Product Description

A fascinating account of vaccination's miraculous, inflammatory past and its uncertain future.

In 1796, as smallpox ravaged Europe, Edward Jenner injected a child with a benign version of the disease, then exposed the child to the deadly virus itself. The boy proved resistant to smallpox, and Jenner's risky experiment produced the earliest vaccination. In this deftly written account, journalist Arthur Allen reveals a history of vaccination that is both illuminated with hope and shrouded by controversy—from Jenner's discovery to Pasteur's vaccines for rabies and cholera, to those that safeguarded the children of the twentieth century, and finally to the tumult currently surrounding vaccination.

Faced with threats from anthrax to AIDS, we are a vulnerable population and can no longer depend on vaccines; numerous studies have linked childhood vaccination with various neurological disorders, and our pharmaceutical companies are more attracted to the profits of treatment than to the prevention of disease. With narrative grace and investigative journalism, Allen explores our shifting understanding of vaccination since its creation. 16 pages of illustrations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #342515 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 512 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Vaccines are one of the most important and controversial achievements in public health. Washington-based journalist Allen explores in depth this dark horse of medicine from the first instances of doctors saving patients from smallpox by infecting them with it to the current controversy over vaccinating preteen girls against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer. One thing becomes very clear: fear of vaccination is not a recent problem. In colonial America, inoculations against smallpox were seen by many as a means of deflecting the will of God. In the 20th century, the triumphs of the Salk polio vaccine and the eradication of smallpox may actually have led to current antivaccination movements: "as infectious diseases disappeared, in part thanks to vaccines, the risks of vaccination itself were thrown into relief." Allen's comprehensive, often unexpected and intelligently told history illuminates the complexity of a public health policy that may put the individual at risk but will save the community. This book leaves the reader with a sense of awe at all that vaccination has accomplished and trepidation over the future of the vaccine industry. 16 pages of illus. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Reviewed by Laurie Garrett

When I was six days old, I nearly died of chicken pox. This was explained to me almost casually by my mother six years later as she commanded me to sleep over at a friend's home, where another child was suffering from the rubella form of measles. It was just possible, Mother said, that I got chicken pox because she had been exposed to the disease during the final days of her pregnancy but had no immunity to the virus -- and thus failed to pass on protective antibodies to poor little me. To make sure that I would not one day give birth to a rubella-damaged baby or miscarry, Mother sent me to that dreaded sleep-over. I did indeed become infected. And for several miserable days, I lay in quarantine, delirious, dehydrated and bored, covered in red blotches and angry as heck that Mother had put me through the ordeal.

Such stories used to be commonplace. In Vaccine, Arthur Allen tells us that by the early 1960s, rubella was a leading cause of some types of birth defects and miscarriages in America, as well as the motivation for thousands of therapeutic abortions aimed at avoiding giving birth to babies damaged by the virus. By the decade's close, however, pediatricians were able to vaccinate youngsters against polio, rubella, diphtheria, measles and tetanus with shots and droplets. The vaccine inventors were hailed as heroes and international celebrities.

But within a generation, such diseases were all but forgotten in wealthy nations, and parents began weighing the risks of the diseases against the possible side effects of the vaccines. Today, we have come full circle, with many of the vaccine pioneers now vilified and their products blamed for everything from AIDS to autism. For all too many American parents, the risk equation has changed, leading them to oppose immunization with one or more of the key pediatric vaccines. Allen, a former Associated Press reporter who writes a column on risks for Slate, began thinking hard about these issues after facing decisions regarding the vaccination of his own two children.

Vaccine is two books, really. The first is a historical account of experiments with vaccination from the early 18th century, when Cotton Mather tried to inoculate his neighbors in colonial Boston against smallpox, through the peak of vaccine development in the 1960s. Written in a straightforward fashion, this book offers few surprises to students of vaccine history, but it does deliver a very accessible account of American (and, to a lesser degree, European) scientific discoveries, public health campaigns and their controversies. The take-home message: Though vaccines have clearly saved lives and stopped epidemics, the practice of immunization has always been controversial, with organized skeptics claiming that vaccines would anger God, kill children, cause innumerable diseases, worsen epidemics and produce defective offspring.

Then, in what feels like a separate book, Allen offers his own analysis of the current state of anti-vaccine sentiments in the United States. This section alone is well worth the price of admission. With genuine panache, Allen describes the "legislative jihad against vaccines" led by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), as well as the mind-boggling array of political and religious forces that have, over the last decade, claimed child vaccination to be responsible for everything from brain disorders and autism to causing the very diseases the products are designed to prevent.

The modern skeptics' primary target is a mercury-based vaccine stabilizer called thimerosal, which critics charge has caused a sharp increase in autism in America. Between 1992 and 2002, the skeptics note, doctors in the United States diagnosed 10 times more cases of the syndrome. But anti-vaccine critics fail to note that between 1987 and 2004, the American Psychiatric Association's official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders revised its definition of autism twice; each time that resulted in an immediate surge in the number of children identified as autistic. Further, when the definitions of autism were standardized, it turned out that Denmark (where no thimerosal was used in vaccines) and Minnesota had the same per capita incidence of autism. Finally, studies show that boys are at least four times more likely than girls to suffer from functional autism, but boys and girls are equally likely to be vaccinated.

Because Allen does not often reflect on the ways that contemporary battles may mirror those described in his earlier historical treatise, the two halves of his book are not well-linked. For example, he offers a concise analysis of the early days of the development of a vaccine for polio, when the pioneering Hilary Koprowski tried out an innovative oral vaccine on thousands of youngsters in Congo. In passing, Allen notes that during the 1990s, a British journalist named Edward Hooper falsely claimed that Koprowski's experiments spawned the AIDS pandemic. But Allen misses the next chapter in that sorry saga: Having read Hooper's claims, a cluster of imams in northern Nigeria announced that Muslims should refuse to have their children vaccinated against polio. Overnight, the global fight against polio shifted; the disease, which had been on the brink of complete eradication, again spread throughout the Muslim world and parts of India.

Similarly, Allen misses the impact that doubts about mercury contamination of vaccines had in some far-flung parts of the former Soviet Union. By the time Mikhail Gorbachev took over control of the Kremlin, less than a third of families in Moscow, Kiev, St. Petersburg and Siberia were allowing doctors to fully vaccinate their children. In the 1980s, Soviet soldiers returning from combat in Afghanistan brought diphtheria back to the largely unvaccinated population, with devastating results. By the early 1990s, Russia and Ukraine combined had a diphtheria epidemic involving a quarter of a million people.

Twenty years ago, the Science magazine reporter Jon Cohen -- arguably the greatest observer of contemporary vaccine research -- set out to write a book about the discovery of an AIDS vaccine. He was optimistic that scientists would soon find the key to stopping the dreaded virus. Today, more than 30 million people are living with HIV, the pandemic continues to spread, and vaccine manufacturers openly express skepticism that a product to stop this hideous disease will ever pass American safety standards. As Allen's book tells us, we have come a long, depressing way from the glory days of vaccine heroism.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
Pulling together years of accumulated research on a topic he has written about for several national publications, Allen recounts the 200-year history of vaccination, from its first employment to combat smallpox, "the first and only contagious disease ever eradicated" by a vaccine, to the present, in which decades of unanswered questions plus low profit margins for vaccine development threaten its future. Allen undertakes a ponderous mission indeed because there has been so much controversy, most recently regarding an alleged link between autism and a vaccine, and disagreement over the efficacy of various vaccines. A 2005 study found little difference in fatality rates between elderly flu shot recipients and those who didn't get the shots, and then there's the whole discussion about how much social responsibility the individual must bear when getting a vaccination that puts the recipient at risk of unwanted side effects but also helps protect the community from an epidemic. Thorny issues all, which Allen deftly maneuvers as he wrangles myriad aspects of a very complicated issue into a comprehensible text. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Revealing the history of the first 2 1/2 centuries of vaccination
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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. Actually, I can't understand why Allen added this third part except to "bring [his] personal agendas" to the "controversial story" of vaccination.

Allen does, in my opinion, highlight the crux of the vaccination issue by quoting somebody else:

"As in all wars, some soldiers are injured...At present, the draftees [mainly babies and small children] injured in the war on infectious diseases are in effect told by conscripting authorities, `Thank you for your contribution to the war effort, and best of success in coping with your [life-long] disability [caused by the vaccination].'"

There are two sets of black and white pictures or "plates" found in the book consisting of fourteen and sixteen pictures respectively. My favorite picture has the following caption:

"Six million New Yorkers were vaccinated within a few weeks after smallpox appeared in the city in 1947. Contemporaries were struck at the willingness of Americans to accept vaccination in this postwar period--even though the [smallpox] vaccine killed and maimed far more people that did smallpox itself."

Finally, those readers seeking a comprehensive treatment of the vaccine debate and history of vaccination outside the United States should go elsewhere.

In conclusion, readers seeking a solid history of the first 2 1/2 centuries of vaccination will find a lot to think about in this book!!

*** 1/2

(first published 2007; introduction; three parts or 10 chapters; epilogue; main narrative 440 pages; acknowledgements; notes; index)

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A fascinating look at a timely and pertinent issue
"Vaccine" is a timely and pertinent book that does an outstanding job of analyzing the many controversies that have plagued (pun intended) vaccines since their beginning. Always a hotbed of controversy, the debate surrounding vaccines has arisen again as a new generation of parents questions the politics and implications behind the HPV vaccine for girls.

This book should be a must-read for parents before they decide NOT to inoculate their children. The book notes there are pockets within communities of highly educated (and very, shall we say, freethinking) parents who don't vaccinate their kids. The chapter titled "People Who Prefer Whooping Cough" tells the intriguing story of a Waldorf School (this one in Boulder, Co.) which maintains that children should become very ill in order to develop into spiritually whole human beings. Public health officials have been tracing many whooping cough outbreaks to this school in Boulder, and cases were showing up more and more in nearby cities like Golden, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins.

Also of interest is the chapter that examines vaccines and whether there is a link to the recent `epidemic' of autism. This book can be a valuable resource for families looking for a comprehensive history of the issue.

Arthur Allen has exhaustively researched and dissected his subject matter, as his 50 pages of footnotes show. His narrative, conversational tone and his skill at weaving the pieces of the story together help make this a highly readable, informative book despite its inherent complexities.

good overview of the whole discovery process plus the political ramifications
A very good history of the vaccine discovery, implementation and political ramifications within religious groups once problems stemmed from discovered wrongdoing. the chapter on autism is the best.