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On Immunity: An Inoculation

Eula Biss

3.91 · Rating details · 9,190 ratings · 1,273 reviews

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 conceptio ...more

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Hardcover, 205 pages

Published September 30th 2014 by Graywolf Press

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Sep 17, 2014 Claire Humphrey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: best-of-2014

Just lovely: so thoughtful and empathetic and intellectually wide-ranging. I've often wondered why people--privileged, educated people, no less--choose not to vaccinate their children, disregarding scientific evidence and social responsibility. I've especially wondered why this position seems so unassailable, why even people I consider friends are so closed to discussion on this one topic although they are open-minded about so much else.

Eula Biss bridges the gap, exposes the power of irrational ...more

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Nov 23, 2018 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: recs, 2018

A meditation on American culture's conception of illness, On Immunity takes on the misinformation and paranoia surrounding vaccination. In precise and moving prose, Eula Biss tracks the global history of immunization, critiques the act of describing public and private health through militaristic metaphors, reflects on her experience of motherhood, considers the ways in which cultural cornerstones such as Dracula represent disease, and deconstructs common arguments against vaccination. The short ...more

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Oct 03, 2014 Rebecca rated it liked it

Shelves: health

This book isn't what I thought. I expected a historical record of the development of vaccines as well as a debate about whether or not parents should vaccinate their children and I got that -- for the first few chapters. Then Biss launched into a serious of personal essays about the birth of her son, taking him for shots and obsessing about the transfusion she had to get following labor. Honestly, the book should have been called "Transfusion" because she never shut up about it. You'd think no o ...more

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Oct 26, 2014 Ashley rated it really liked it

Those of us who identify as what is called "pro-vax"--parents who not only vaccinate their children, but who feel passionately about it--are not exactly shrinking violets. Frankly, we can't afford to be--although the vast majority of parents vaccinate their children, we do it as a matter of course for the most part, and do not feel a driving need to speak up about having done so, any more than we brag about taking our kids to the dentist. However, this silence has allowed a vocal and dangerous m Those of us who identify as what is called "pro-vax"--parents who not only vaccinate their children, but who feel passionately about it--are not exactly shrinking violets. Frankly, we can't afford to be--although the vast majority of parents vaccinate their children, we do it as a matter of course for the most part, and do not feel a driving need to speak up about having done so, any more than we brag about taking our kids to the dentist. However, this silence has allowed a vocal and dangerous minority of no-vax, slow-vax, and anti-vax parents to dominate the conversation about immunization, to disastrous effects. We're faced now with measles outbreaks, pertussis clusters which have killed infants, even mumps outbreaks in college kids this year. Because we're so passionate, and because the other side is equally passionate, debates can devolve into shouting matches. One side braying about "science and research" while the other side spouts nonsense about a worldwide conspiracy of silence and "vaccine injuries." It's rarely productive.

Although she vaccinates her children, no one would mistake author Eula Biss as a "pro-vax" parent. And in some ways, that's exactly what this conversation needs. I consider Eula Biss the closest thing we have to our generation's Joan Didion. She shares many of the same stylistic tics, has the same careful, analytic mind, the same elegant literary sensibility, and, most markedly, the same ability to take current anxieties, identify with them, even experience them herself, and them step back and examine them like an archaeologist might examine a shard of Minoan pottery. From bloodletting and bloodsucking (pre-twentieth century medicine and Bram Stoker's Dracula, respectively) to the politics of wealth and education when it comes to the decision to vaccinate, Biss carefully weaves the fears of vaccines, and more broadly, parenthood itself with timeless themes of chaos and lack of control.

There were times I felt Eula Biss was too careful. She refers to the country's most vocal and, in my opinion, dangerous fearmongerer, Barbara Loe Fisher, as a "consumer advocate." There is an endnote that describes in more detail Fisher's role in the anti-vaccine movement, but I was disappointed to see her described in this positive manner in the body of the book. BIss's father, a doctor, at one point dismisses anti-vaxxers as idiots, and Eula Biss states unequivocally that they're not. No doubt there are those who are intelligent but misguided. But there is a deep vein of paranoid, conspiracy-mindedness that goes along with anti-vaccine ideas, and she doesn't touch this. In fact, she doesn't address the fact that the most common arguments anti-vaxxers use to sway parents from vaccinating are not based in science. In fact, they are mostly proved incorrect by science. There was a conversation about the catastrophic effect the fraudulent Wakefield study had on the vaccination rates in the U.S and the U.K., and she mentions that the IOM did an exhaustive review of the literature and found absolutely no connection between vaccines and autism. But I was concerned with the lack of acknowledgment about the scientific illiteracy question, particularly because it ties in so naturally with other dangerous belief systems that can or will cause real and lasting damage to humanity (i.e. climate change denialism).

That being said, I was enraptured as I read this book, which felt--and perhaps intentionally so--addressed to me specifically. In fact, Biss says in one of her endnotes (and be sure to read the endnotes straight through--they're an integral part of the book) that she chose to write the book to mothers, not because fathers are any less important as caregivers, but because she feels many of the anxieties about which she writes are specific to mothers. An interesting approach. A brilliant writer. ...more

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Mar 23, 2015 Ayelet Waldman rated it it was amazing

This book is remarkable. Read it.

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Mar 11, 2015 Iris P rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: immersion-reading, essays, 2015-favorites, iris-s-favorites, 2015-reads, health, medicine

On Immunity: An Inoculation

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 learned our seemingly never endin ...more

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Oct 23, 2014 Robert Felton rated it it was ok

There was a lot of very informative and insightful material in On Immunity. I liked the section focused on perceptions of risk, where the belief of the validity of a particular risk by many people in society is often at odds with quantifiable facts. I also enjoyed the metaphorical comparisons that Eula Biss makes in our language and our exaggerated scientific studies, both of which contribute to our general fear of vaccinations. But, I felt the book didn't quite work for me. My biggest problem i ...more

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Mar 31, 2020 Anusha Narasimhan rated it really liked it

Shelves: reread-someday, nonfiction, storytel

This book is a collection of essays from the author's perspective as a doctor's daughter and a mother. It informs the reader about immunity, viruses, history of some diseases, clinical trials and vaccination. It also explains the concept of herd immunity and the process involved in finding a vaccine for a disease. I found this book very relevant to the current crisis of coronavirus.

This book does not focus only on hard science. It sheds light on how healthcare impacts, as well as gets impacted b ...more

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Mar 23, 2015 Glenn Sumi rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

Eula Biss isn’t a scientist; she’s an award-winning non-fiction writer and a mother. But based on On Immunity: An Inoculation, she’s clearly done copious amounts of research. The book is a personal, impressionistic, fascinating look at the history of immunity, from those 18th century English milkmaids with cowpox who miraculously found themselves immune to smallpox to the crazy (and dangerous) theories of celebrities like Jenny McCarthy.

Biss has a poet’s ear, and recognizes all the connotations Eula Biss isn’t a scientist; she’s an award-winning non-fiction writer and a mother. But based on On Immunity: An Inoculation, she’s clearly done copious amounts of research. The book is a personal, impressionistic, fascinating look at the history of immunity, from those 18th century English milkmaids with cowpox who miraculously found themselves immune to smallpox to the crazy (and dangerous) theories of celebrities like Jenny McCarthy.

Biss has a poet’s ear, and recognizes all the connotations of a scientific term like “herd immunity” (“it suggests that we are cattle, waiting, perhaps, to be sent to slaughter”) and takes apart the contradictions of the much-used word “natural” (“What natural has come to mean to us in the context of medicine is pure and safe and benign.”)

This book is in the spirit of Susan Sontag’s Illness And Metaphor and AIDS And Its Metaphors, both of which Biss mentions. She’s very sensitive to how disease has been linked with fear of “the other.” There’s a fascinating section on the legend of Dracula. And during the smallpox epidemic of 1898, the disease was called, variously, “the Nigger itch,” “the Italian itch,” and “the Mexican bump.” Seriously.

Biss also suggests that the frontier mentality of Americans might account for the anti-vaccers: “we imagine our bodies as isolated homesteads that we tend either well or badly. The health of the homestead next to ours does not affect us, this thinking suggests, so long as ours is well tended.”

Biss grounds the book with stories about her own fears of being a new mom, but also looks abroad. Most horrifying is the story of vaccine providers in Pakistan and Nigeria being murdered by extremist groups because it was thought they were giving them AIDS or sterilizing Muslim girls.

Closer to home, there’s the Nashville woman who handed out chickenpox lollipops. And there’s the disturbing demonization campaign against Dr. Paul A. Offit, a pediatrician who co-invented the rotavirus vaccine. To discredit him, he was being called "Dr. Proffit" to create the illusion that the vaccine was simply a way for him to make money. (In fact, vaccines are costly to develop and generate only modest profits.)

The book isn't a page-turner, by any means, but rather a thoughtful, meditative book about a timeless topic that affects everyone on the planet. ...more

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Oct 02, 2014 Erin rated it it was ok

Shelves: non-fiction, nutrition-food

Wow, not what I expected. I agree with Rebecca's review below. I was wanting a more factual/historical read, but instead this book was ALL OVER THE PLACE. The chapters weren't arranged chronologically, or in any logical way whatsoever. You start a new chapter where she talks about when her son was born, but in the previous chapter he was 4 years old. She talks way too much about vaccinating her son, her father being a doctor, and a blood transfusion she once received. The title should be more li ...more

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Dec 05, 2014 Jeremiah rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: Anyone looking to regret reading a book.

Recommended to Jeremiah by: Entertainment Weekly (I should have known better)

Shelves: bound-toilet-paper

Thank you to Eula Biss for pushing me to return to goodreads. I felt as though this was the only place I could properly voice my disappointment in this book. As focused as a broken telescope I have to wonder with what scandalous info she blackmailed her editor. Her use of metaphors are like a clean-up hitter shooting a three point shot during the superbowl and coming up short only to get an icing call on the final lap. ...or should I say it is like a vampire quoting Sontag but only to support Ki ...more

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Jul 11, 2014 Rebecca rated it really liked it

Shelves: illness-and-death, political, uncategorizable, history, reviewed-for-nudge

When she first became a mother, professor and essayist Eula Biss took the opportunity to reconsider inoculation. She’d never given it much thought before, but in an American culture of paranoia about everything from bird flu to food additives, it was impossible not to ask what risks she was exposing her son to, and whether they were worth it. In a wide-ranging cultural history reminiscent of Susan Sontag’s AIDS and Its Metaphors, she delves into the facts, myths and metaphors surrounding immuniz ...more

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Jan 01, 2015 Greg rated it it was ok

This is a thoughtful discussion of illness and immunity that pays particular attention to the controversies surrounding vaccines. And there is no doubt the author invested a great deal of research and thinking in this. Be warned, however, that it is less straightforward narrative than a bricolage of her own memories, readings and musings, which can be, at times, difficult. For example, early in the book, Biss moves from Kierkegaard, to the Doppler effect, to O negative blood and then to the idea ...more

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Mar 02, 2015 Book Riot Community added it

Shelves: favorites, non-fiction

Despite the fact that this book has been deemed one of the best non-fiction books of 2014, it completely took me by surprise. By combining historical information and personal essays, Biss takes on the hot button topic of vaccinations and brings it to a level that can appeal to anyone. Plus she is able to take the idea of vampires and our cultural history with those creatures and integrate them into our current cultural fear of vaccinations. Without shaming people who may be wary of vaccines and ...more

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May 26, 2016 Tanja Berg rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: psychology-psychiatry, science, non-fiction

Rating 6* out of 5. I have never read anything like this in my life. I am not talking about the subject in itself, because actually none of the facts presented here were new to me. I have read about them before. What is different is how Eula Biss pieces together fact and mythology (Greek and vampirical) together with her own experiences as a first time mother to make a case for vaccination. She does this so gently, so expertly, that surely not even the anti-vaccination faction could take offense Rating 6* out of 5. I have never read anything like this in my life. I am not talking about the subject in itself, because actually none of the facts presented here were new to me. I have read about them before. What is different is how Eula Biss pieces together fact and mythology (Greek and vampirical) together with her own experiences as a first time mother to make a case for vaccination. She does this so gently, so expertly, that surely not even the anti-vaccination faction could take offense. Biss is sympathetic where I would have been arrogant.

I got this book in the post on Thursday. I had already started something else, but I thought I would read a couple of pages while warming up dinner. I was immediately hooked. I had been afraid that this would be a technical and complicated book that would require some additional effort on my part, but it is not. This is a very easy book, compelling, fascinating, deeply personal and written for the lay man. All you need is basic reading comprehension. This should be mandatory reading.

"After leaving the cemetery I remarked to my father that I had noticed the graves of five-year-olds and ten-year-olds and a number of teenagers, but that I was surprised not to have seen, in one of the oldest cemeteries in Chicago, the graves of any babies. This, my father reminded me, was probably because infants died in such large numbers during the nineteenth century that they were not routinely buried in marked graves. Later, I would learn that one out of every ten children born in 1900 died before their first birthdays. I would read this ina report on vaccine side effects, which concluded its brief historical overview of child mortality with the observation that now 'children are expected to survive to adulthood.'"

Think about it. Up until recent history, even in the Western world, child mortality was a fact everyone had to live with. Even when children did not die, they could suffer consequences for the rest of their lives, as with polio. Antibiotics are also a recent invention, and a respite from infections that will quickly come to an end because of over-use.

"For several nights while my son had croup I sat with him for most of the night, holding him upright while he slept so that he could breathe more easily. There was nothing else I could do for him. I traveled back in time then, or so I felt, passing through a space-time rift into what I imagined might have been the experience of a mother a hundred years ago, when faux-croup could just as easily have been killing croup. I thought of the mothers in Daniel Defoe's 'A Journal of the Plague Year' who were said to have died after losing their children - not of the plague, but of grief."

"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."

I cannot do this book justice. It is a call for greater good. It is deeply intellectual and philosphical work, written so that anyone can grasp its concepts. READ IT! ...more

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Aug 02, 2014 Jen Hirt rated it it was amazing

I can't reveal much about this brilliant personal critique of America's culture of doubt surrounding vaccines, because I'm getting paid (for once) to write about it elsewhere (the next edition of the American Writers reference series, not due out until 2016). But I will echo what others are saying -- Biss has inherited the critical inquiry skills of Susan Sontag and Joan Didion and merged them with the research focus of Rebecca Solnit. The whole short book (164 pages, followed by 40 pages of end ...more

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Apr 18, 2019 Mara rated it really liked it

Shelves: recommended-to-me, subscription, audio

4.5 stars -- this was a very emotional read for me, one that I almost resented. But ultimately, I could not deny the beauty of the writing or the thoughtfulness of Biss' consideration of ourselves as bodies interconnected to one another in so many different ways. ...more

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Jun 26, 2020 Udit Nair rated it really liked it

Shelves: science, non-fiction

The author tries to weave a story through hard hitting research and personal experiences. The intergenerational approach added with current political environment over vaccination makes it an interesting read.

The areas where the book stands out is the precise combination of science of vaccination added with other aspects related to vaccination. The author is able to give out the historical data along with some of the personal anxieties which surround the individuals. Another exciting aspect is t ...more

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Dec 01, 2014 Douglas rated it really liked it

“Immunity is a shared space – a garden we tend together.”

Eula Biss has written a fine argument and defense for the importance of vaccination in our society.

When I was in high school, we had a contest between other school debate teams called The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, named for the famous candidates in the 1858 Senate race in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. Even though Lincoln didn’t win the debate in 1858, his opinions won the popular vote, and the debates helped launch his car ...more

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May 30, 2019 erica rated it it was ok

Shelves: nonfictions, my-kindle, medicine-and-health-care

This isn't a science book. It's not a book about health care. It's not even a book about vaccination. Instead, On Immunity is a confusing collection of essays with no cohesive theme. Biss cycles between motherhood and literary analysis and never brings it all together.

With the measles outbreak splashed across every newspaper, I picked up a copy of On Immunity, aiming to educate myself on vaccination, and expecting a primer on vaccines and vaccine culture. I was disappointed to discover that this ...more

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Sep 29, 2014 Renata rated it it was amazing

Shelves: grownup, nonfiction

I love Eula Biss. Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays is soooo important to me and so stylistically impressive. This is different--one structured narrative rather than an essay collection, but she does trace different topics related to the history of vaccinations and anti-vaccinations.

Ugh she's just so SMART and so good at making connections between things. And I love that she writes openly from her perspective as a new mother, a privileged mother, who can understand the panic that anti-v ...more

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Jan 31, 2017 Cat rated it it was amazing

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I was obsessed with what I consumed. I didn't just give up wine; I gave up chewing gum. I feared that my cups of early pregnancy green tea could cause spinal bifida; I meticulously removed the feta cheese from a dining hall sandwich, knowing that there was virtually no chance that institutional dairy was unpasteurized. In "On Immunity," Eula Biss explores our desire to spare our children the toxicity and mortality that is their lot, and she is unsparing in h When I was pregnant with my daughter, I was obsessed with what I consumed. I didn't just give up wine; I gave up chewing gum. I feared that my cups of early pregnancy green tea could cause spinal bifida; I meticulously removed the feta cheese from a dining hall sandwich, knowing that there was virtually no chance that institutional dairy was unpasteurized. In "On Immunity," Eula Biss explores our desire to spare our children the toxicity and mortality that is their lot, and she is unsparing in her assessment of the privilege such anxieties reflect. Though it would be easy to imagine the ideal of immunity as a hermetic space, repelling the onslaught of infection through the shield of the immune system (and Biss discusses our martial metaphors for immunity as well), Biss emphasizes the collective condition of vulnerability and the ideal of herd immunity as a metaphor for the body politic, where the choice to vaccinate supposedly protected privileged children improves the health of everyone. She understands vaccination not as an incursion on our inviolate bodies but rather as a choice to opt in to a social good, to mind the commons for everyone.

Biss's book weaves together feminist, posthuman, and queer theory with personal anecdote and medical research, and she makes her own learning process and maternal anxieties part of the narrative. Her family members play roles in the unfolding philosophical dialogue about vaccination and its implications: her father, a doctor, and her sister, an ethicist. Her syntactical grace and unfailing clarity effortlessly lift the intellectual weight of her explorations; I do not know how she slices through these waters with such momentum given how easily she could be bogged down by her multi-faceted approach (symbolic, epidemiological, and psychological) to the subject.

The one thing that was very demoralizing was reading this book during the dawn of the Trump era. Biss prognosticates about the contemporary anxieties about what it means to be a citizen in a democracy and what it means to be awash in toxicity, and she convincingly links xenophobia and racism to metaphors about bodily invasion and infection (one of my favorite things about the book). She chronicles the debunking of Robert Kennedy Jr.'s unfounded article about immunization and autism. When she was writing this, she must have imagined her inoculation moving forward into a reasonable future, helping people to see not simply the pragmatic benefits of vaccination but also its important to a more capacious view of our physical enmeshment with one another. Unfortunately, it seems we're going in the other direction . ...more

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Mar 30, 2020 Caleb Ingegneri rated it really liked it

If you are sick of getting quarantine recommendations for The Plague and The Road, this is the book for you.

I picked it up in January while I was in Boston, read the first half of it in a frenzy—inspired, interested, oddly repulsed. The book is about vaccination, immunity, and public health and all the discussions of illness and needles felt nauseating at first.

Now, returning to it after the outbreak of COVID-19, it is prophetic and helpful. It shows you in artful writing what and how we shoul ...more

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Feb 08, 2015 Ana rated it really liked it

Shelves: science, non-fiction, 21st-century, north-american-literature, history, united-states-literature

The praise this book is getting is well deserved.

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Oct 30, 2020 Miriam rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: bookclubs

This book is very readable and has lots of interesting information to offer. Biss explains where anti-vaccinators are coming from, their fears and concerns. I think I understand that a little better now, even though I don't agree with it in the slightest. Biss brings in lots of historical examples of how people have tried to prevent disease. The discussion of the weaponisation of disease and vaccination was fascinating and horrible to read about.
Biss also refutes most of the claims and fears of ...more

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Aug 03, 2014 Andrew rated it liked it

I remain immune to the hype.

There's some brilliant writing in here awaintg an editor. Is it a commentary on the current immunity scare? A history of inoculation? A journey into the subtle class boundaries of North America? Who knows. It's all of those things, but in no particular order and with no obvious object. Now, I know that post-modern post-structuralist writing values the amorphous subjective (and perhaps the also the even more elusive intersubjective) but readers still deserve, at the mi ...more

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Dec 29, 2014 Luis rated it did not like it

What a waste of time this book was. The only positive thing is that it is short. The problem? It has no thesis whatsoever. I still do not know what all the ranting was about. It talks a great deal about vaccines and why people are afraid of them, about Dracula, and about her son, but I still don’t know what she was trying to get at. She goes on and on about her son, his birth, his vaccines, his allergies, etc. Please! You should just go ahead and write a memoir about your tendencies as an overpr ...more

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Apr 05, 2015 Beth Knight rated it really liked it

I read this as part of my Book Riot Read Harder challenge (it fulfills the "a-book-published-by-an-indie-press" requirement). I didn't think I'd like it as much as I did. I'm much more "into" fiction and so I was worried this book was going to be too dry. It wasn't. It was filled with all kinds of stats and facts, of course, but there was also a lot of personal details about the author's life and young son so that made it more readable and identifiable. I'd recommend the book to everyone but I t ...more

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Dec 25, 2014 Karen Witzler rated it really liked it

Shelves: nyt-ten-best-books-of-year, essays

Belletristic approach to the current vaccine debate. Eula Biss weaves history, philosophy of science, current events, and personal memoir into this excellent piece on the cultural implications of immunology and disease. Susan Sontag, Donna Haraway, and Bram Stoker are consulted along with contemporary scientists and public health advocates. Beautiful writing, indeed. Highly recommended.

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Oct 03, 2016 Julie Ehlers rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-and-tech, nonfiction

This book was so, so interesting and important. I can't stop thinking about it. I will go so far as to say that everyone should read it. I almost docked a star because the way the endnotes are set up was really annoying, but there's just too much good stuff here not to give it the 5-star deluxe treatment. ...more

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About Eula Biss

Eula Biss

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Eula Biss holds a BA in nonfiction writing from Hampshire College and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. She is currently an Artist in Residence at Northwestern University, where she teaches nonfiction writing, and she is a founding editor of Essay Press, a new press dedicated to innovative nonfiction. Her essays have recently appeared in The Best Creative Nonfiction and the ...more

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Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009

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Her Favorite Books About Vaccination: The author of On Immunity shares five books that informed her critique of the myths and fears surrounding...

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“Wealthier countries have the luxury of entertaining fears the rest of the world cannot afford.” — 20 likes

“That so many of us find it entirely plausible that a vast network of researchers and health officials and doctors worldwide would willfully harm children for money is evidence of what capitalism is really taking from us. Capitalism has already impoverished the working people who generate wealth for others. And capitalism has already impoverished us culturally, robbing unmarketable art of its value. But when we begin to see the pressures of capitalism as innate laws of human motivation, when we begin to believe that everyone is owned, then we are truly impoverished.” — 19 likes

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