Fear of Vaccines

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Washington, News, Politics, President, Wickenden, Wnyc, Barack, Obama, Lizza

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2015

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Where is my child’s liberty if she is made sick by the freedom of someone else not to be vaccinated?” says New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter about the politics of falling inoculation numbers. Specter joins fellow staff writer Ryan Lizza and host Dorothy Wickenden on this week’s Political Scene podcast to discuss the anti-vaccination movement and American hostility to science. The discuss the origins of suspicions about vaccines, the history of government responses to epidemics [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/30/resistant], the change in popular attitudes toward science during the George W. Bush Administration [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/06/the-covenant], and President Obama’s inability to convince some Americans that vaccinations are safe for their children. “When he champions something, it polarizes the issue,” says Lizza. “If he says the sky is blue, people may start to question that.”

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