Faculty Bibliography

The December 2014 outbreak of measles in California impacted over 100 children and served as a reminder that this disease still plagues the USA, even 50 years following the first licensed vaccine. Refusal of vaccination is a complicated and multifaceted issue, one that clearly demands a closer look by paediatricians and public health officials alike. While medical doctors and scientists are trained to practice 'evidence-based medicine', and studies of vaccine safety and efficacy speak the language of statistics, there is reason to believe that this is not the most effective strategy for communicating with all groups of parents. Herein, we consider other methods such as narrative practices that employ stories and appeal more directly to parents. We also examine how doctors are trained to disseminate information and whether there are reasonable supplementary methods that could be used to improve vaccine communication and ultimately immunisation rates.

Mississippi persistently leads the United States in childhood vaccination with a greater than 99% measles-mumps-rubella vaccination rate for children entering kindergarten. The story of how this came to pass in a state that lags behind on nearly every other public health measure is pertinent given the recent outbreaks of measles in the United States, especially in pockets of the country where there is strong resistance to vaccination. The fight against compulsory vaccination law is centuries old and the enduring success of Mississippi at repelling challenges to their vaccination requirements is a testament to the public health infrastructure and legal framework established in the state. Herein we trace the anti-vaccination movement from its origins in England up until the present time in the United States and explore how Mississippi has established a model vaccination system. Seminal court cases and legislation are evaluated for their impact. Finally, contemporary battles over vaccination legislation are examined and the feasibility of national-level change is considered.

Parts of the 1947 smallpox scare -- the sick traveler harboring a deadly disease, the missed hospital diagnosis, the quickly spreading infection -- strike a disturbing chord. Though the vaccine for smallpox was discovered by the British doctor Edward Jenner in the 1790s, it didn't trigger a revolution in medical thinking. [...]well into the 1850s, the onset of disease was still attributed to foul-smelling clouds of decomposed matter known as "miasmas," and the most common remedy was to purge ill patients of supposed impurities until the body's equilibrium was restored

On a March evening in 1971, eight antiwar protesters burglarized an F.B.I. office in Media, Pa., just outside Philadelphia, with astonishing ease. A few weeks of elementary surveillance had shown them the vulnerability of the target: There were no cameras to elude, no alarms to disconnect. Because the building contained residential apartments, the group chose the night of the first Joe Frazier-Muhammad Ali heavyweight championship fight, an ideal distraction. It turned out that the Pennsylvania office, like so many others across the country, had almost no physical protection. Security was largely symbolic, resting on the bureau's carefully buffed reputation for efficiency in tracking down America's "most wanted" criminals, from bank robbers to atomic spies. Put simply, no one messed with [J. Edgar Hoover]'s F.B.I. There was more. As Ms. [Betty Medsger] shows, the most important stolen document was a routine routing slip containing the word "Cointelpro." The term meant nothing to the burglars, for good reason. Cointelpro was among the F.B.I.'s most carefully guarded secrets, a huge program of dirty tricks and illegal activities designed to "expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize" groups deemed subversive by the director. It would take several years for other journalists to piece together the scope of Cointelpro; its targets ranged from the Ku Klux Klan to the Black Panther Party. These personal stories, impeccably researched and elegantly presented in "The Burglary," are the best parts of an engaging but overstuffed book. Ms. Medsger spends hundreds of pages drawing a familiar and relentlessly hostile portrait of the F.B.I. (though it's still fun to recall Hoover's ban against hiring agents with "pear-shaped heads" and his puzzled response to a list of names that included a much-heralded French Nobel Prize laureate: "Find out who Sartre is," he demanded)