On Immunity : : an Inoculation

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Call Number: 616.079 Bi, Adult Book / Nonfiction / Social Science / General / Biss, Eula
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

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Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	616.079 Bi	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	616.079 Bi	4-week checkout	Due 05-11-2024
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Social Science / General / Biss, Eula	4-week checkout	Due 05-01-2024

Upon becoming a new mother, Eula Biss addresses a chronic condition of fear: fear of the government, the medical establishment, and what is in children's food, mattresses, medicines, and vaccines. Biss investigates the metaphors and myths surrounding the conception of immunity and its implications for the individual and the social body. As she hears more and more fears about vaccines, Biss researches what they mean for her own child, her immediate community, America, and the world.

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On Immunity submitted by SBNB on July 28, 2015, 12:00pm It's very interesting. It doesn't beat the current situation to death but instead explores the history and philosophy of immunity and what it means to be a part of a whole.

Again *Very* Relevant - "The health of our bodies always depends on choices other people are making" submitted by sdunav on June 11, 2021, 12:36pm This is a fascinating collection of short chapters (much like essays) that explore several linked ideas and their history. Vaccinations (and the history of smallpox and vaccine safety and regulation), chemicals and the "natural", DDT and malaria in Africa and the US, our immune systems, croup and diphtheria, bodily purity and filth and immigration, the use of metaphors in science and politics, motherhood, and Dracula are all thoughtfully examined.

Biss wrote this after the H1N1 scare, but it is even more relevant and interesting - seemingly prescient - to read in the midst of a global pandemic.

Some of my favorite passages:

"The fact that the press is an unreliable source of information was one of the refrains of my conversations with other mothers, along with the fact that the government is inept, and that big pharmaceutical companies are corrupting medicine. I agreed with all these concerns, but I was disturbed by the worldview they suggested: nobody can be trusted.....By late October, the mothers who were still talking about the flu vaccine were mainly talking about how hard it was to get a child vaccinated" (pg. 9-10).

"Consider relationships of dependence," my sister suggests, "You don't own your body - that's not what we are, our bodies aren't independent. The health of our bodies always depends on choices other people are making." She falters for a moment here, and is at a loss for words, which is rare for her. "I don't even know how to talk about this," she says. "The point is there's an illusion of independence." (pg. 124)

"However we choose to think of the social body, we are each other's environment. Immunity is a shared space - a garden we tend together." (pg. 163).