"Exploring Science Literacy and the Literacy Communities of the Anti-Vaccination Movement"
Wyn RichardsWyn Andrews-Richards is a rhetoric scholar with specific research interests in literacy studies (particularly science literacy/aliteracy), writing center studies, political rhetoric, and feminist rhetoric. She will begin her masters program in August 2016 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Contents |
Final ThoughtsI have a personal story to tell about vaccines. In 1962, an oral vaccine for polio was licensed. However, it was too late for my father. My father contracted polio as a 6-year-old child. Polio left him with much of the right side of his body paralyzed, most severely his entire right arm and the right side of his diaphragm. Dad couldn’t play his beloved baseball in Little League. Dad’s lung capacity was less than 50%. This was a family tragedy that my grandfather blamed himself for. If only he hadn’t let my dad drink from the hose that one day, polio wouldn’t have afflicted my dad. Polio is a virus. It was never truly known how Dad contracted it. But, it haunted my grandfather until his death. Now, my father is nearing the end of his life. Post-polio syndrome has rendered him unable to walk for more than a few steps. For the last 10 years he has struggled with recurring pneumonia, due to his paralyzed diaphragm. Now, I watch him fight for every breath, always hooked up to a machine that gives him oxygen. His dreams of international travel during retirement were dashed long ago, because of post-polio syndrome that has given him weakness, fatigue, sleeplessness, and chronic pain. If the polio vaccine had been available to my father, I wonder how different his life would look. I like to think he would he be in London, drinking tea and visiting the British Museum, instead of lying in home hospice care, dying. Perhaps due to witnessing his struggles, and hearing the stories of his time spent in Shriner’s Hospital St. Louis, I have never had doubts about the necessity of vaccines. My own personal science literacy isn’t enough to publish an article about the science of vaccines, or offer anyone evidence with equations, but I am a knowledgeable outsider. My own science literacy is such that I understand the scientific method and I can comfortably and respectfully defer to those with greater science literacy than mine. It is my hope that through further study of science literacy in public forums, the literacy studies community can find ethical and reasonable ways to address the problems relating to science, communication, competence, and literacy.
Post Script: The author’s father died from complications due to post-polio syndrome less than one week after this essay was originally written. |