The first paragraph of the introduction to the book titled "The Politics of Vaccination - A Global History":

"Government-organised vaccination campaigns are political projects that presume to shape the immunity of whole populations. Like other pervasive expressions of state power – taxing, policing, conscripting – mass vaccination arouses anxiety in some people but sentiments of civic duty and shared solidarity in others. As a rule, controversy clings to immunisation programmes, and different social formations – classes, urban elites, ethnic and confessional majorities and minorities, specialised workforces, refugees, provincial antagonists of capital cities – have at different times and places disputed, evaded or actively opposed stateled vaccination. Nonetheless, in most communities vaccines have come to be accepted as the most effective means for halting the spread of communicable diseases. People now tend to demand public health immunisation, and the development of new vaccines, for example against HIV, malaria and Ebola, are eagerly awaited. But compliance is always an issue. A key premise of this collection is that a state ’ s ability to produce, or at least distribute, large quantities of vaccine, as well as its ability to manage the necessarily awkward intrusion into healthy bodies, have at different times and places strengthened or weakened social cohesion."

The Politics of Vaccination - A Global History

First paragraph of the Preface of a book titled "Vermin, Victims and Disease - British Debates over Bovine Tuberculosis and Badgers":

"There is something sticky about bovine tuberculosis (bTB), especially in Britain. It seems that anyone who tries to understand or unravel the many threads connecting cows, microbes, badgers and people sooner or later finds themselves drawn into the tangle and making it more so. The above statement was made, with deep irony, as eminent ecologist, science policy player and now member of the House of Lords Professor John Krebs recounted the story (to an audience of government scientists) of his own ensnarement by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), of the doomed Conservative government under John Major. Krebs was asked to convene an expert group to review the evidence relating to badgers and bTB; today, over twenty years later, he is still involved with the problem, albeit now as a senior politician. Krebs’s comments echoed the account of another eminent scientific Lord, Solly Zuckerman, as he had sought to extricate himself from the bTB snarl, nearly forty years ago: ‘I said yes, because I like Peter [Walker, the Minister of Agriculture at the time] and because the way he explained the whole thing to me all that would be required would be a week’s work: looking at documents and talking to people in his Department.’ This ‘week’s work’ occupied most of Zuckerman’s time for several years, as he prepared and published his 1980 report on what was already a notorious science-policy problem. By February 1981, six months after publication, Zuckerman was begging Walker to ‘please, please take over’ the work of engaging in public debate:3 however, he persisted in defending his work and that of government scientists and veterinarians, corresponding on the topic until the end of 1985, shortly after his retirement as President of the Zoological Society of London.4 Zuckerman and Krebs are far from alone in their entanglement: as of the end of 2018, there will have been nine expert-led reviews or reports commissioned by the British government on the problem. In publishing this book, I declare myself similarly ensnared: I have been researching this controversy—between other projects—since 2008."

Vermin, Victims and Disease - British Debates over Bovine Tuberculosis and Badgers