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Sunday, July 1, 2007

Vaccinated

Originally published on June 20, 2007.

I come from a medical family. For me, getting my children vaccinated was never a question. However, when my older son was in Early Intervention for speech therapy, I met several parents who had autistic children. Many of them expressed the belief that thimerosal (used as a preservative in vaccines like MMR and flu shots) causes autism. While I still vaccinated both of my kids, I asked the pediatrians whether or not the shots did contain thimerosal and how much was in the shot.

Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases by Paul A Offit, MD chronicles Maurice Hilleman and his life's work creating vaccines. A humanitarian who wanted nothing more than to save children, Hillman created the vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, pneumococcus, meningococcus, and Hib. Surely such a man would have received a Nobel Prize, right? The answer is no. Most people have never heard of him, myself included. Clearly he was not in this for fame and fortune.

If you are interested in science, you will probably enjoy all of this book. It talks not just about the vaccines that Hillman created, but more broadly about the history of all vaccines, including the work of other scientists. It describes how vaccines were invented and what methods were used to make each of them. How was the first vaccine invented? Did you ever wonder why the flu vaccine is grown in chicken eggs? Lest you think that this book is too scientific, rest assured that it is pretty easy to read. It's not the type of book to take to the beach, but it's not dry.

Even if you do not care about the history of vaccines, I think it is worth getting the book to read the last quarter. This is the part that talks about the alleged link between autism and vaccines. It also discusses the papillomavirus vaccine. I have to say that after reading this part of the book I feel much better about the vaccines that my eleven month-old will be receiving next week, on the other side of his first birthday. It also discusses capitalism and vaccines.

Obviously this book is pro-vaccine, but I did find the explanations of the history of vaccines, and the scientific data to be pretty unemotional. Even when showing that vaccinating is preferably after analyzing data, the author still completely articulated the opposing argument and then rebutted it.

From a moral and ethical perspective, I enjoyed this book because it talks about the atrocities that went along with creating vaccines - atrocities that I bet many people in my generation don't know about. Vaccines used to be tested on mentally retarded children. I think that that is something important to know about our society, and to understand, as the author explains, why it was perceived as morally acceptable at the time.

Finally, as the author points out, when we are protected, we take vaccines for granted. I'll never know if my own kids were exposed to measles or mumps last week. I'll just know that on June 20th, they were healthy.

posted by Alex Elliot @ 9:49 PM 0 comments

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Name:	Alex Elliot
Home:	MA, United States
About Me:	Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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