"Promises and Perils of a COVID Vaccine," a podcast organized for the Revaluing Care in the Times of COVID-19 series
September 5, 2020
September 5, 2020
Episode description:
Researchers across the globe are busily working to manufacture a vaccine that will halt the devastating spread of the novel coronavirus. As case and mortality rates climb, a vaccine appears to many as the only way out of the pandemic. Yet vaccine development and distribution raise a number of ethical quandaries that cannot be separated from histories of medical violence and mistrust—issues that are compounded by staggering health disparities across communities of color, due to economic and discriminatory practices that disproportionately put them at risk.
This workshop brings together experts in history and bioethics to provide insight into these issues and to consider what opportunities vaccination might hold for restorative justice and more equitable forms of preventative care.
Panelists include:
Dr. Yolonda Wilson, Encore Public Voices Fellow
Dr. Robin Wolfe Scheffler, Associate Professor, the MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society
Elise A. Mitchell, Doctoral Candidate, Department of History at New York University.
Researchers across the globe are busily working to manufacture a vaccine that will halt the devastating spread of the novel coronavirus. As case and mortality rates climb, a vaccine appears to many as the only way out of the pandemic. Yet vaccine development and distribution raise a number of ethical quandaries that cannot be separated from histories of medical violence and mistrust—issues that are compounded by staggering health disparities across communities of color, due to economic and discriminatory practices that disproportionately put them at risk.
This workshop brings together experts in history and bioethics to provide insight into these issues and to consider what opportunities vaccination might hold for restorative justice and more equitable forms of preventative care.
Panelists include:
Dr. Yolonda Wilson, Encore Public Voices Fellow
Dr. Robin Wolfe Scheffler, Associate Professor, the MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society
Elise A. Mitchell, Doctoral Candidate, Department of History at New York University.
"The World’s First Vaccine: A History of Gender, Race, and Rights in the Americas,” Invited Public Lecture, Iniciativa de Estudios Globales, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, August 11, 2020.

"Smallpox in Latin American and Caribbean History,"
Public Lecture for the Collective for the History and Culture of the Region of the Americas, June 27, 2020.
Recommended reading and assignments can be found here.
Public Lecture for the Collective for the History and Culture of the Region of the Americas, June 27, 2020.
Recommended reading and assignments can be found here.
“When Politics Go Viral: COVID-19 and Lessons from the Atlantic World,”The Panorama, April 24, 2020.
"When Medicine is a Sin: Sex and Heresy in Colonial Mexico," The Recipes Project, May 12, 2019