About immunity.

Vaccination: myth, metaphor, responsibility, by Eula Bliss

I would not have thought I could find history, sociology, medicine, psychology and more
in a book about vaccines. As a doctor, I thought I knew pretty much everything about this
subject. It would never have occurred to me that I would be able to decipher metaphors on this
arid, epidemiological, non-attractive subject in medical school everywhere.

The author is a young and prestigious essayist, in her third book, one of the ten Best
Books of 2014 awarded by the New York Times Book Review. She is also the daughter of a
doctor and a poet. And the book is also an amalgam of science, which sublimates in metaphor,
about every page. This is exactly what I needed to get out of my daily work routine.

At the center of a story about the author's relationship with her child (a narrative that
convinced me that we are dealing with a mother first, and still a very caring one, scared of any
potential danger to the child's health and hates the paternalism of doctors and hospitals. ), there is
the controversial discussion about vaccinating children. With a perfect understanding of the fear
of all, including his own, related to the aggressive act of inoculation, breaking individual
physical barriers, Eula is not against him, but neither does he carry a crusade against those who
oppose him. Moreover, it does not use the term "anti-vaccination movement". She recounts
discussions with her friends, mothers and they, understands their views on vaccines, and shares
amazing findings she makes during her research on vaccines and diseases, interweaving
metaphors and myths, psychology, sociology and philosophy, science and politics, history and
religion. She painstakingly researches written documentation of all kinds, asks researchers,
infections and pediatricians, consults her father, a cancerologist, and finally gives us a superb
transfer from the cold field of information, to that of empathy, of acceptance.
Far from being a stubborn plea for vaccination, the book is a dense fabric of information and
personal testimony, which is left scattered to provide a thread of the Ariadne, which will lead to
the only logical possibility, vaccination. At the next vaccine, I will no longer think of the impure
serum, but the idea that "if vaccination can be considered an aggressive act, it can also be
thought of as an instrument for the service of human love." Much of the writing is examining the
degree to which we exist in the continuation of one another, codependents. “You have your own
body - not what we are, our bodies are independent. The health of our bodies always depends on
choices other people are making ... The point is an illusion of independence. ” So the idea is that
we are not well-defined bodies, as we imagine, and that the skin does not really manage to
separate us perfectly from them. Since birth, we all share a common system.

"About Immunity" includes not only comments about infections caused by viruses, but
also about ideas, about epidemics of prejudice, about attaching some of that fear to the toxicity of
vaccines, even if they are provided with evidence that vaccines contain nothing toxic. .
Especially infections with scientifically unfounded ideas, in order to support a momentary
political interest (for example the C.I.A. vaccination campaign in Pakistan).

Our mind, like our affective life, is continually nourished by those around us. Emotional
states are contagious, this has been scientifically proven. Our mental health, as well as our bodily
health, depends on that of our fellow human beings. The mind does not exist in isolation, and
isolation does not do it well. Loneliness destroys psychologically. My mind doesn't work
anymore, if it's broken by other minds. But in a culture like this, influenced by the values of
Renaissance individualism, it is of course risky and difficult to think our own mind connected to
those of others. It scares us the idea of sharing our minds. But here's the Star Trek with the Borg
race. Borg is a vast collection of cyber-organisms, autonomous, linked through a collective mind,
The Hive, that is Stupul. Somehow sinister, this image gives us the opportunity to explore our
own collective fear.

This keen researcher discovers that all that is known, all the information that humanity
has, is the product of such a mental stupor. The answers so far to our questions, have been found
collectively. The clarifications were brought by the collaboration of several minds. Alone, I
could not find out much, and still less would understand. In an attempt to better understand the
"anti-vaccination" movement, the author talks about human psychology and the influence of
metaphors. A Romanian pediatrician colleague, just told me that he received a message from a
young Bucharest father, the son of a friend, who begs him to send him a "cleaner" vaccine for his
child, from here, from America. It is about the metaphor of the vaccine considered a pollutant, a
dirt, a metaphor which, says the author, is not at all new, but existed in the book "Bodily
Matters" written 150 years ago. This metaphor was used there in the context of fear that a foreign
substance could compromise the purity of blood, then psychologically associated with ideas such
as class and race purity. Today, the obsession of pollution comes from what happens to the
environment, and the anxiety related to it, intense, tends to associate everything with the
pollution of the environment. The association between the vaccine repulsion and the attitude
towards immigrants is also mentioned here. The author herself testifies that this metaphor of
pollution was part of her own thinking, all the more so because she was prejudiced that vaccines
contain "toxins". She realized that her idea was actually fueled by the collective metaphor of
pollution, and it wasn't her idea. After being informed, he realized that we are already born
polluted, and the quantities of aluminum, mercury, triclosan that come from the environment are
huge, compared to those of a vaccine.

I speak of some as "vaccine toxicity" or "cumulative toxicity". The traces of

formaldehyde, the substance that inactivates the virus from a vaccine, are still a product of
metabolism in our body, and the amounts that circulate through our blood are much higher than
those traces of a vaccine. If the mother's milk were to be sold at the store, the stock waves would
have to be withdrawn, as it would exceed the limits of DDT and PCB legally admitted. The
notion of a "toxin" is debated, and the logical conclusion is that vaccines protect us from toxins
that damage organs, such as the toxin produced by the bacteria that gives the cough, the one
produced by the diphtheria bacillus, or the deadly tetanus neurotoxin. Thus, these metaphors
appear erroneous, and the author advocates a remedy, transforming them. Instead of vaccine =
pollutant, she proposes the metaphor of vaccine-preservation of the environment. Instead of the
one who vaccinates a child = vampire who feeds on the health of the child, he proposes:
unvaccinated person = vampire who sucks public health.

And as for vampires, Dracula often appears in the text, sometimes as a metaphor for
diseases, sometimes as an entity that reminds us that we are penetrable bodies. And at other
times to exemplify the empiricism that underlies some beliefs. But the craziest and most
eccentric, is the use of vampirism in the idea of needing organisms from other organisms, to
survive. A terrifying but realistic idea through its cruelty.
Coming back to the idea of vaccine = preservation of the environment, I liked how the concept of
"natural" is debated, a concept very dear to today's generations. It starts from the premise that it
is wrong to consider the term "natural" as synonymous with "good". Many think that letting
children gain immunity by becoming ill would be more natural than getting it by vaccination,
given the impression that vaccines are unnatural. In fact, vaccines are a kind of domesticated
wild horses. And their action depends on the body's ability to make antibodies naturally, not at
the factory. Vaccines are biological products, not chemicals, like drugs. If there is an unnatural
appearance in a vaccine, then it is precisely the fact that it does not introduce the disease, does
not bring the disease, which it can be considered "natural", as eventual death, or as the injuries
caused by infections on organs, sometimes irreversible.

Impressive to this author is the way he manages to renew among so much information.
To put them head to head, to talk to them, without having the air that he wants to convince with
something, and to converse in a kind of narrative, jumping lightly from one information to
another, crossing many associated terms, crossing different fields , and gradually leading us to
self-reflection, on the perspective through which we see our right to our own body. He tells us
that the research he did was that of an Alice in Wonderland, who falls into the rabbit hole, and
falls, still falls, reaching deeper than he had initially intended.
In order to be quite satisfied with my own review, I should be able to mention for the
reader all the interesting ideas, and so I should copy the whole book from beginning to end here.
However, I cannot refrain from writing about that mother, who, as opposed to vaccinating her
son, had not, however, reminded her that, as resilient as her child was in the event of illness, he
would become the carrier of the virus, and it would contaminate another vulnerable child,
another child, an elderly person or a person with low immunity, who could not survive the
illness. Bliss writes that "a privileged percentage of 1% is protected by the rest of 99%", and that
this is the purpose of the vaccination: the majority, to defend a minority, otherwise defenseless.
Being responsible for others, but equally powerless, is something like being a citizen of the
United States. We have representatives and thus our democracy is based on "empowered
powerlessness", a lack of conscious power, but with the assumption of empowerment, a form of
eco-system, of interdependence, of assumed dependence.

    "If we extend the metaphor of the garden to our social body, we could imagine ourselves as a
garden in a garden. The outdoor garden is not an Eden, and no rose garden. It is as strange and
varied as is the inner garden of our body, where we host fungi and viruses and bacteria, both
good and bad. This garden is unlimited and unmanaged, and produces both fruit and thorns.
Maybe we should call it wild. Or maybe community is enough. However we choose to refer to
the social organism, we are the environment for each other. Immunity is a common space - a
garden we take care of together. " (p. 184)

Manole Ana-Maria
Grupa 206
An II MG