issues surrounding vaccinations and public health.  Biss has taken the time to study the issues in depth, partly as a parent who wanted to do what is best for her son.  The daughter of a doctor, science and research are familiar to her but as a mother, it is sometimes easy to get pulled into doubt when you read about others who question what is best.  What do you owe society?  How much control should the government have in matters that relate to public health?  What is herd immunity, its' benefits and who should be responsible for it?

Biss is very careful with her words and doesn't cast doubters or believers into any pot but seems to encourage conversations and points to the benefits of education and understanding the issues involved.

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On Immunity: an Inoculation / Eula Biss 205 p.

A book as unusual as it is important.  Biss is the author of, among other things, Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays, which earned a host of accolades and was chosen as Washington University's 2013 First Year Reading Program title for its elegant examination of race and identity in America.  Here Biss takes immunization as a focal point for a discussion of, well, many things: individual rights versus the needs of the group, the boundaries we place on our own bodies, notions of cleanliness and purity, sickness and health.  She is at once provocative and mild, clearly seeking to draw readers into a conversation rather than pushing them away from a hard, bright line.

While Biss writes with delicacy, in the end she is clear about her pro-immunization position.  One senses in her desire not to demonize those who disagree with her a strong wish not to alienate herself from them.  She casts herself over and over as an upper-middle class mother with all the hyper-vigilant concerns that characterize that tribe.  At times she goes overboard here, in statements such as ,"I remember feeling agony when my son drank water for the first time."  Agony?  Either she is grossly exaggerating for the sake of appearing 'balanced' or she is...well, let's just hope she's exaggerating.