Anti/VAX: Reframing the Vaccination Controversy

In Anti/Vax, Bernice L. Hausman challenges the widespread perception of vaccine skepticism shaped by media, celebrities, and internet misinformation. She explores other motivations behind vaccine hesitancy, including distrust of pharmaceutical companies and the belief that illness plays a role in good health. Seeking to reframe the conversation, she shows that when resistance to vaccination is portrayed as scientific illiteracy, denial of scientific facts, or simply as irrational, we lose opportunities to understand many people’s real concerns.

Anti/Vax reveals that resistance to vaccination consolidates a number of cultural issues--from critiques of medicalization to concerns about government overreach--and raises questions about public health norms. Researched and published before the Covid-19 pandemic, Hausman’s rich exploration of the cultural themes animating vaccine skepticism continues to illuminate controversies over vaccination today.

Bernice L. Hausman is the Garner James Cline Professor of Humanities in Medicine and Chair of the Department of Humanities at the Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania. She is the author of Viral Mothers, Mother’s Milk, and Changing Sex.