Vaccines, Pesticides, and Narratives of Exposure and Evidence.

This essay considers the cultural work performed by two public health narratives - the DDT narrative and the vaccine narrative - as they appeared in popular and professional discourse concerning two recent media events: controversy over an antivaccination film, and the emergence of a Zika global public health emergency. Like all narratives in the history of medicine, the stories historians and others tell about DDT and about vaccines organize a shared past to explain the present. They also point to a hoped-for future. The DDT and vaccine narratives share several themes: public health, expertise, evidence, exposure, and power. Their inclusions and exclusions, however, convey distinct messages about these themes, particularly regarding the right conduct of health citizens in the pursuit of public health. These narratives are analyzed to compare their agendas, and to propose a case study of how historical work can shed light on contemporary public health norms, practice, and challenges.