EP #204 - 01.18.2021 - Vaccines Past and Present

Today we continue the discussion of COVID 19 care, vaccines, and vaccination with Alisha Rankin and Carla Keirns.

Dr. Carla Keirns is assistant professor of Medical Ethics and Internal Medicine at the University of Kansas in Kansas City, Kansas. She has published in the history, sociology and ethics of medicine, and has been treating patients the past year through the COVID-19 pandemic, both those with COVID and whose care looks very different because of it. Her father-in-law died of COVID-19 in April, so this issue is personal for her. 

Alisha Rankin is Associate Professor of History at Tufts University. She has published widely on the early history of pharmaceuticals and medical experiments, and she co-led the working group “Testing Drugs and Trying Cures in the Pre-Modern World," at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. She has a Ph.D. in the History of Science from Harvard University, and she was a postdoctoral fellow at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. Her latest book, The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science, just came out with the University of Chicago Press.