“Do We Really Need Hepatitis B on the Second Day of Life?” Vaccination Mandates and Shifting Representations of Hepatitis B

In the decade following hepatitis B vaccine’s 1981 approval, U.S. health officials issued evolving guidelines on who should receive the vaccine: first, gay men, injection drug users, and healthcare workers; later, hepatitis B-positive women’s children; and later still, all newborns. States laws that mandated the vaccine for all children were quietly accepted in the 1990s; in the 2000s, however, popular anti-vaccine sentiment targeted the shot as an emblem of immunization policy excesses. Shifting attitudes toward the vaccine in this period were informed by hepatitis B’s changing popular image, legible in textual and visual representations of the infection from the 1980s through the 1990s. Notably, the outbreak of AIDS, the advent of genetically engineered pharmaceuticals, and a Democratic push for health reform shaped and reshaped hepatitis B’s public image. Hepatitis B thus became, in turn, an AIDS-like scourge; proof of a new era of pharmaceuticals; a threat from which all American children had a right to be protected; and a cancer-causing infection spread by teenage lifestyles. The metamorphosis of the infection’s image was reflected in evolving policy recommendations regarding who should receive the vaccine in the 1980s, and was key to securing broad uptake of the vaccine in the 1990s

Toxic Knowledge: A Review of Baptized in PCBs

Elena Conis reviews Ellen Griffith Spears's Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014)

Calling the Shots: A Social History of Vaccination in the U.S., 1962 - 2008

In two centuries of vaccination in the U.S., the last five decades constituted a unique era. American children received more vaccines than any previous generation, and laws requiring their immunization against a litany of diseases became common. Vaccination rates soared, preventable infections plummeted, and popular acceptance of vaccines remained strong--even as an increasingly vocal cross-section of Americans questioned the safety and necessity of vaccines and the wisdom of related policies. This dissertation examines how and why, between the 1960s and 2000s, Americans came to accept the state-mandated vaccination of all children against a growing number of infections despite the growing prominence of vaccine doubts. I argue that vaccines and vaccine policies fundamentally changed the ways health experts and lay Americans perceived the diseases they were designed to prevent. Second, I demonstrate that vaccination policies and their acceptance throughout this period were as contingent on political, social, and cultural concerns as they were on scientific findings. Thirdly, I show how, as new vaccine policies took shape, feminism, environmentalism, and other social movements laid challenge to scientific and governmental authority, with profound--but previously overlooked--implications for how Americans perceived vaccination. Finally, I argue that the relationship between vaccination beliefs and political ideology is more complex than historians have heretofore asserted, for selective and blanket vaccination doubts at the end of the twentieth century were as informed by leftist critiques of capitalism and social hegemonies as by traditional American libertarian ethics. This work draws on a diverse set of sources, including presidential archives; government agency records and publications; popular and scientific print media; television broadcasts; newsletters; internet archives; documents and publications at chiropractic libraries; and the personal files of vaccine scientists and critics. It contributes to the histories of disease, women, the environment, and health politics, as well as the sociology of social movements. By placing public health knowledge in historical context, this dissertation illuminates the many meanings of vaccination that lay between that of gold-standard disease preventive and hotly contested enterprise at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first

Breakout Session 3 - Motherwork as Bodywork: The Problem of Invisible Laborers

Breakout Session 3 - Motherwork as Bodywork: The Problem of Invisible Laborers Jessica Martucci, Mississippi State University Mothering to the Degree: Breastfeeding, Labor and Love Elena Conis, Emory University Vaccination as Motherwork: Mothers and the 21st Century Vaccination Debates Deanna Day, Chemical Heritage Foundation Data-driven Science for Creating Tiny Miracles: The Unacknowledged and Unpaid Labor of Fertility Chartin

Drugs, sex, money and power: An HPV vaccine case study

In this paper we compare the experiences of seven industrialized countries in considering approval and introduction of the world's first cervical cancer-preventing vaccine. Based on case studies, articles from public agencies, professional journals and newspapers we analyse the public debate about the vaccine, examine positions of stakeholder groups and their influence on the course and outcome of this policy process. The analysis shows that the countries considered here approved the vaccine and established related immunization programs exceptionally quickly even though there still exist many uncertainties as to the vaccine's long-term effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and safety. Some countries even bypassed established decision-making processes. The voice of special interest groups has been prominent in all countries, drawing on societal values and fears of the public. Even though positions differed among countries, all seven decided to publicly fund the vaccine, illustrating a widespread convergence of interests. It is important that decision-makers adhere to transparent and robust guidelines in making funding decisions in the future to avoid capture by vested interests and potentially negative effects on access and equity.Vaccination Human Papillomavirus Decision making Public health Pharmaceutical policy Public policy