Eula Biss is the author of four books, most recently Having and Being Had. Her book On Immunity was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2014 by the New York Times Book Review, and Notes from No Man’s Land won the National Book Critics Circle award for criticism in 2009.
At the Guardian, Biss tagged "the best books to understand vaccines– and why some refuse them." One title on the list:
New viruses require new vaccines, but vaccines are not a new technology – they predate penicillin, and X-ray machines, and most of the advances of modern medicine. Scepticism of vaccines is as old as vaccines themselves. In Bodily Matters: The Anti-Vaccination Movement in England 1853-1907,Read about the other entries on the list.Nadja Durbach details widespread refusal of the government-mandated vaccination against smallpox. Some fears from that time seem comical now, such as the belief that vaccination could cause a person to grow the horns of a cow. But other concerns remain familiar – fear of bodily pollution, suspicion of both doctors and the medical system, and opposition to the government’s role in public health.
--Marshal Zeringue
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