Description
Book SynopsisAntivaxxers are crazy. That is the perception we all gain from the media, the internet, celebrities, and beyond, writes Bernice Hausman in Anti/Vax, but we need to open our eyes and ears so that we can all have a better conversation about vaccine skepticism and its implications.
Hausman argues that the heated debate about vaccinations and whether to get them or not is most often fueled by accusations and vilifications rather than careful attention to the real concerns of many Americans. She wants to set the record straight about vaccine skepticism and show how the issues and ideas that motivate itlike suspicion of pharmaceutical companies or the belief that some illness is necessary to good healthare commonplace in our society.
Through Anti/Vax, Hausman wants to engage public health officials, the media, and each of us in a public dialogue about the relation of individual bodily autonomy to the state''s responsibility to safeguard citizens'' health. We need
Trade Review
Solid scholarship, clear writing, and a deep bibliography help this book stand out from others on this subject. Hausman's work is spot on and deserves a wide readership.
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Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments
Introduction: Vaccination Stories and Why I Wrote This Book
1. So What Bothers You about Vaccines?
2. Immune to Reason
3. Whom Do You Trust?
4. Being a Responsible Parent
5. Is Vaccine Refusal a Form of Science Denial?
6. What Are Facts, and How Do We Trust Them?
7. Medicalization and Biomedicalization
8. Antimedicine in Theory and Practice
9. Viral Imaginations
10. Anti/Vax
Conclusion: What Vaccination Controversy Can Teach Us about Medicine and Modernity
Notes
Bibliography
Index
