Medical Narratives in Rhetorical Context: Ethically Researching Anti-Vaccinationists

ABSTRACT

This article argues that anti-vaccinationists pose an ethical challenge to researchers. On the one hand, research practices in narrative medicine push us to empower illness narratives. On the other hand, empowering some illness narratives may be misleading if the narrator is misinformed. By combining approaches to ethics found in medical humanities, medical ethics, and rhetoric of health and medicine, we can more accurately and ethically unravel how these skeptics are persuaded to hold their attitudes.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethics
• medicine
• narrative
• rhetoric
• vaccines

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adam S. Lerner

Adam S. Lerner is a PhD student in the English Department at the University of South Carolina. His research interests include technical communication and the rhetoric of health and medicine.