On Immunity by Eula Biss





Last week I finished On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss, published in 2014. It’s the perfect book for our pandemic times (even though the book primarily focuses on vaccination, which can be a cruel reminder of our current lack of a COVID-19 vaccine.) I’d definitely recommend the book. My main takeaways:

• The boundaries of what we think as the “body” and “self” are not truly there—our actions influence the health and bodies of strangers: “You don’t own your body—that’s not what we are, our bodies aren’t independent. The health of our bodies always depends on choices other people are making.” Our skin is not a protective barrier. We have the illusion of independence from others (maybe tied to the American value of “freedom.”) But our actions tangibly influence everyone around us. This has become especially clear with COVID-19: a portion of the population following social distancing rules does not mean we are safe.

• Those who don’t vaccinate draw resources from the other 99% and create an outsize risk: this can also be applied to masks and social distancing.

• Language is key to constructing an entire perspective about illness, vaccination, and medical practices. Phrases we use regularly, like “fight” or “battle” cancer, are actually rooted in military metaphors. Language can be manipulated to make certain medical practices seem more desirable. Some quotes that stood out:

• One of the appeals of alternative medicine is that it offers not just an alternative philosophy or an alternative treatment but also an alternative language. If we feel polluted, we are offered a “cleanse.” If we feel inadequate, lacking, we are offered a “supplement.” If we fear toxins, we are offered “detoxification.”

• “Obviously,” the naturalist Wendell Berry writes, “the more artificial a human environment becomes, the more the word ‘natural’ becomes a term of value.” If, he argues, “we see the human and the natural economies as necessarily opposite or opposed, we subscribe to the very opposition that threatens to destroy them both. The wild and the domestic now often seem isolated values, estranged from one another. And yet these are not exclusive polarities like good and evil. There can be continuity between them, and there must be.”

• “Immunologists were forced to use unusual expressions […] like ‘memory,’ ‘recognition,’ ‘interpretation,’ ‘individuality,’ ‘reading,’ ‘inner picture,’ ‘self,’ ‘nonself,’” he maintained, were unknown in physics or chemistry. “Atoms and molecules have no self, memory, individuality, or inner pictures.”

• “Popular publications,” Martin observes, “depict the body as the scene of total war between ruthless invaders and determined defenders. Our understanding of disease as something that we “fight” invites an array of military metaphors“

• Is Chinese medicine an “alternative” medicine, in the way Biss describes alternative medicine? There are lots of “strange” remedies and pressure points, and a view of different channels in the body as connected. But saying that Chinese medicine is “alternative” would naturally center Western practices as “mainstream” in a problematic way

• Fear is dependent on knowledge: so many toxins in foods or mattresses that Biss is afraid of her baby touching or ingesting I’ve never even heard of. My mom didn’t have the fear of these toxins because she didn’t research them or have knowledge of them when I was 2. The intense focus of Biss on her child seems typical of what my mom calls “first child” or “only child” syndrome, where the parent is obsessed with protection and constantly worries about their child.

• I was surprised that Biss expressed her own fears about vaccination. I’ve mostly regarded “anti-vaxxers” as a joke. But I began suddenly understanding some parts of their logic and their conspiracy theories. I was especially surprised to find this quote compelling: All of us who have been vaccinated are cyborgs, the cyborg scholar Chris Hables Gray suggests. Our bodies have been programmed to respond to disease, and modified by technologically altered viruses.

• Biss talks a lot about Dracula, vampires, and blood-sucking—which was a really interesting medical comparison. I probably won’t be able to get my blood drawn again without thinking of vampires, lol.

• I’m interested in reading more about capitalism (which Biss touched on) and how capitalism interacts with and changes our cultural conception of disease, illness, vaccination and even the entire pharmaceutical industry. Really liked this quote: But the art of healing, as doctors would discover, is rather difficult to commodify. The wise practice of waiting and watching is hard to sell, in part because it looks a lot like doing nothing. How many of the drugs we use are unnecessary, and prescribed just for the sake of “doing something”?