On Immunity: An Inoculation

by Eula Biss

Even a modestly informed woman squinting at the rough outlines of a compressed history of medicine can discern that quite a bit of what has passed for science in the past two hundred years, particularly where women are concerned, has not been the product of scientific inquiry so much as it has been the refuse of science repurposed to support already existing ideologies. In this tradition, Wakefield’s study forwarded a hypothesis that was already in the air, a hypothesis that held particular appeal for women still haunted by the legacy of the refrigerator mother theory. Those who went on to use Wakefield’s inconclusive work to support the notion that vaccines cause autism are not guilty of ignorance or science denial so much as they are guilty of using weak science as it has always been used—to lend false credibility to an idea that we want to believe for other reasons. Believing that vaccination causes devastating diseases allows us to tell ourselves a story we already know: what heals may harm and the sum of science is not always progress. “Women know very well that knowledge from the natural sciences has been used in the interests of our domination and not our liberation,” Donna Haraway writes. And this understanding, she observes, can render us less vulnerable to the seductive claims of absolute truth that are sometimes made in the name of science. But it can also invite us to undervalue the place and importance of scientific knowledge. We need science, Haraway warns. W...