This paper looks at popular cultural artifacts (films, television programs, magazines, and books) to consider the ways in which genetics and genetic technology are changing public thinking about health, behaviors, and reproduction, setting up a new system for evaluating choices and technologies within a genetic paradigm. Genetic thinking embroils us in a system of surveillance: discovering, reading, and interpreting our genomes has become the cutting edge of medical health practices. Yet, the lack of options for effective genetic interventions means that this surveillance system ends up supporting a largely preventative view of medicine, even to the point of "preventing" the birth of a child with a potential genetic problem. Ultimately, genetic knowledge is limiting and proscribing our health choices, not expanding them.

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Vaccination, as a technology, has been controversial since its invention by Jenner in 1796. Even as governments and other agencies have promoted or even mandated vaccinations for an increasing array of dangerous pathogens, anti‐vaccination groups and sentiments of vaccine hesitancy have continued to flourish. Vaccination controversies frequently revolve around key questions of social beliefs and values such as personal liberty, the public good, individual autonomy, and expert authority.

Textual analysis allows critics to analyze written, visual, and aural messages in their historical context. It uses techniques of close reading to highlight particular cultural understandings of health, medicine, and society, revealing in particular unspoken norms, values, and beliefs that shape individuals' choices and actions in specific health settings. Textual analysis requires the critic to have a rich understanding of their chosen texts, their contexts, and the cultural codes that ground them.