Vaccine Risk Questioners: The Human Cost of Risk and the Acknowledgement of Subjectivity

• In Event: Products of Biotecnoscience: Modified Living Beings Used in Health and Agriculture Activities - II

Abstract

“The Science is Settled.” The use of these four words signifies that sufficient evidence has been amassed that no further discourse is necessary on a topic, yet this seems antithetical to the very notion of the ways in which science is iteratively created. This idea has become entrenched in the ways that childhood immunizations are discussed in the United States and beyond. While vaccines continue to play such a critical role in our public health system, voices from medical professionals and scientists raising issues of risk contribute to the body of discourse influencing public opinion within the context of Big Pharma interests and attempts at public health management by the state. Is there a need to consider these voices of risk in light of creating innovative and alternative delivery systems that have the potential to not only increase compliance but lower risk as well? How should true informed consent be constituted when issues of public safety are at stake? Is mandatory vaccination constitutional in its efforts to safeguard the body politic via forced inclusion into the herd? This paper explores these issues through the ethnographic analysis of voices of leaders of the state and of the scientific community who have publicly grappled with these questions of risk in the face of emotional and highly polarized opposition in regard to the formulation and regulation of public policy.

Author

• Leea Thompson Fudge, Southern Methodist University