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    Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases
    Unavailable
    Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases
    Unavailable
    Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases
    Ebook370 pages6 hours

    Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases

    By Paul A. Offit, M.D.

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    "Medical writing at its finest."—David Oshinsky, author of Polio and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History

    Respected physician Paul Offit tells a fascinating story of modern medicine and pays tribute to one of the greatest lifesaving breakthroughs—vaccinations—and the medical hero responsible for developing nine of the big fourteen vaccines which have saved billions of lives worldwide. This edition includes a new foreword by the author.

    Maurice Hilleman’s mother died a day after he was born and his twin sister was stillborn. Believing that he had escaped an appointment with death, he made it his life’s work to see that others could do the same. The fruits of his labors were nine vaccines that practically every child receives, everyday miracles of modern medicine that have eradicated some of the most common—and devastating—diseases, including mumps and rubella.

    Offit, a vaccine researcher himself who co-invented the rotavirus vaccine, befriended Hilleman and, during the great man’s final months, interviewed him extensively about his life and career. Those conversations are the heart of Vaccinated. In telling Hilleman’s story, Offit takes us around the globe and across time, from the days of Louis Pasteur, to today, when a childhood vaccine can protect women from cervical cancer and stop a deadly pandemic like Covid-19. Yet these preventative treatments have come under increasing attack from both the left and right, and the anti-vaxxer movement that began with false reports over autism is growing at an alarming rate, threatening society’s well-being, and especially those whose conditions prevent them from being vaccinated. 

    Offit makes an eloquent and compelling case for Hilleman’s importance, arguing that his name should be as well-known as Jonas Salk. Vaccinated reminds us of the value of vaccines and the power of science to save lives and protect our well-being.

    Editor's Note

    In the news…

    Measles cases have exploded across the country in the largest outbreak since 2000, when the disease was declared eliminated in the US. Many of those infected had not been vaccinated. Find out more about the microbiologist who developed life-saving vaccines, including the MMR vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061871511
    Unavailable
    Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases
    Author

    Paul A. Offit, M.D.

    Paul A. Offit, MD, is a professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases and director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, as well as the acclaimed author of Autism's False Prophets, Vaccinated, Pandora's Lab, and Deadly Choices.

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    Reviews for Vaccinated

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      A combination biography, history of vaccinations, this book covers the development of the vaccinations that control many common diseases that were once mass killers and now are controlled, at least in the western world. It is not as far ranging as some other histories of vaccinations, since it touches mostly on the 20th century as it covers the contributions of one man, Maurice Hillemann, with side trips to other major contributors. It is less biography than history, as it spends little time on his personal life, and most of its time on the subject of the vaccines. This is a feature, not a bug, as the story of his vaccine crusade appears to be the bulk of his story for a man who worked so many hours that he had little personal life, apparently. The author also discusses the former tendency to test techniques on children in hospitals for the mentally retarded, and while recognizing the ethical difficulties with this, also discusses the whys and wherefores of doing the testing where they did, and it was not for hatred of the mentally less gifted; it was because this was the population most at risk. The final chapters discuss the various political and social movements that are troubling vaccinations at this time. A lucid, readable book.
    • 1/5
      Don’t vaccinate you kid - it’s all a lie seriously

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Dr. Maurice Hilleman: singlehandedly pushed through a vaccine that mitigated the influenza epidemic of 1957; developed vaccines against mumps, rubella, measles, Japanese encephalitis virus, hepatitis A and B, pneumonia, and Haemophilus influenzae type b. Most of his vaccines are still in use to this day. He never won the Nobel Prize for his work, and to this day few people know his name, let alone his accomplishments.
      Dr. Offit uses Hilleman's work to organize the book and take readers through the history of biological research and humanity's relationship with disease. He also examines myths that have dogged Hillman's work: that fetuses were killed to provide material, that the hep B vaccine contained HIV, that the MMR vaccine causes autism, that ethyl mercury (formerly contained in vaccines) causes autism. And he reminds his readers just how necessary vaccines are. I recommend this book to everyone, regardless of scientific background. A lay person could read this just as easily as a microbiologist--and should. Knowledge is power!
    • 4/5
      Good stuff. I'm quite partial to medical history, but it'd been a while since I read any. This is a good one, easily accessible, interesting and super relevant. Although it's organized around the work of Maurice Hilleman it really isn't a biography (thank goodness). Offit simply uses him as a pivot by which he accesses the history and development of vaccines preceding and concurrent with Hilleman's career. It was completely fascinating reading how vaccines grew from the cringe-worthy practice of arm-to-arm vaccination (when the inoculated fluids of one person were introduced directly in the next person to be vaccinated) to the crazy space-age sort of vaccines we've got today where scientists can cleave apart viruses isolating the particles that cause immunity from the dangerous bits with little threat of outside contamination. That's pretty new, they stumbled onto the mechanism to do that in the 80's.Most of it is about some pretty down and dirty, nose to grindstone type of techniques. Reading about them made vaccines understandable in a way that they never were before. Simply put before I read this book I had only the vaguest idea of how vaccines worked and where they came from. Scientists did it! With magic! Ha. No really, after years and years of hearing about vaccines being made from weakened or dead diseases I get it now. Now I know how they weakened diseases. They forced them to evolve. Stick it in a chicken egg. Force generation upon generation to acclimate to life in a chicken egg until it's not so good at life in a person, but still enough like the original disease that the body can learn to make antibodies from it. Offit presents how various vaccines were developed and it's fascinating how much the ingredients list sounds like witchcraft. Really. The rabies vaccine was first made in rabbit spines. Offit also does a good job of looking at the political and corporate involvement in vaccine production, both positive and negative. It's all very human. Hilleman was kinda a hardass, but you had to respect how completely committed he was to developing the best vaccine for the people. It's a shame that egos, fear-mongering and bottomlines can do so much damage to such important work.