Browsing by Author "Ghebremichael, Mecal"

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    Human Papillomavirus and Gardasil
    Patel, Elena; Ghebremichael, Mecal; Sutherland, Aimee (Virginia Tech, 2013-10)
    Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexual transmitted disease (STD), with 79 million Americans currently infected and 14 million new infections occurring annually... The pharmaceutical company Merck developed the Gardasil vaccine to protect individuals against four strains of HPV that cause genital warts and various cancers.
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    ‘Poisonous, Filthy, Loathsome, Damnable Stuff’: The Rhetorical Ecology of Vaccination Concern
    Hausman, Bernice L.; Ghebremichael, Mecal; Hayek, Philip; Mack, Erin (Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 2014)
    In this article, we analyze newspaper articles and advertisements mentioning vaccination from 1915 to 1922 and refer to historical studies of vaccination practices and attitudes in the early 20th century in order to assess historical continuities and discontinuities in vaccination concern. In the Progressive Era period, there were a number of themes or features that resonated with contemporary issues and circumstances: 1) fears of vaccine contamination; 2) distrust of medical professionals; 3) resistance to compulsory vaccination; and 4) the local nature of vaccination concern. Such observations help scholars and practitioners understand vaccine skepticism as longstanding, locally situated, and linked to the sociocultural contexts in which vaccination occurs and is mandated for particular segments of the population. A rhetorical approach offers a way to understand how discourses are engaged and mobilized for particular purposes in historical contexts. Historically situating vaccine hesitancy and addressing its articulation with a particular rhetorical ecology offers scholars and practitioners a robust understanding of vaccination concerns that can, and should, influence current approaches to vaccination skepticism.
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    Vaccination in the News: Newspaper Coverage 1915-22
    Ghebremichael, Mecal (Virginia Tech, 2012)
    The newspapers I focused my research on are: Bisbee Daily (Bisbee, Arizona), The Evening Herald (Klamath Falls, Oregon), The Evening World (New York, New York), The Washington Herald (Washington, D.C.), The Commoner (Lincoln, Nebraska), The Day Book (Chicago, Illinois), The Corpus Christi Caller (Corpus Christ, Texas) and The Public Ledger (Maysville, Kentucky). I attempted to pick a wide range of newspapers that represented rural and city areas. The newspapers had to have a large amount of articles from 1915 to 1922 that mentioned vaccine or vaccination. Also the newspapers had to be published daily but I made an exception with the regards to The Commoner because it provided great insight into the time period. After evaluation of these newspapers six arguments became apparent. The arguments are as follow: distrust in the medical community, vaccinations contaminate the body, compulsory vaccination, effects of disease, vaccinations are beneficial and finally vaccinations prevent natural selection.