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>> the reinhart award presented each year at the festival specializing in nonfiction. this is all little under one hour. >> what we did with the festival whiz we started for awards for freedom poetry for lifetime achievement in now giving away the award for nonfiction tonight. the goal to create the award

was to try to focus attention on the reporting in those writers who bring those readers together in a celebratory parcelled the way the festival is about. teaching at northwestern in chicago has won numerous other awards the jackson writers award, the nonfiction prize, press got prize, a great circle award. we thank you very much for coming to accept a humble prize compared to those others prepare her previous books are the balloonist 2002. into the notes from 2009 and today we will have those for sale and her recent "on

immunity". but to notice her importance as a writer i notice her work is the checks -- juxtaposition the self-contained irony that fills our lives. she identifies and focuses the bright light of her attention on them in ways that makes us aware. she is engaging and entertaining. she is probably most roadworthy attacking vital issues. in her first book the review is a beautiful narrative style, a dialogue, a brief anecdotes this is your complex relationships.

but with one important distinction she has no pre-drawn conclusions but instead it is a continuation of life through arguments. but to have that key and insight that we're all connected but she started the little-known part that was put out from other public officials over the first telephone poles going up in the country. you think today's battles were about obamacare obamacare, imagine what officials cut down telephone poles because they did not want the telephone coming into their community. the telephone company had to

go to rather extreme measures to put guys on top of the polls to sit there to keep them from being cut down and tell the winds were stretched then there were protected by law. but until then they could cut the pull down. -- pulled down. fascinating with the juxtaposition talking about your cellphone whenever first came out people were opposed. but look at that juxtaposition that i find so compelling about her work. another element with an essay she puts out the constructive nature and tells how a plumber helped her when she first moved to new york getting her refrigerator and her stove

and she does of self mocking joke before she to get downstairs someone had stolen it. in the parenthetical she says she was lonely in her first days did new york and could not get up to her apartment because she did not know anybody who could helper. she couldn't either so she asked the landlord to replace the fridge he said local vat so she stayed. she is the truth teller. she makes -- faces truce in a way to make final connections. with her desire she has a broader impulse that we'll have to the fairy tales that mothers and fires protect children to provide happy

lives but instead leave them with the unprotected heel for example. but instead she writes of consequences of power and knowing max. she goes on to observe the belief of public-health measures are not intended for people like us that it is widely held by people like me. the simple fact we need germs to become functional socially not sanitizers else even if we could. and the way people looked at immunization is too much government authority. but she also notes how that grows out of the state easily translating to a body of the state. it has arms and legs and head. you can see the way the body

of the government has become mixed. in the final paragraph she writes we might imagine ourselves regarding, the outer garden is that he didn't and the rose garden it is like the in your garden of our body. with viruses and bacteria of the good and bad despite the pups and downs and the thorns or perhaps community. however we choose we are each other's environment.%m/gr with a shared space. in the best of my years as a journalist had of mentor charlie mcdowell whose criteria was if they could keep to thoughts and there had a onetime. by charley measure she is

not only smart but uniquely in powering writer and a person because through her work she not only puts forth to sought for three or four but enables us to hold them in our head. i am very happy and pleased to present to you the mary roberts rinehart award for nonfiction to eula biss. [applause] >> thanks for that incredibly generous introduction. this is a tremendous honor for me particularly meaningful because of food mary roberts rinehart was. a working mother, a trained nurse, incredibly prolific

writer, authors of works that inspired batman and the advocate that spoke publicly about having breast cancer when it was still unmentionable. so i hope something of her legacy might be reflected in the book that i am about to talk about. this is "on immunity" out in two weeks. anduvcx i will read a few passages from the beginning since you know, the end. supply will start at the very beginning and skip around a bit. the first tory i ever heard about community was told to be by with the other, a doctor when i was very young. his mother tried to make him immortal and raised immortality with fire in one telling and ickes was left

impervious everywhere except his he'll wear a poisoned arrow would eventually kill him. in another it was reversed six the river that divides the world from the underworld. his mother held her baby by the kiel to deadpan in the water. one fiddled vulnerability. but when he has a styx's where he began. that is from the dead vary in the distance. a keeley's dingell from his mother's hands with his hand and shoulders entirely underwater. this is clearly no ordinarily regard to the underworld where the baby's body meets the river as it is plunged into the beast confirming immunity is the

task to prepare the children for the hazards of life my own mother red grooms barry tales every night before bet i don't remember the of brutality as did the the as i remember that magic. the boy no bigger than that from the 12 brothers who were twelves wants but it did not escape my notice but the appearance had a bad habit to gamble with there devil he thinks he is giving away his apple tree but to his dismay his daughter is standing there. in another story a woman wanting a child becomes pregnant but then grows into the garden of the wicked

enchantress. when the husband is caught he promises the future child who locks the girl away in a tall tower. but they will let down their hair. soap my mother read to me later to hear that ottman is prophesy could not keep the daughter childless by a locking her in a tower. the shower of gold left her pregnant who killed the king. when left on the mound site to die was saved from sheppard was not told were saved from the prophecy to kill his bothered married his mother and others could not even burn his mortality. to a child cannot be kept from his state although this does nonstops the gods from trying.

achilles mother heard a prophecy her son would die young and made every effort to defy the prophecy including dressing him as the girl during the trojan war. he picked up the sword and ask the god of fire to make a shield for him it would emblazoned with the sun and the moon and earth for "war and peace." the universe with all dualities. destroyed my father told me was not from achilles but another ancient story. as my father relates the plot and a standby confused the to prepare the hero is immune to injury from blood of a dragon. but it leaves a small spot on his back for use unprotected but after having pretorius in many battles he is killed by one blow to the

spot. immunity is a myth for code no mortal can ever be made in full verbal. the truth of this was much easier for me to grasp before i became a mother. my son's first bout shows my power ando7 powerlessness. i went bargaining with fate so frequently be made a game of it asking which diseases would give our child for prevention of another. that impossible decision of km. when my son was the inventor of a year variations of all that matters is that he was safe. i wonder if that was all that mattered as nearly as often as i could keep him safe for our research and it didn't have the power to protect him from his faith whatever it might be but i was determined to avoid the

bad gambles program would not let my children be cursed by my own carelessness of stupidity or accidentally say to the double -- devil you could have what is beyond the of bill because that is my child. i will skip ahead. >> titled the vaccination and vampire talking about the vaccinator known defeat on the blood of babies a vampire's was of that fought -- metaphor. bloodsucking monsters of folklore were hideous. victorian vampires could be seductive. but that sexuality dramatize the of the year there was something sexual in vaccination. the anxiety reinforced when

a sexually transmitted diseases were spread arm to arm to vaccination. not just corruption of the blood bottle so economic corruption. having virtually invented thek÷ profession to be almost exclusively available to the rich doctors were suspect to the working-class. stokers count dracula is of the bloodthirsty to keep gold coins in his castle from those he stabbed. but it is difficult to lookit him as of vaccinator. looking at the clinical pages diseases were the most obvious. dracula a rise in england just as a new disease would arrive on the boat. with is infected people spreads to the first woman she bites and the children

she feeds on that night. what makes dracula terrifying and which takes the plot so long to resolve is that he is some monster as a monstrosity is contagious. the germ theory was widely accepted 8971 dracula was published but only after ridiculed earlier in the century. the suspicion microorganisms cause disease had been around so long for the theory was already considered outdated by the time louis pasteur showed the presence of germs in the air in his class of guys. a month of vampire hunters sterilizing the coffin to not take refuge for those tour doctors that would disagree on the diagnosis. the number one cannot believe in vampires despite the evidence of the older doctor delivers the impassioned speech on the

intersection of science and faith. let me tell you there are thingséñ done today that would have been deemed un wholly by those who discovered electricity to they themselves have been burned as wizards. he goes on i heard once of an american that enables us to believe things to be untrue. that we should have an open mind not let a little bit of truth like us small rock does to a truck for pro the dracula is as much about this problem of evidence chanters as it is about vampires. in proposing one truce may be real another do we believe vaccination to be more monstrous fantasy's?

-- the and tizzies? >> there is thus overlooked by god the household of the millions upon millions as he wrote in his journal.úú that was the year he finished works of loves the insist it is not known to words but only by the fruits i read the of first 50 pages in college before giving about of exhaustion. as it unfolds the commandment you shall love your neighbor as yourself almost word by word so after exploring the nature of love he is asked what is meant yourself or your neighbor? he and you shall? overwhelmed i stopped reading shortly after lewis is one's neighbor answering in part neighbor is what

philosophers was recalled of there the selfishness that used to be tested. i had ready enough to be troubled by the idea one must enact to even embodied them. and somewhere deep in my childhood i remember my father explaining his enthusiasm behind a the doppler effect. when we would watch the sunset of river he described to the removal of the shorter wavelengths to siva red cloud's it was more intense green at dusk. he dissected the owl pellet for me and reconstructed the tiny skeleton of the mouse. he marveled at the natural world more often and he talked about the human body but pled typey spoke with passion for:people with the black tape -- blood type o

negative kindle the receive zero dash o dash king give up any other types o o dash is known as universao÷ donor. with father within reveal his blood type was o- that he was a universal donor. he gave blood is often his he was allowed because his was always in demand for emergency transfusions. i suspect fan he already knew that my blood is also o-. i and stood the universal donor as an ethic more than of medical concept. but i did not think of that as the catholicism to his medical training for:sky never raced in the church took communion so i was not reminded of cheese is

offering his bledsoe we couldn't live talking about universal donor but i believed that we owe each other our bodies. any time we would go out as an organ donor

at 30 i had only donated blood once back in college i wanted my son to start his life with the credit to the bank not that they're already felt this was before a universal donor was of sole recipient after my son's birth blood of the most precious type coming from a public bank. if we imagine the action of how it affects a single body but in terms to affect the collective body it is fair to think as a vaccination as banking of the community. contributions are donations to those you cannot be protected by their own community. the principal community that mass vaccination becomes far more effective for:any given

faxing can fail to produce immunity in the individual but some are less effective than others. but whenmy enough people are fascinated with the relatively ineffective vaccine viruses have trouble moving from coast to coast. sparing the and vaccinated it has not produced immunity. this is why the chances to contract measles can be higher for the vaccinated person living in the unvaccinated community then and vaccinated with living in the vaccinated community. the and vaccinated person is protected by the bodies around her by which it does not circulate but if you are vaccinated by surrounding by those that are left foldable to feel you're feeding immunity. we're protected not so much by your own skin but what is beyond.

the boundaries between our bodies begin to dissolve blood and organs moved between us exiting and entering which is a common trust as much as a private account for:those of us who drive on collective immunity o our house to our neighbors. >> i will do one more excerpt and then i will take questions. >> the belief the public health measures are not intended for people like us is widely held by many people like me. public health is for people with less. less education, less taxes - - access and less time and money i have heard mother suggest the standard childhood immunization schedule groups multiple shots because the mothers will not come frequently

enough to get those 26 shotsy no matter that we may find those visits daunting. so the standard schedule is for people like them. in an article from mothering magazine jennifer express his outrage that newborn infants are routinely vaccinated against hepatitis b y which she vaccinee heard daughter against a sexually transmitted diseases she had no chance of catching? it is not transmitted only through sexual intercourse by bodily fluids the most common way they contracted is from their mothers. babies born to women that are infected and they carry the virus without knowledge will almost certainly be infected if they are not vaccinated within 12 hours of birth. they also be passed between contract -- contact with

children in any age can carry it. like h-p the virus and a number of others hep b is a carcinogen most likely tobeñ cause cancer for those who one of the mysteries of hep b vaccination only vaccinating high risk groups did not bring down the rates of infection. when the vaccine was introduced in 1981 it was recommended for prisoners coming health care workers workers, a gay men and i'd be drug users. the rates were unchanged and tell the vaccine was recommended for all newborns one decade later. only mass vaccination brought down the rates now is virtually eliminated the disease in children. the concept of a risk group provides the archaic idea

that the illness was judged. hep b is a complicated assessment. there is risk to have sex with one partner or traveling through the birth canal. in many cases the source of infection is not known. i decided before i knew how mitch blood of with zoos i did not want my son to be vaccinated against hep b. but by the time to put him to my breast i had received a blood transfusion and my status had changed for:when the last nationwide smallpox epidemic began 1898 some people believed that whites were not susceptible to the disease. it was associated with immigrants called mexican bonds. when i hit new york city police officers were sent

out with the battalion to immigrant -- inoculate the immigrants. everyone in the black section of/ town in the kentucky was vaccinated at gunpoint. these campaigns to limit the spread of the disease but at that time could seek to infection and other diseases was out from the most vulnerable group. the poor were in listed -- a listed. the dates are now often cast as the debate over the integrity of science. all the to be completely understood about conversation of power. of working-class people from the 1850's three provision were concerned with their own freedom. with the seizure of their property could be lost if they did not vaccinate infants this is glenn beck to slavery.

vaccination wed pressing questions about rights to your body but anti-vaccinators are more interested as a metaphor for individual liberty and the causes of risk. not in the recklessly selfish spirit of john browne with their doomed effort to free the slaves they resisted vaccination. and tiebacks leaders were quick to draw on the political motive for the rhetorical value of the slave for the colonized african in britain and quicker still to claim the suffering of white english citizens took precedence. the primary concern was people like them. in her history of that movement returning to the idea that they were not as

coagious or dangerous judicial -- social body but contamination in violation of bodies were most contagious and vulnerable. in a time and place where they were seen as a liability for public health it is dangerous to others it is poured to articulate the vulnerability. if it was meaningful than that there were not purely dangerous i suspect it might be as meaningful dow to except we're not purely vulnerable. the middle-class may be threatened but we are still dangerous. even though little bodies of children encourages us to be vulnerable are dangerous to spread disease. think of the unvaccinated boy in san diego returned

from the trip to switzerland with a case of measles that ñ infected for children in the waiting room for both three of those ribbons too young to be vaccinated and one had to be hospitalized for: unvaccinated children the 2004 analysis are more likely to be white the older married mother with a college education and lives in a household as $75,000 or more per car like my child. unvaccinated children are clustered in the same area racing the probability they will contract and illness that could be passed to the under vaccinated children per calendar vaccinated children, those who have received some but not all at recommended doses are more likely to be black, young and unmarried mother, moving across state lines and live in poverty.

vaccinations works by having the majority in the protection of the minority. you did that minority that is vulnerable to disease the elderly with influenza. newborns with protests as. pregnant women with rubella. but when it we vaccinate our children we may be participating in the protection of black children who sing gold the others have moved rather than a product of circumstance have not fully vaccinated them. is a radical version of this historical application that was another form of bodily servitude for the benefit of the privileged. there is some truth to the idea that public health is not strictly for people like me but threw$gm literally

through our bodies that certain public health measures are enacted. >> i will stop there. [applause] thinks. if there is time i am happy to answer questions. >> i don't blame you if you don't want to be on c-span. [laughter] >> how long did it take you to research your book and where was your major sources of information? >> it took about five years i started shortly before my son was born and he is five

and a half now her call for i did was research. i did not write. and then by information came from all over. i started by talking to other parents and reading what other parents are reading and recommending to be. i was reading articles in medical journals and histories of vaccination. you heard some of that evidence. reading works looking at vaccination with a textbook on immunology was harder than expected but then i moved to interviews and talk to your toxicologist and pediatricians.

so i talked to, that was the most gratifying and interesting part talking to those who held expertise. because it brushes up against all of these other areas. i also found myself thinking about environmental issues and chemical pollution and issues of government and what it means to be a citizen as i talk to philosophers and people who help me to think about the conscience and what that means. it was wide ranging. some of it was technical and based in madison andó required i get a lot of help

from that expertise and a lot of it was more social in nature and historical. >> that is my students. all grown up now. >> i was wondering how did you go through to make sure the research was still accurate? >> that is a great question. and i expect nothing less from you. how did i make sure everything was still correct? in part the i had held that there was a copy editor

doing fact checking. i also went back myself to double check my source is. i had to separate scientist read the book one was a source but i also found a scientist who was not to read the book for accuracy. despite all that effort not everything that is in this book is absolutely accurate. and i know that because some of the things i was writing about changed so quickly that even though this will all become out in two weeks the situation with polio for instance has changed so quickly that much of what i said about polio is no longer true. most everything i said is a vast understatement of what isv) going on because in the six months since the text

was finalized a lot has changed. the reference to ebola i talked about the last round that happened when i was in high school not this round which i am not sure will not read the the way i meant it now that the new crisis has emerged. but those are the kinds of things that is the inevitable fallout to write about something that is still happening. i did everything i could to make sure the information was accurate to my knowledge into the knowledge of the people i showed the book to. i don't doubt for a minute i probably got something wrong. even just a day going through a fact checking process with "the new york times"jb magazine revealing

how much judgment it involved and how many people have to weigh contradictory information on a deadline to decide what is the fact that appears in the peace. there is a gray area that is difficult and challenging. >> i will forget my question now. is a huge topic. of lot of research as you said so my thought is that personal aspect purple your father is the position position, talked-about immunization, so i am thinking, in the writing process, it did you have the narrative story like a

father and the son then to incorporate all that research to apply to the story or did the research for the narrative? >> that is a great question i am trying to think they're trying to think what actually happened. i think the process for this book is that i was reading-s lot of questions that drove both the increase in the form and structure of the book. it was less working with ed meredith and working with questions that sometimes drove me into narrative. but at some point i)÷ was not complete.

i had done a nef to see there was no compelling reason not to vaccinate my son. but there were still questions that i had. i vaccinated him on schedule but the little part of me was still nervous and to compel me through their research is why am i doing this? white vaccinating him on schedule if i am not 100 percent certain there is nothing bad that could happen from this? that question bothers me and propelled me to a line of inquiry talking to my sister and reading philosophy and she teaches ethics at loyola of baltimore. we had a long discussion

about conscience and what that is spread by realized at the end the answer to the question is why i am doing this even though i am not 100 percent sure my son will not be harmed is a matter of conscience for:. of have trouble facing my father in my heart and mind if i had not turned up the extraordinarily compelling reason not to do this right thing. important to him but also it was beyond importance but arranged into a territoryj in line with a morality that i was raised to understand and act. it by one step outside that moral action i felt i needed

a really good reason. that is the question that i would go to those areas. some of those involved me talking about my father so where i reflect to talk about the blood type and those conversations, and that is coming out of the question what is it about my a upbringing or that moral sense or those ethics that make me uncomfortable for what i see as a civic duty? then there is another section driven that is much more research based. then a section where i researched the anti-vaccination movement in

victorian england. those at that time period called themselves conscientious objectors the first widespread usage of that term in the context of war but first was vaccination. so i was interested that term conscience had appeared thursday in the vaccination movement. so if what i call conscience and what they feel is conscience but to a different decisions, what is going on? to different understandings over different historical periods? what is happening. that drove me deeper into research and information. does that answer your

>> do you find questions of ethics and morality drive your choices for topics? >> yes. i seem to not to be able to get away from them. i don't necessarily intent to go there but those questions fine to me or i find them for:i was a little surprised when i started to work on this book it would be a real departure from my last book to talk about race and racial identity. in many ways that was the exhausting subject for as long as i did work with it and raised questions to provoke self examination. i was under the delusion

when i started to write this book because i was in the new subject matter territory of science and medicine i would escape those kinds of questions or moral and ethical issues. but that did not last long. a did not take me far into the book before i came up against some of the questions and even in a similar context. there are issues of race and privileges that come up around vaccination for pro bowl history the movement is steeped in class. not only did i not escape those questions i learned in

many ways it was issues last book had left off to take them further and more specific territory. one of the last things my book suggested to me was the possibility that one can be born into privilege but can still choose to live that privilege in the redemptive way. but thatbñ> was a wide and vague knowledge that the merged into a forced me to look at a specific instance where someone might be in a position of privilege where they could make a bad choice to help or hurt another person in those were thec,$rñ terms i was looking at.

this book will not be what it was without the book before it. it was done in the first book. at some point i would like to get away from its purpose of that is tricky territory and the reason nobody ever laughs at my reading. i don't get to talk about how to be good. [laughter] any other questions? >> did you get into issues where the containment is not based on vaccination but more like ebola with no taxation -- vaccine or where

it is sanitary control or isolation? gazette is something you dealt with? >> i've looked at that more historically. the ways that we contain diseases before we had vaccines. but the disease i became interested in was malaria. it kills hundreds of thousands of children in africa and many others are left a mentally disabled. and we have no effective vaccine yet. there are a couple is in the works but not one yet available for practical use. what is upsetting looking at how malaria is dealt with is in the absence of a vaccine

vaccine, we need to make a lot of the public health measures with compromise is. one of the more effective ways to contain malaria is the use of ddt to kill and to prevent the use of reproductive organs in mosquitos when ddt was stopped it has researched now some searching countries have put ddt back into use and have seen the good results to contain malaria. but as we know there is some significant environmental fallout. there is reasons why that is not a great solution. it is unfortunately one of the few effective things

that we have to contain malaria. i think one of the beauties of vaccination is it does not include the massive compromise like widespread ddt used as. does not mean it is absolutely perfect or there is no compromise and there are risks and kids to have side effects for:but the good in done comparison to the harm is tremendous. >> a final question. >> we have books for sale in the back. >> thanks so much. [applause] [inaud