Stocking up on Fish Mox: a Systematic Analysis of Cultural Narratives about Self-medicating in Online Forums

Abstract

This study is a systematic review of cultural narratives that drive American belief in the value and efficacy of stocking up on fish antibiotics for human consumption. Popularized by “doomsday prepper” forums and survivalist medical professionals' online videos, this narrative suggests that in some scenarios humans may benefit from such treatments—even as they note its contraindication to mainstream public health advice. Discussions in crowd-sourcing forums however, reveal that in practice Americans are using them as a form of home remedy to treat routine infections without missing work or to make up for gaps in insurance coverage. This article argues for greater attention to what makes it plausible and reasonable to treat human conditions with animal medications. It suggests that public health initiatives should address such decisions as emerging from a rational analysis of social and economic conditions rather than dismissing such practices as dangerous to population and individual health outcomes. As social scientists of medicine have long argued, collective narratives about health and medicine illustrate deeply the broader contexts in which communities understand and experience bodily state and shape how communities interact with public health institutions and respond to medical expertise. This study surveys online discussions about “fish mox” to show how participants contest medical expertise and promote a more distributed form of populist expertise. As such, consuming fish mox is both panacea for health inequality and a critique of health institutions for perpetrating such stratification.

Another Person’s Peril: Peanut Allergy, Risk Perceptions, and Responsible Sociality

“…Directly pertinent here is the evolving field of research into people’s trust in those producing and disseminating information about risk (Eyal 2019; Oreskes and Conway 2010; Silbey 2009), as well as in the authority and legitimacy of institutions to administer and mediate claims about risk (Clarke and Short 1993; Thomas 2014). Extant scholarship shows that—as part and parcel of the reflexivity incumbent in risk society (Beck 1992; Douglas and Wildavsky 1982)—growing numbers of people are critically questioning institutionally-produced knowledge of risk and safety from scientific authorities, corporations, and governments (Brulle and Pellow 2006; Cable et al 2008; Hagen 2019), and they are finding information, and misinformation, through proliferating alternative channels (Foster 2016; Gage and Panagakis 2012; Howes-Mischel 2017). In this view, the world has not necessarily become more hazardous (although some argue it has).…”