A mother’s concern for her newborn son led her to investigate the science and mythology of vaccination – with compelling results
When Eula Biss went into labour for the first time, she walked out from her Chicago home to watch the morning sun breaking up ice floes on Lake Michigan. During the long, difficult delivery of her son, she almost died: “I imagined myself swimming in the lake, which became, against my will, a lake of darkness and then a lake of fire and then a lake without a horizon.” A rare complication had occurred – a “uterine inversion” – triggering shock and a life-threatening haemorrhage. In the weeks following birth, the seismic adjustment all new parents have to make was made more difficult by anaemia, “delirious fatigue” and her suffocating new awareness of the fragility of life. She became prey to anxieties and paranoia, and would pass nights rocking her boy in a chair, soothing him through her insomnia.
Of the many dreads that pressed in on her the most prominent was that her son, in his perfection, would be polluted by contact with the world – she became frightened of contamination by manmade chemicals and vaccinations. But instead of giving in to those apprehensions, she set out on something remarkable: a journey to discover the truth about vaccines and inoculation. She read deeply into the history, mythology, sociology and the clinical science of immunisation and, to a lesser extent, toxicology. On Immunity is the result: an enthralling, deeply personal book that’s by turns lyrical and impassioned, lucid and enlightening – one woman’s journey to discover the best way forward for her son, herself and the communities of which we are all a part.
It’s odd to be concerned that vaccination is unnatural – after all, it’s natural to die in infancy
Related: The perils of parenthood with Eula Biss and Kate Hamer – books podcast
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