Do you feel feverish? Impotent? Suffer from ADD? You might have been vaccinated!
Call the attorneys at Tropics of Meta at 976-HOT-TOMS to join our class action lawsuit against Big Science.
In the latest episode of our sister podcast Doomed to Repeat, we delve into the gory glories of the anti-vaccination movement. We obviously have strong feelings about the issue (all of our kids are enrolled at Los Feliz Daycare, after all). But we wanted to talk to some bonafide historians of science, medicine, and public health to understand the contemporary movement to get to the bottom of this problem, and really understand the deeper historical and cultural roots of vaccine skepticism. In the process, we get to bigger ideas about resistance to government coercion and a crisis of authority that has infected not only medicine but academia, the media, science, and other powerful institutions.
In the episode, we chat with Nadja Durbach, professor of history at the University of Utah and author of the books Bodily Matters and Spectacle of Deformity, as well as the legendary Marian Moser Jones, associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health and author of The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal. (MMJ was also Alex’s dissertation sherpa/buddy back in the day. She still gets residuals on the first five pages of Democracy of Sound.)
We hope that these interviews give a deeper and broader sense of why we are facing the anti-vax dilemma today. If you love it, hate it, agree, or disagree, let us know in the comments!