Grandparents For Vaccines

For the last six months, I’ve been the Michigan Representative of the volunteer group Grandparents For Vaccines. Our group’s mission is to ensure America’s grandchildren have their best start in life without the threat of vaccine-preventable diseases. We do this by sharing the stories of people who have lived during the time before vaccines were common. 

Are Electromagnetic Fields
Making Me Ill?

There’s a link between being a coauthor of the textbook Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology and volunteering for Grandparents For Vaccines. In IPMB, Russ Hobbie and I discuss the misconceptions associated with electromagnetic fields, such as the debunked claims that 60-Hz powerline fields cause leukemia and radiofrequency fields emitted by cell phones cause brain cancer. I explored these topics further in my popular science book Are Electromagnetic Fields Making Me Ill? A tremendous amount of misinformation and many conspiracy theories are associated with these issues. After the rise of the Make America Healthy Again movement, I noticed similar misinformation and conspiracy theories associated with the opposition to vaccines. Naturally I was attracted to groups advocating for vaccines, especially vaccines for children. In addition, last August I became a first-time grandfather. So Grandparents For Vaccines seemed like a perfect fit for me.

Want to learn more about Grandparents For Vaccines? This week I had an essay published by Your Neighborhood Scientist. This nonprofit organization works to make science accessible, understandable, and human-centered. It strives to explain why science is important to communities and why we should support science. Boy, do we need more of that. I thank the founder and executive director of Your Neighborhood Scientist, Audrey Drotos, for publishing my essay and am grateful to the two editors who helped me write it: Trinity Pirrone and Kate Giffin. You can read the essay here.

Another place to learn about Grandparents For Vaccines is Kristen Panthagani's post in her Substack account You Can Know Things. As time goes by, I appreciate more and more the importance of science communicators like Panthagani, Drotos, and others. 

During the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Abraham Lincoln said

In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.

I believe this holds true for the role of science in America today. We cannot defeat the forces of antiscience by legislation or lawsuits. Our only hope is to convince the public of the value of science. 

The main thing Grandparents For Vaccines does is collect videos of people (mostly, but not exclusively, grandparents) telling stories about their experiences with vaccine-preventable illnesses. If you want to hear some of these inspiring stories, you can find them on the Grandparents For Vaccines YouTube channel. I link to several of these stories below, and others can be found in my Your Neighborhood Scientist essay. If you have such a story of your own, please consider sharing it with us.

 Christine from North Carolina talks about getting the polio vaccine as a child.

Teri from Oregon tells her story about vaccines. The irrepressible Teri Mills, a retired nurse, recruited and trained me as the Michigan Rep for Grandparents For Vaccines.

 DeeDee from Colorado is another nurse who understands the importance of vaccines.

Kathryn from Virginia describes polio pioneers during the first polio vaccine clinical trial.

 Renowned vaccine scientist Paul Offit describes a polio unit in the 1950s.

Arthur Lavin is the founder of Grandparents For Vaccines.

 This is the worst of this bunch of videos, recorded by an odd guy with poor public speaking skills. I include it to show that even if your story isn’t the most inspiring or articulate one, it’s still worth telling.