Quotes by Eula Biss - Page 1

Our community of contagion really is a world community.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Contagion
Our Community
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Our constitution got built around the idea of minority protection.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Protection
Minority
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My own thinking is often clarified and extended by talking with students.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Extended
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The opportunity to think with another mind is my preferred mode of travel.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Opportunity
Mind
Thinking
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Our willingness to believe the news is, in many cases, not entirely innocent.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Believe
Innocent
News
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Wealthier countries have the luxury of entertaining fears the rest of the world cannot afford.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Country
Luxury
World
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Bram Stoker's 'Dracula,' in my reading, is really obviously about disease and our relation to disease.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Disease
Relation
Dracula
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There's something ancient and inevitable about this desire to do whatever you can to protect your child.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Ancient
Inevitable
Your Child
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One of the shortcomings of our medical system is that doctors have very little time with their patients.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Medical
Doctors
Little Time
Shortcomings
Patients
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Art-making was part of my daily life from a very young age, and I still love that kind of everyday art-making.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Daily Life
Everyday
Young Age
Life Love Age
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Fear is isolating for those that fear. And I have come to believe that fear is a cruelty to those who are feared.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Believe
Cruelty
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I guess I could say that I pursue questions that interest me in ways that interest me on the page, but that's awfully vague.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Pursue
Guess
Page
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I think that protecting children at the age where they're most vulnerable against diseases that are highly contagious is prudent.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Age
Contagious
Prudent
Against
Diseases
Highly
Protecting
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There's a lot of essay writing that could pass for journalism and journalism that could pass for essay. Some of it is just taxonomy.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Journalism
Essay
Pass
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When I was researching the Victorian anti-vaccination movement, those activists often used a vampire as a metaphor for the vaccinator.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Metaphor
Vampire
Victorian
Activists
Researching
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The risk of getting Hep B from a blood transfusion is a tiny number, but it's a bigger number than the risk of side effects from the vaccine.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Effects
Tiny
Vaccine
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I had already drafted the manuscript that would become my first book by the time I graduated from college, but I had no idea what to do with it.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Book
College
No Idea
By The Time
Drafted
Graduated
Manuscript
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My mother wrote poetry when I was young - I have an early memory of the sound of her typewriter - and my father told me inventive bedtime stories.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Bedtime
Typewriter
Inventive
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Imagine the action of a vaccine not just in terms of how it affects a single body, but also in terms of how it affects the collective body of a community.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Action
Body
Community
Imagine
Single
Affects
Also
Collective
How
Terms
Vaccine
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In the case of Pakistan, the CIA actually used a fake vaccination campaign to try to locate Osama bin Laden, so now vaccination is associated with espionage.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Cia
Espionage
Fake
Pakistan
Used
Actually
Associated
Bin
Campaign
Case
Locate
Vaccination
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In some areas, immunity has been eroded so much that the child who's not vaccinated is now actually more vulnerable to the complications of infectious diseases.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Immunity
Complications
Diseases
Eroded
Infectious
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Most of us believe that dirt is good for our kids, but some of us are wary of the grass in the parks, which may or may not have been treated with toxic chemicals.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Chemicals
Dirt
Grass
Parks
Toxic
Wary
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One of the mysteries of hep B immunization is that vaccinating only 'high risk' groups, which was the original public health strategy, did not bring down rates of infection.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Groups
Infection
Public Health
Strategy
Mysteries
Rates
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Some of the most interesting research that I did was about risk assessment and how ordinary citizens like me handle risk assessment and how irregular our risk assessments are.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Assessment
Handle
Ordinary
Irregular
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Yes, there's a higher rate of people living below the poverty line who aren't vaccinated. But it's much rarer for that to be a product of choice than a product of circumstance.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Higher
Poverty
Living
Below
Choice
Circumstance
Line
Poverty Line
Product
Rarer
Yes
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A trust-in the sense of a valuable asset placed in the care of someone to whom it does not ultimately belong-captures, more or less, my understanding of what it is to have a child.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Children
Doe
Understanding
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Yes, we can make prudent choices as parents, but we can't create an environment where there's zero risk for our children. Not only is that impossible, I don't think it's desirable, either.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Zero
Desirable
Prudent
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Babies born to women who are infected with hep B - and mothers can carry the virus without their knowledge - will almost certainly be infected if they are not vaccinated within twelve hours of birth.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Birth
Twelve
Babies
Carry
Infected
Mothers
Virus
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A vaccine introduces a small amount or a tempered version of the virus into the body - just enough to that the body is able to recognize it and deal with it when it encounters it again in the future.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Encounters
Version
Tempered
Vaccine
Virus
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There's a cultural expectation that everyone will be immunized, in part to protect the entire population. When people refuse that expectation, they're indulging in a certain kind of political or social immunity.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Immunity
Population
Political People Will
Cultural
Expectation
Indulging
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I think there's a temptation to try to think of people who don't vaccinate as a homogenous community, but I'm not convinced that's true. I'm not even sure that the word 'community' is totally accurate there, you know.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Accurate
Temptation
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On the pro-vaccine side - and not everyone does this, but I saw it enough for it to make me really uncomfortable - is a tendency to accuse people who are wary of vaccination of being stupid and not understanding science.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Stupid
Uncomfortable
Understanding
Accuse
Science Me People
Tendency
Vaccination
Wary
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My son is fully vaccinated, but there is one immunization on the standard schedule that he did not receive on time. This was meant to be his very first shot, the hep B administered to most babies immediately after birth.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Birth
Meant To Be
Babies
Immediately
Standard
Receive
Schedule
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Herd immunity is, it turns out, not incredibly easy to understand. It took me quite a bit of reading before I fully grasped it. But understanding herd immunity is essential to understanding why we vaccinate the way we do.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Immunity
Turns
Me Way Understanding
Essential
Grasped
Herd
Quite A Bit
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If your child's going to ride in a car or go swimming or play soccer, all of those things involve risk. And if your child doesn't do any of those things, then they're probably sitting too much, and that involves risk, too.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Soccer
Swimming
Involve
Ride
Your Child
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There's this tendency to think of the individual and the collective are somehow at odds or separate. But I think that's really false. We're all both. And when the individual suffers, the collective suffers, and vice versa.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Odds
Vice Versa
Collective
False
Suffers
Tendency
Versa
Vice
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As for mercury, a child will almost certainly get more mercury exposure from her immediate environment than from vaccination. This is true, too, of the aluminum that is often used as an adjuvant in vaccines to intensify the immune response.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Exposure
Immune
Mercury
Response
Immediate
Vaccination
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I think that people's resistance to vaccination isn't going to disappear until we address some of the nonmedical reasons for that resistance and people's discomfort and distrust of the government. That's bigger than what most medical professionals can handle.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Medical
Bigger
Disappear
Distrust
Handle
Resistance
Address
Professionals
Reasons
Vaccination
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The belief that public health measures are not intended for people like us is widely held by many people like me. Public health, we assume, is for people with less - less education, less-healthy habits, less access to quality health care, less time and money.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Education
Quality
Health
Access
Belief
Care
Health Care
Public Health
Time And Money
Assume
Less
Public
Education Health Time
Habits
Held
Intended
Less Time
Measures
Widely
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In the 19th century, smallpox was widely considered a disease of filth, which meant that it was largely understood to be a disease of the poor. According to filth theory, any number of contagious diseases were caused by bad air that had been made foul by excrement or rot.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Air
Disease
Filth
Foul
Poor
Smallpox
Theory
Understood
Caused
According
Considered
Meant
Number
Largely
Rot
Widely
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I thought, how would I feel if my son gave one of those [underprivileged] kids chicken pox? For him it's not a terrible thing. We have good insurance and easy access to health care. It's a different situation for another family. I didn't want to make the decision for them.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Kids
Decision
Son
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What I saw when I was doing research is that in pursuit of a middle ground, people will kind of split the difference between the two extremes that they're hearing. And I think what's problematic is that people are seeing vaccinating on schedule, on time, as an extreme position.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Extremes
Hearing
Middle Ground
Pursuit
Extreme
Time Research People
Problematic
Schedule
Split
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Fears that formaldehyde from vaccines may cause cancer are similar to fears of mercury and aluminum, in that they coalesce around miniscule amounts of the substance in question, amounts considerably smaller than amounts from other common sources of exposure to the same substance.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Exposure
Mercury
Substance
Vaccines
Considerably
Fears
Similar
Smaller
Sources
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We've been using vaccination in some form for hundreds of years now. We have almost nothing in our modern medicine that we've been using that long, and it's been consistently productive even though, you know, the older vaccines were much more dangerous than vaccines we're using now.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Consistently
Dangerous
Form
Medicine
Modern
Productive
Years
Almost
Almost Nothing
Older
Hundreds
Hundreds Of Years
Though
Using
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I talked to lots of people who are vaccine-hesitant, and I actually was one myself until I got further into this project, and most of them actually are in my demographic: so well-educated people with advanced degrees who are upper middle-class and have read quite a bit on the subject.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Degrees
Well Educated
Actually
Advanced
Lots
Quite
Bit
Read
Myself People Who
Demographic
Project
Further
Quite A Bit
Subject
Talked
Upper
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Nigeria and Pakistan are two countries that have had a lot of trouble with polio. And part of the reason is that there's a lot of political unrest, and people really distrust what the government is doing. That has an effect on people's health, and it has an effect on the health of children.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Distrust
Nigeria
Pakistan
Polio
Unrest
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In the story of Thetis and Achilles, it's clear this isn't really a safe environment. She's gone down to the River Styx - the dead are being ferried across in the background. There's something in this mythology that says that if you want invulnerability, if you want immortality, you pay a price.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Achilles
Environment
Immortality
Mythology
Safe
Styx
Background
Price
River
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What a dazzlingly generous, gloriously unpredictable book! Maggie Nelson shows us what it means to be real, offering a way of thinking that is as challenging as it is liberating. She invites us to 'pay homage to the transitive' and enjoy 'a becoming in which one never becomes.' Reading The Argonauts made me happier and freer.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Book
Reading
Real
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And when comfort is what we want, one of the most powerful tonics alternative medicine offers is the word 'natural.' This word implies a medicine untroubled by human limitations, contrived wholly by nature or God or perhaps intelligent design. What 'natural' has come to mean to us in the context of medicine is 'pure' and 'safe' and 'benign'. But the use of 'natural' as a synonym for 'good' is almost certainly a product of our profound alienation from the natural world.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Intelligent
Mean
Powerful
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One of the paradoxes of our time is that the War on Terror has served mainly to reinforce a collective belief that maintaining the right amount of fear and suspicion will earn one safety. Fear is promoted by the government as a kind of policy. Fear is accepted, even among the best-educated people in this country, even among the professors with whom I work, as a kind of intelligence. And inspiring fear in others is often seen as neighborly and kindly, instead of being regarded as what my cousin recognized it for - a violence.
Eula Biss / Fiction Writer
Fear
Country
Cousin
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Eula Biss Quotes - Page 1

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