On Immunity

An Inoculation

By: Eula Biss

Narrated by: Tamara Marston

Upon becoming a new mother, Eula Biss addresses a chronic condition of fear - fear of the government, the medical establishment, and what is in your child's air, food, mattress, medicine, and vaccines. She finds that you cannot immunize your child, or yourself, from the world.

In this bold, fascinating book, Biss investigates the metaphors and myths surrounding our 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, both historically and in the present moment. She extends a conversation with other mothers to meditations on Voltaire's Candide, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Susan Sontag's AIDS and Its Metaphors, and beyond. On Immunity is a moving account of how we are all interconnected - our bodies and our fates.

©2014 Eula Biss. (P)2014 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

I have no more questions about vaccines!

Thanks to this book, I have no more concerns when it comes to having my kids vaccinated. I will, however, still keep avoiding the seasonal flu shots as long as I have a choice.

Falls short

While striving to explain the complexities of the vaccination issue, this book has actually done little to satisfy either side. Because the author eventually (and seemingly reluctantly) comes down on the side of pro-vaccination, anti-vaxers call the book a promotion of big pharm and big government, ignoring what science was presented. For the pro-vaccination camp, there were too many emotion-fed anecdotes on motherly fears, including the author’s own obsessive fascination with vampires, which led to a Dracula metaphor being stretched beyond the breaking point. While I appreciate her attempts to show the rationale and concerns of those opposing vaccination, I have to wonder how many really think of Bela Lugosi coming through the window to consume their child’s life force. She was at her best when she stuck with science and history to make her points, but lost me when her politics got in the way, including diatribes against capitalism and the insistence that military metaphors are inappropriate to any discussion of fighting disease.

Readers looking for a coherent discussion of the pros and cons of vaccination may find some useful information, but at the expense of muddling through multiple angst-ridden stories of her labor and delivery, blood transfusions (which just confuses the picture) and her ongoing fears of the contaminations her child must face in this world. I was hoping for a more reasoned presentation of the issues at hand, including suggested solutions to bring the camps together, but this book simply confirmed that the discussion continues to be clouded by emotions and prejudices, whether they are justified by science or not. Viruses and bacteria are shrewd survivors, evolving past the medications we have to treat them. I’m afraid we will have to face a full-blown outbreak of something terrible before people realize that prevention is the world’s protection.

I'll round up to a 3 because the science that was presented was well described in terms that should be understandable to non-medical readers, and because the author does seem to have tried to make a balanced presentation of both sides of the vaccination questions. I just wish her editor could have convinced her to make it less of a personal confessional of parental angst.

Informative and balanced

Fair and non judgemental exploration of vaccines and their history as well as the culture surrounding health and medicine. Very interesting and educational. The performance was also well done.

some good info

It was a struggle to finish. My impression before buying it was that it was a coming from the same perspective as our family - concerned parents wanting to be informed. I learned about some of the history of this debate which showed me that there have always been people of either opinion. The reader always had an unconfrontational tone even while defending government forced vaccinations and ridiculing capitalism. One contradiction in my view is how the author explains how mother and fetus are two separate bodies, but then defends ending the unborn baby's life. It kinda creeped me out, such a gentle voice explaining why I should be forced to be injected. It reminds me of the overly - referred - to - book "1984." I admit I don't understand herd immunization, but if it can't be explained concisely then maybe it's not true. I love debates and reasoning, but don't force me or mine to be injected.

Interesting

I thought it was interesting. Not a fan of all of the vampire comparisons. Probably could do without all of the analogies.

A Provocative Set Of Essays On Immunity

Eula Biss, the author of "On Immunization: An Inoculation" is the daughter of a poet and a doctor. She is herself a poet and a renowned essayist, this creates a seemingly absurd but interesting background that I think allows her to bring a unique perspective to an issue that could be otherwise tedious and dull.

Before reading this book, I never considered that the subject of immunizations was as complex and vast as it is. But as I discovered our seemingly never ending argument about vaccines is not only a health issue, it is also a political/economic/philosophical/ theological and bio-ethical debate.

"On Immunization: An Inoculation", provides a very comprehensive, rational and thorough research of vaccines and their history, how they are developed, why they are so controversial and why we feared them so much. Bliss's takes a nuanced approach on the issue and although she comes strongly on the side that favors the widespread use of vaccines, she seems to make a a point of being respectful of people that are on both sides of the so called "vaccination debate".

The rise of the anti-vaccine movement in the United States, has created an unusual (and from my point of view dangerous) alliance across some extreme ideological political lines. On the left side of the spectrum, we have liberals skeptic of pharmaceuticals companies that developed, patent, manufacture and aggressively market vaccines, on the other side there are conservatives and libertarians that held a cynical view of government and its involvement in monitoring, distributing and regulating them.

As the mother of a boy who was diagnosed with Autism at 2 1/2 years-old, I experienced a fair amount of apprehension when deciding whether or not my child should continue receiving all his immunization shots and if so, if he was to get them on the schedule recommended by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and his pediatrician.

It was a difficult and unnerving experience because back in 2007, there was so much to learn about the whole Autism spectrum, its causes, best treatments and whether or not we had reliable studies confirming or denying a link between the MMR (stands for Measles, Mumps & Rubella) vaccine and the outbreak of Autism we were facing.

So I did my best to research the issue, discussed the matter with my child doctors and ultimately decided to err on the side of caution: when outweighing the risks of not being immunized vs. the non-proven risks that linked Autism to the MMR vaccine, the former was scarier than the latter.

The book reads as a collection of essays and at it starts with Bliss's interesting connection of Greek mythology (Achilles was " made immune to injure but not to heal") and Gothic horror (Dracula demonstrates our deep fears of contagion) with the overall theme of our fears over the practice of immunization. The idea of contaminating our children with the very hazard with hope to avoid sounds indeed almost mythological.

The author looks at our unease with immunization as a metaphor that reflect on the larger fears and anxieties we have regarding government intervention, unethical medical and pharmaceutical companies and our overall predisposition to distrusts the injection of anything that doesn't feel "natural" into our bodies. And I do believe that these fears are particularly enhanced when it comes to making decisions that affect our children.

Bliss also makes an important moral and social argument in favor of Immunizations: vaccines protect not only those that have been immunized, but also those that for different reasons, sometimes very valid and justifiable reasons, are unable to do so. This include people with impaired immune systems, pregnant women and people that are too young or too old, to name a few.

This was a really enlightening book to listen and read to (I bought the Kindle version of the book as well).

Tamara Marston was a perfect choice to narrate this book. She has a pleasant voice and modulates it in a way that does not distract the listener from concentrating on the content of the book. Really a great narrator especially for Non-fiction books!

Too "liberal arts" and sensational

I was expecting more scientific evidence or arguments. Instead it was more a "from a mother to another" treatment. I suppose it works fine for its target audience (parents weary of vaccines or at least question the cost vs. benefits). Unfortunately I do not feel the book was speaking to me at all.

Wonderful, smart, nuanced book

Would you consider the audio edition of On Immunity to be better than the print version?

No

Any additional comments?

Intelligent, thoughtful, and even-handed. Wish we could make this required reading for every anti-vax parent out there.

Like the debate itself YMMV

I so wanted to like this book. I heard Ms. Bliss on a talk show about vaccines and she seemed intelligent and gave some great concrete examples of why certain myths that anti-vaxxers use, while at the same time showing empathy towards them since she seemed to be saying that she was in the same camp initially.

I was initially not so much an anti-vaxxer as someone who, 10 years ago when my wife was pregnant and the modern debate was relatively new, had suspicions based on my own leanings of wanting to do things "naturally" - not just with vaccinations but child-birth, eating, etc. As such, we decided to delay some vaccines initially and opt out of the Hep-B, as many "under-vaxxers" as Bliss calls them do. Over the years, however, doing more research, I've become a staunch promoter of vaccinations, but still wince at some of the rhetoric on BOTH sides. And as such, I thought this book would be a good antidote to the debate which is often more heat than light, deteriorates into name calling, accusations of extreme selfishness or on the other side imposed poisoning, etc. I thought, hoped, this would go through a list of talking points and address each of them in a fair way, trying to shed light on where the fears came from, and when, in perhaps a small number of cases, these were due to legitimate concerns which should not be shouted down but addressed reasonably.

Unfortunately, as others have noted better than I could, the book was more of a hodgepodge, meandering here and there from personal anecdotes to historical information, to literary references. This was indeed a book written by a poet and an essayist, but one that seems to be written more for the literati rather than the common person. It certainly contains some interesting ideas, but despite having an MA I feel that one reading is inadequate in fully "getting it." Unfortunately the vast majority of folks, I fear will have much less patience and toss it aside after reading only a fraction of it.

The sense I got from Ms. Bliss's account was that she never really was someone who was at all in the anti-vaxx camp, or even close. It wasn't even clear to me whether she "undervaxxed" only that the social group that she travelled in were pretty anti-vaxx and suggested she should be as well. She even talks about disagreeing with some of them, so I don't get the sense that she ever didn't follow the regular schedule even though she may have felt some social pressure to. Most of her thesis seems to be around making anti-vaxxers or under-vaxxers not so much being stupid as rather being duped by their own special interests, and particularly based on a generally xenophobic/racist/anti-semetic/classist paranoia. This may all be true, but I don't think this will convince people who hold a lot of suspicion towards vaccines. Unfortunately it will be perceived as yet another attack not only on their intellect, but on their morals and psychological profile.

Good information, but tainted by political bias.

What made the experience of listening to On Immunity the most enjoyable?

Plenty of information on inoculation and the history of vaccination.

What about Tamara Marston’s performance did you like?

Even inflection; pleasant voice

Any additional comments?

The author's extreme liberal bias comes through, which is distracting. Her lack of objectivity in historical and cultural matters makes you question how even-handed she was in her treatment of the information. For example, she seems to suggest that capitalism is unique in creating suffering among the powerless; she doesn't consider the suffering inflicted on tens (or hundreds) of millions by communism, fascism, etc. And her opinions on such matters are totally irrelevant to the main points in the book. Why include them? Otherwise, there seems to be a lot of good and useful information in this book which in many instances is well presented.