While watching my toddler get a (very welcome, at least on my part) vaccine recently, I had a startling thought. I have a serious cockroach phobia, and if you told me that letting a cockroach crawl on my daughter every few months, starting minutes after birth, would protect her health, everything in my body would scream in protest.
Since that realization, I’ve been thinking about how much vaccine hesitancy could be needle phobia in search of justification. If public health leaders insisted that cockroaches crawling on babies was medically necessary, I’m sure it would be tempting to seize on any excuse, no matter how backed by science, to opt out.
So I was thrilled to publish a First Opinion this week by vaccine researcher Benjamin L. Sievers. The grandson and child of vaccine researchers, Sievers is as pro-vaccine as anyone you’ll meet — but he has a needle phobia. That personal experience informs the work he does today. “Often, when we talk about vaccine hesitancy, we focus on misinformation, conspiracies, autism myths, and political polarizations,” he writes, “but for millions of people, the barrier may be a simple fear of needles. One way to combat hesitation, then, is to try to take the needles out of vaccines.”
First Opinion Podcast: This week on the podcast, I spoke with STAT reporter Jason Mast and recent First Opinion author Celena Lozano. Celena wrote a compelling op-ed about her unique experience as the mother of a child with a rare disease and a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience — and how she tries to use that background to help other parents better understand the state of scientific research. That became particularly important earlier this year, when headlines about a “CRISPR miracle” swept through groups for parents of children with rare diseases, raising hopes and expectations.
We have just two more episodes left this season. If you aren’t subscribed already, now is a great time to do so! You can get it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever your preferred platform is. (Mine is Overcast, though I’m still miffed its most recent redesign.)
Recommendation of the week: If, like me, you once binge-watched “America’s Next Top Model” marathons on VH1, the new podcast “Curse Of: America’s Next Top Model” is a fascinating listen, especially the episode on the show’s have-it-both-ways approach to body diversity in modeling.
