Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver PDF

Rating: (30 reviews) Author: Arthur Allen ISBN : 9780393331561 New from $6.48 Format: PDF

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"A timely, fair-minded and crisply written account."—New York Times Book Review

Vaccine juxtaposes the stories of brilliant scientists with the industry's struggle to produce safe, effective, and profitable vaccines. It focuses on the role of military and medical authority in the introduction of vaccines and looks at why some parents have resisted this authority. Political and social intrigue have often accompanied vaccination—from the divisive introduction of smallpox inoculation in colonial Boston to the 9,000 lawsuits recently filed by parents convinced that vaccines caused their children's autism. With narrative grace and investigative journalism, Arthur Allen reveals a history illuminated by hope and shrouded by controversy, and he sheds new light on changing notions of health, risk, and the common good.

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• Product Details
• Table of Contents
• Reviews

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (May 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393331563
• ISBN-13: 978-0393331561
• Product Dimensions: 1.3 x 5.2 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver PDF

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"In telling the story of vaccination, this book makes an assessment that is as fair as I can make it, based on the available evidence. I [the author] am neither a scientist nor someone with personal experience of a severe vaccine reaction [vaccines carry some measure of risk to the patient]...This book deals with preventive vaccines [that produce an artificial immunity] against infectious diseases [smallpox, polio, measles, whooping cough, etc.)...a vaccine's success as a public health measure relies on three legs of support: (1) the public, which must be confident of the safety and worth of the procedure; (2) manufactures, who seek to generate profits by making vaccines; and (3) government and public-health [workers] who...[help] further population-wide health goals. As [the reader] will see throughout this book, none of these legs is entirely stable."

The above is found in the introduction of this well-researched, easy-to-read book by writer Arthur Allen. Be aware that the author also says in the introduction the following: "I do...bring personal agendas to this book." The book itself is divided into three parts.

In the first two parts, Allen describes the history of the development of vaccines in a time when there were no clinical ethics boards or informed consent laws, the defeat of such infectious diseases as smallpox & polio, and public resistance to widespread vaccination. There's a lot here to disturb both proponents and opponents of mandatory vaccination.

The author devotes the third and last part of his book to the vaccine controversies of the last few decades. I found that this relatively brief analysis was not well connected to the first two parts.