PositiveThe RumpusAlthough Biss arrives at a definitive pro-vaccine stance in On Immunity, this is not one of those insipid, reader-affirming parenting books. Nor is it a polemic ... On Immunity might be classified as a work of deep ecology. It sees, for example, the body as a garden, the immune \'system\' as a tidal ebb and flow, and immunity as inseparable from community. Above all, it seeks connections over divisions in its approach to the subject of our collective health ... With the subtitle \'An Inoculation\', Biss seeks to fortify mothers (explicitly) with contextualizing information in the same way that an inert virus trains the immune response. She seeks to remind us, as motherhood tunnels our vision, of the bigger picture: of history, of class and race, of philosophy ... this big-minded book seeks to prime our defenses against a response that might, in the big picture, run contrary to our own self-interest, even our own health. It does so by refreshing the memories of those of us in the privileged position to fear even the vaccines intended to make our children safer, reminding us that there are many more on this planet who are far more vulnerable, and that, given how interdependent our porous bodies are, their vulnerability is also our own.
