"We've got the right to choose": history, politics and vaccine resistance Body Politics: where history, medicine and society collide

"Are you gonna get the vaccine?" In the past few months, this question has probably been asked millions of times in hundreds of languages, in households all over the world. For many of us, answering affirmatively is more than a response to a simple, closed question, but puts us on the "right side" of history. By saying "yes" to vaccines, we also say "yes" to science, truth, the moral high ground, and civilisation itself. In large parts of culture those who answer "no" are often ridiculed, branded mad, decadent and irresponsible in the process. 

This episode, though, should make you reflect on such simple categorisations. What do people actually mean when they resist vaccines? Are they talking about vaccines themselves, or is there some deeper form of expression at play, of sentiments about how they feel as parents, citizens, men, and women? With the help of historian Nadja Durbach, we are going to think with vaccine resistance as it emerged in relation to smallpox in early-nineteenth-century Britain, in the decades after vaccination was first used as a treatment against infectious disease by Edward Jenner. That conversation is about a specific time and place, but has resonance with our own times, and what is at stake - other than science - for regular people when they submit to medical treatment.