Running head: MULTI-MODAL INTERVIEW 1

Multi-Modal Interview

Amanda M. DeBarros

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

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Multi-Modal Interview

This week, I shared with my roommate, Mya, about my topic for the semester long

project. My project is about the history of vaccines and touching on cancer in order to relate both

topics into the research and trials going on for this potential cancer vaccine. I asked her what she

knew about the history of vaccines and what exactly she thought of this cancer vaccine research.

Her response was, “I know that Jenner tested the first small pox vaccine on a child using cow

pox and it resulted in a cure. I also know that if children didn’t get vaccinated in polio they were

at a high risk of death from the disease. As for the cancer vaccine research, I believe that if they

ever do figure out the vaccine, the government would never let private companies publish it. As

harsh as it sounds, they would lose way too much money from cancer treatments and many

companies would go out of business.” I was impressed and shocked to hear her response because

not only did she recognize many important aspects of the vaccine history timeline, she also

included that she truly believes that the government would never publish the cure for cancer to

the public. Although this is sad to believe that could happen, it is interesting that someone else

also had this perspective on this topic. A great idea that was given to me from Mya about

research is to include the costs of vaccine production and also the costs for patients on cancer

treatments. “How would this new cancer vaccine compare to these costs?” This is a great point to

research because in reality, many of the reasons that these treatments are still in full effect is

because it’s seen as the most effective treatment and also, they are very expensive. The expenses

definitely cover all the costs of production and distribution of cancer treatments. It would

definitely be interesting to compare the costs. I learned that not only Mya, but my other

roommate Lydia had very similar responses to these same questions. She also believed that the
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government would not publish a cure to the public in fear of basically losing all the money from

chemotherapy. I wonder if this is the same way the audience in our UWRT class will think.