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Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases
His goal—to prevent every disease that commonly attacked children—was unattainable. But Maurice Hilleman came close.
Maurice Hilleman is the father of modern vaccines. Chief among his accomplishments are nine vaccines that practically every child gets, rendering formerly deadly diseases — including mumps, rubella, and measles — nearly forgotten. Author Paul A. Offit's rich and lively narrative details Hilleman's research and experiences as the basis for a larger exploration of the development of vaccines, covering two hundred years of medical history and traveling across the globe in the process. The history of vaccines necessarily brings with it a cautionary message, as they have come under assault from those insisting they do more harm than good. Paul Offit clearly and compellingly rebuts these arguments, and, by demonstrating how much the work of Hilleman and others has gained for humanity, shows us how much we have to lose.
274 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2007
340 people are currently reading
6887 people want to read
About the author
Paul A. Offit
26 books485 followersPaul A. Offit, MD is the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Offit is also the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology, and a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He is a recipient of many awards including the J. Edmund Bradley Prize for Excellence in Pediatrics bestowed by the University of Maryland Medical School, the Young Investigator Award in Vaccine Development from the Infectious Disease Society of America, and a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Paul A. Offit has published more than 130 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety. He is also the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, recently recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC; for this achievement Dr. Offit received the Gold Medal from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Jonas Salk Medal from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.
Dr Paul Offit was also a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is the author of multiple books.
from www.paul-offit.com
Dr. Paul A. Offit has published more than 130 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety. He is also the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, recently recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC; for this achievement Dr. Offit received the Gold Medal from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Jonas Salk Medal from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.
Dr Paul Offit was also a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is the author of multiple books.
from www.paul-offit.com
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 253 reviews
May 9, 2017
So this book is a brief history of vaccination and most of it talks about Maurice Hilleman's career and life but the author also makes mentions of various other people involved in the making of vaccines through out. I bought this book thinking it be about the history of vaccines but it's mostly centered around Hilleman who is actually quite impressive and deserves a biography. The book was interesting and the writing was clear and easy to read. If you like the human interest aspect of things and are interested in the history of science you'll probably enjoy this one. I wish the content was more heavily focused on the science aspect of vaccinations as well too but that's just a personal preference.
September 10, 2011
"That's the problem with vaccines. When they work, absolutely nothing happens. Nothing. Parents go on with their lives, not once thinking that their child was saved from meningitis caused by Hib or from liver cancer caused by Hepatitis B or from fatal pneumonia caused by pneumococcus or from paralysis caused by polio. We live in a state of blissful denial. But somebody was getting those diseases. Before pharmaceutical companies made the Hib vaccine in the early 1990s, every year about ten thousand children were stricken with meningitis, leaving many blind, deaf, and retarded. Today, fewer than fifty children every year suffer this disease. But who are those thousands of children who aren't getting Hib today? What are their names? We don't know. And that's what makes vaccines - or any prevention - much less compelling than treatment. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on bone marrow transplants and lung transplants and kidney transplants and heart transplants. These therapies are extraordinarily expensive, and they certainly don't save money for the health care system or society. But when we know a person is sick, we'll stop at nothing to help. Unfortunately, we seem perfectly willing to withhold life-saving vaccines when we don't know who is going to be sick. We're willing to take that gamble - a gamble that many children will inevitably lose."
October 25, 2015
#IoVaccino.
No alla #Disinformazione
*English review below the Italian one.
Di solito recensisco nella lingua in cui leggo, ma stavolta devo fare un'eccezione perché questo libro merita la massima divulgazione possibile.
Intanto cominciamo dagli hashtag qui sopra, una campagna di sensibilizzazione lanciata da Alice Pignatti, Miriam Maurantonio e teamvaxitalia a favore delle vaccinazioni e della corretta informazione a riguardo.
Potete firmare la petizione pro-vaccinazioni in ambiente scolastico cliccando qui.
Il libro racconta la storia dei vaccini, partendo da quello che ha debellato il vaiolo per arrivare a quello contro il papilloma virus.
Spiega anche come gli interessi economici di un unico medico, Andrew Wakefield, abbia dato vita all'irrazionale movimento anti-vaccini nel 1998.
Traduco uno dei pezzi migliori:
Questo è il problema con i vaccini. Quando funzionano, non succede assolutamente niente. Niente. I genitori continuano con la loro vita, non pensando nemmeno pr un istante che il loro figlio è stato salvato dalla meningite o dal cancro al fegato dovuto all'epatite B o da una polmonite collegata allo pneumococco o da una paralisi conseguente la poliomelite. Viviamo in uno stato di beata ignoranza. Ma qualcuno si ammalava di queste malattie. Prima che le case farmaceutiche scoprissero il vaccino hib nel 1990, ogni anno circa 10.000 bambini soffrivano di meningite che lasciava molti ciechi, sordi o ritardati. Oggi, meno di 50 bambini l'anno contraggono questa malattia. Ma chi sono quei bambini salvati dal vaccino hib? Come si chiamano? Non lo sappiamo. Ed è questo che non ci fa sentire le vaccinazioni - o qualsiasi altro tipo di prevenzione - come impellente. Spendiamo centinaia di milioni di dollari per il trapianto di midollo, di polmoni, di reni e di cuore. Queste procedure sono estremamente costose e influiscono sul sistema sanitario di ogni nazione. Ma quando sappiamo che una persona è malata non ci fermiamo davanti a nulla pur di aiutarla. Sfortunatamente ci sembra sia perfettamente normale evitare i vaccini-salvavita perché non sappiamo chi si ammalerà. Ci va bene giocare d'azzardo, un gioco che molti bambini finiranno inevitabilmente col perdere.
Pensateci: continuiamo a fumare anche se sappiamo che fa male, perché in fondo in fondo non crediamo seriamente che il cancro ai polmoni possa capitare proprio a noi. E poi lo zio/nonno/cugino Tal dei Tali è campato fino a 90 anni fumando 40 sigarette al giorno!
Oppure pensate a un bambino che si ingozza di dolci: la madre gli dice di smettere perché gli verrà il mal di pancia, ma il bambino non è in grado di abbandonare una gratificazione immediata per qualcosa che potrebbe, ma anche no, accadere in futuro (e non solo i bambini). Poi, quando il mal di pancia arriva, siamo pronti a fare di tutto affinché se ne vada in fretta.
Il problema è questi complottari giocano con malattie letali: come si giustificheranno se nella prossima generazione (non mi preoccupo troppo per la mia, l'immunità di gregge ci garantirà di vedere ancora per qualche tempo troppi pochi morti per smettere di dire cavolate) torneranno malattie quasi debellate? Colpa della lobby dei polmoni d'acciaio?
ENGLISH
Dear English reader, I'm not going to translate the italian rant I wrote above because it's connected to our own, local drama: a mum set a petition on change.org to reintroduce mandatory vaccinations in schools. Anti-vaxxers are having tantrums on FB. Same difference, I'm afraid, even if you're reading this from a country far far away.
With you, I'd like to point out the 1 and 2 stars review this book got: have you noticed there are almost no comments, just a low rating? I could be wrong, but I think they rated it low simply because they oppose vaccinations, not because there's something wrong with the style or the topic of the book.Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases is extremely interesting and very well written: the author wants you to understand the data.
I'll leave you with the quote that summarize more or less everything
"That's the problem with vaccines. When they work, absolutely nothing happens. Nothing. Parents go on with their lives, not once thinking that their child was saved from meningitis caused by Hib or from liver cancer caused by Hepatitis B or from fatal pneumonia caused by pneumococcus or from paralysis caused by polio. We live in a state of blissful denial. But somebody was getting those diseases. Before pharmaceutical companies made the Hib vaccine in the early 1990s, every year about ten thousand children were stricken with meningitis, leaving many blind, deaf, and retarded. Today, fewer than fifty children every year suffer this disease. But who are those thousands of children who aren't getting Hib today? What are their names? We don't know. And that's what makes vaccines - or any prevention - much less compelling than treatment. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on bone marrow transplants and lung transplants and kidney transplants and heart transplants. These therapies are extraordinarily expensive, and they certainly don't save money for the health care system or society. But when we know a person is sick, we'll stop at nothing to help. Unfortunately, we seem perfectly willing to withhold life-saving vaccines when we don't know who is going to be sick. We're willing to take that gamble - a gamble that many children will inevitably lose."
No alla #Disinformazione
*English review below the Italian one.
Di solito recensisco nella lingua in cui leggo, ma stavolta devo fare un'eccezione perché questo libro merita la massima divulgazione possibile.
Intanto cominciamo dagli hashtag qui sopra, una campagna di sensibilizzazione lanciata da Alice Pignatti, Miriam Maurantonio e teamvaxitalia a favore delle vaccinazioni e della corretta informazione a riguardo.
Potete firmare la petizione pro-vaccinazioni in ambiente scolastico cliccando qui.
Il libro racconta la storia dei vaccini, partendo da quello che ha debellato il vaiolo per arrivare a quello contro il papilloma virus.
Spiega anche come gli interessi economici di un unico medico, Andrew Wakefield, abbia dato vita all'irrazionale movimento anti-vaccini nel 1998.
Traduco uno dei pezzi migliori:
Questo è il problema con i vaccini. Quando funzionano, non succede assolutamente niente. Niente. I genitori continuano con la loro vita, non pensando nemmeno pr un istante che il loro figlio è stato salvato dalla meningite o dal cancro al fegato dovuto all'epatite B o da una polmonite collegata allo pneumococco o da una paralisi conseguente la poliomelite. Viviamo in uno stato di beata ignoranza. Ma qualcuno si ammalava di queste malattie. Prima che le case farmaceutiche scoprissero il vaccino hib nel 1990, ogni anno circa 10.000 bambini soffrivano di meningite che lasciava molti ciechi, sordi o ritardati. Oggi, meno di 50 bambini l'anno contraggono questa malattia. Ma chi sono quei bambini salvati dal vaccino hib? Come si chiamano? Non lo sappiamo. Ed è questo che non ci fa sentire le vaccinazioni - o qualsiasi altro tipo di prevenzione - come impellente. Spendiamo centinaia di milioni di dollari per il trapianto di midollo, di polmoni, di reni e di cuore. Queste procedure sono estremamente costose e influiscono sul sistema sanitario di ogni nazione. Ma quando sappiamo che una persona è malata non ci fermiamo davanti a nulla pur di aiutarla. Sfortunatamente ci sembra sia perfettamente normale evitare i vaccini-salvavita perché non sappiamo chi si ammalerà. Ci va bene giocare d'azzardo, un gioco che molti bambini finiranno inevitabilmente col perdere.
Pensateci: continuiamo a fumare anche se sappiamo che fa male, perché in fondo in fondo non crediamo seriamente che il cancro ai polmoni possa capitare proprio a noi. E poi lo zio/nonno/cugino Tal dei Tali è campato fino a 90 anni fumando 40 sigarette al giorno!
Oppure pensate a un bambino che si ingozza di dolci: la madre gli dice di smettere perché gli verrà il mal di pancia, ma il bambino non è in grado di abbandonare una gratificazione immediata per qualcosa che potrebbe, ma anche no, accadere in futuro (e non solo i bambini). Poi, quando il mal di pancia arriva, siamo pronti a fare di tutto affinché se ne vada in fretta.
Il problema è questi complottari giocano con malattie letali: come si giustificheranno se nella prossima generazione (non mi preoccupo troppo per la mia, l'immunità di gregge ci garantirà di vedere ancora per qualche tempo troppi pochi morti per smettere di dire cavolate) torneranno malattie quasi debellate? Colpa della lobby dei polmoni d'acciaio?
ENGLISH
Dear English reader, I'm not going to translate the italian rant I wrote above because it's connected to our own, local drama: a mum set a petition on change.org to reintroduce mandatory vaccinations in schools. Anti-vaxxers are having tantrums on FB. Same difference, I'm afraid, even if you're reading this from a country far far away.
With you, I'd like to point out the 1 and 2 stars review this book got: have you noticed there are almost no comments, just a low rating? I could be wrong, but I think they rated it low simply because they oppose vaccinations, not because there's something wrong with the style or the topic of the book.Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases is extremely interesting and very well written: the author wants you to understand the data.
I'll leave you with the quote that summarize more or less everything
"That's the problem with vaccines. When they work, absolutely nothing happens. Nothing. Parents go on with their lives, not once thinking that their child was saved from meningitis caused by Hib or from liver cancer caused by Hepatitis B or from fatal pneumonia caused by pneumococcus or from paralysis caused by polio. We live in a state of blissful denial. But somebody was getting those diseases. Before pharmaceutical companies made the Hib vaccine in the early 1990s, every year about ten thousand children were stricken with meningitis, leaving many blind, deaf, and retarded. Today, fewer than fifty children every year suffer this disease. But who are those thousands of children who aren't getting Hib today? What are their names? We don't know. And that's what makes vaccines - or any prevention - much less compelling than treatment. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on bone marrow transplants and lung transplants and kidney transplants and heart transplants. These therapies are extraordinarily expensive, and they certainly don't save money for the health care system or society. But when we know a person is sick, we'll stop at nothing to help. Unfortunately, we seem perfectly willing to withhold life-saving vaccines when we don't know who is going to be sick. We're willing to take that gamble - a gamble that many children will inevitably lose."
July 2, 2022
"Ваксиниран" е книга за прогреса на медицината през двадесети век. Посветена е на един практически непознат герой на съвременната наука - микробиологът Морис Хилеман. Съвместно с фармацевтичната компания Merck той създава десетки ваксини, някои от които се използват и до днес. Милиони деца дължат живота си на неговите открития. Когато ваксините действат, нищо не се случва. Хората не се разболяват и е нужна пандемия от нов вирус, за да си дадем сметка какво става, когато нямаме защита срещу опасни инфекциозни заболявания.
Хилеман създава първата си ваксина след като взема материал от гърлото на собствената си дъщеря. Изолираният и отслабен щам на паротитния вирус е наречен на нейно име - Jeryl Lynn и се прилага и до днес. През осемдесетте години Хилеман създава първата ваксина срещу хепатит В, използвайки свръхпречистени кръвни продукти, съдържащи т.нар. австралийски антиген на вируса. Ваксината се оказва технологично чудо за времето си, но не е използвана масово заради страха от кръвно заразяване с новооткрития вирус HIV. Хилеман разбира, че категоричното доказване на безопасност и ефективност не е достатъчно за постигане на повсеместно приложение. Обществото трябва да бъде успокоено и убедено със средствата на масовата комуникация, а не на академичната наука. По-късно ваксината започва да се произвежда чрез рекомбинантна биотехнология от генетично модифицирани бактерии (т.е. без участието на кръвни продукти) и масовото приложение се постига изключително бързо.
Хилеман е продуктивен учен с важни открития през целия си живот. Той първи осъзнава, че азиатският грип от 1957 г. ще се превърне в пандемия, защото хиляди анализирани серуми не съдържат антитела срещу него. Хилеман първи доказва, че ваксина може да защитава от раково заболяване. Ще ви изненадам с името на предотвратеното заболяване - болест на Марек. Не се учудвайте, ако никога не сте го чували - то засяга само птици, но потвърждава идеята, че ваксинална профилактика срещу рак е напълно възможна и приложима. Хилеман е и първият учен, който изолира вещество с противовирусен ефект - интерферон.
Хилеман не получава Нобелова награда въпреки огромният си принос за развитието на медицината. Той остава и непознат за широката публика - рядко се срещат хора дори в медицинската сфера, които са чували името му. Суетата и показността, толкова характерни за съвремието, са му напълно непознати. Нобелова награда е дадена на Барух Блумберг, който открива австралийския антиген в серума на пациенти, но нито разбира, че той е част от хепатит В, нито успява да го изолира за създаване на ваксина. Пейтън Роус печели Нобелова награда за откритието си, че вируси може да причиняват ракови заболявания (саркомен вирус на Роус при птици), но Хилеман не е удостоен със същото признание за ваксините, които предпазват именно от това.
Морис Хилеман е велик учен и откривател, без когото светът щеше да бъде различен. Повече хора трябва да се запознаят с неговата биография, а книгата на Пол Офит е прекрасно четиво по темата.
Хилеман създава първата си ваксина след като взема материал от гърлото на собствената си дъщеря. Изолираният и отслабен щам на паротитния вирус е наречен на нейно име - Jeryl Lynn и се прилага и до днес. През осемдесетте години Хилеман създава първата ваксина срещу хепатит В, използвайки свръхпречистени кръвни продукти, съдържащи т.нар. австралийски антиген на вируса. Ваксината се оказва технологично чудо за времето си, но не е използвана масово заради страха от кръвно заразяване с новооткрития вирус HIV. Хилеман разбира, че категоричното доказване на безопасност и ефективност не е достатъчно за постигане на повсеместно приложение. Обществото трябва да бъде успокоено и убедено със средствата на масовата комуникация, а не на академичната наука. По-късно ваксината започва да се произвежда чрез рекомбинантна биотехнология от генетично модифицирани бактерии (т.е. без участието на кръвни продукти) и масовото приложение се постига изключително бързо.
Хилеман е продуктивен учен с важни открития през целия си живот. Той първи осъзнава, че азиатският грип от 1957 г. ще се превърне в пандемия, защото хиляди анализирани серуми не съдържат антитела срещу него. Хилеман първи доказва, че ваксина може да защитава от раково заболяване. Ще ви изненадам с името на предотвратеното заболяване - болест на Марек. Не се учудвайте, ако никога не сте го чували - то засяга само птици, но потвърждава идеята, че ваксинална профилактика срещу рак е напълно възможна и приложима. Хилеман е и първият учен, който изолира вещество с противовирусен ефект - интерферон.
Хилеман не получава Нобелова награда въпреки огромният си принос за развитието на медицината. Той остава и непознат за широката публика - рядко се срещат хора дори в медицинската сфера, които са чували името му. Суетата и показността, толкова характерни за съвремието, са му напълно непознати. Нобелова награда е дадена на Барух Блумберг, който открива австралийския антиген в серума на пациенти, но нито разбира, че той е част от хепатит В, нито успява да го изолира за създаване на ваксина. Пейтън Роус печели Нобелова награда за откритието си, че вируси може да причиняват ракови заболявания (саркомен вирус на Роус при птици), но Хилеман не е удостоен със същото признание за ваксините, които предпазват именно от това.
Морис Хилеман е велик учен и откривател, без когото светът щеше да бъде различен. Повече хора трябва да се запознаят с неговата биография, а книгата на Пол Офит е прекрасно четиво по темата.
April 24, 2020
Finally a pandemic-themed book that delivers, hurray!
Vaccinated is about the history of vaccines, in particular those in the 20th century, and in even more particular by one Maurice Hilleman. You might think that's a limiting scope until you realize he's behind the measles, hep a, hep b, meningitis, mumps, ... and other vaccines. Guy's a monster. He never received any Nobel prize (or much public recognition), because Nobel prizes are for scientific discoveries, not for people who the people who apply that science.
The fastest vaccine to be developed and widely spread was Hilleman's mumps vaccine: 4 years. That was in the 1960s though. We've learned a few tricks since then.
Have you ever wondered about the egg allergy disclaimers on various vaccines? Well, let me in on and a massive simplification how vaccines are developed...
You take a virus. Say, run a swap down your daughter's throat (as the opportunistic Hilleman did when he discovered his daughter had mumps, it's hard not to imagine that he got a little excited). Then, you gotta weaken the virus.
You could weaken it by carving out small window into a chicken egg (as Hilleman did), letting it grow, then move the viruses to a new egg, repeat a couple dozen times... your hope is that the virus starts mutating to adapt to this new egg-y environment, making it more dangerous for eggs (?), but less so for humans.
The technique of exposing vaccinating by exposing yourself to a similar virus, adapted for a different animal/environement dates back to the 1700s. Then, they figured out that if you're exposed to cowpox, you become immune to smallpox. The antibodies you create for cowpox beat smallpox, but cowpox virus is much less dangerous than smallpox for humans.
Once you've passed the virus through enough animal parts, you start injecting it into gradually larger groups of humans and keep record of whether they get sick more or less than a placebo group. In some cases, the virus hadn't been weakned enough. In other cases, the right antibodies may not have developed.
Other vaccines were developed with monkey livers, mice, blood, ... I can't really find method to this madness. It almost reads like you just choose whatever you have at hand (?), or you're most familiar with (Hilleman had lots of chicken growing up, so that's what he crept to). Today, much more advanced techniques are used that the book doesn't cover.
Many vaccines have also been developed with fetus cells, which gives the anti-vaxxers some momentum (careful hunch that anti-vax + pro life might have some overlap...). And while we're on that topic, some dude started spewing bullshit in the 90s that children injected with vaccines are much, much more likely to develop autism. It couldn't be because children are diagnosed with autism around the time they're ready for vaccines, could it? Tons of studies have debunked this repeatedly since.
Just a thrilling read about the science that has saved an incredible amount of lives. Recommended!
Vaccinated is about the history of vaccines, in particular those in the 20th century, and in even more particular by one Maurice Hilleman. You might think that's a limiting scope until you realize he's behind the measles, hep a, hep b, meningitis, mumps, ... and other vaccines. Guy's a monster. He never received any Nobel prize (or much public recognition), because Nobel prizes are for scientific discoveries, not for people who the people who apply that science.
The fastest vaccine to be developed and widely spread was Hilleman's mumps vaccine: 4 years. That was in the 1960s though. We've learned a few tricks since then.
Have you ever wondered about the egg allergy disclaimers on various vaccines? Well, let me in on and a massive simplification how vaccines are developed...
You take a virus. Say, run a swap down your daughter's throat (as the opportunistic Hilleman did when he discovered his daughter had mumps, it's hard not to imagine that he got a little excited). Then, you gotta weaken the virus.
You could weaken it by carving out small window into a chicken egg (as Hilleman did), letting it grow, then move the viruses to a new egg, repeat a couple dozen times... your hope is that the virus starts mutating to adapt to this new egg-y environment, making it more dangerous for eggs (?), but less so for humans.
The technique of exposing vaccinating by exposing yourself to a similar virus, adapted for a different animal/environement dates back to the 1700s. Then, they figured out that if you're exposed to cowpox, you become immune to smallpox. The antibodies you create for cowpox beat smallpox, but cowpox virus is much less dangerous than smallpox for humans.
Once you've passed the virus through enough animal parts, you start injecting it into gradually larger groups of humans and keep record of whether they get sick more or less than a placebo group. In some cases, the virus hadn't been weakned enough. In other cases, the right antibodies may not have developed.
Other vaccines were developed with monkey livers, mice, blood, ... I can't really find method to this madness. It almost reads like you just choose whatever you have at hand (?), or you're most familiar with (Hilleman had lots of chicken growing up, so that's what he crept to). Today, much more advanced techniques are used that the book doesn't cover.
Many vaccines have also been developed with fetus cells, which gives the anti-vaxxers some momentum (careful hunch that anti-vax + pro life might have some overlap...). And while we're on that topic, some dude started spewing bullshit in the 90s that children injected with vaccines are much, much more likely to develop autism. It couldn't be because children are diagnosed with autism around the time they're ready for vaccines, could it? Tons of studies have debunked this repeatedly since.
Just a thrilling read about the science that has saved an incredible amount of lives. Recommended!
February 28, 2013
According to Maurice Hilleman, we can expect our next deadly influenza pandemic to strike us in 2025; it will be from the same strain of virus that infected millions in 1889 and 1957. Hilleman discovered that pandemics of the same strain occur every 68 years, which is effectively a life span, and just enough time for a new set of people with no exposure or immunity to reach adulthood and die (the deadliest influenza viruses predominantly kill healthy adults, not the infants and elderly who are the ones who usually die from ordinary flus.) I'll be 49.
That is only one of the fascinating facts and theories I took away from the book Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases. Author Paul Offit isn't the best writer around (he's a doctor and developer of the rotavirus vaccine) but the subject matter is so interesting that I give it 4 stars.
I am ashamed that, prior to reading this book, the name Maurice Hilleman wasn't familiar to me. We should all be grateful to this man who devoted his life to the study of diseases and development of vaccines. NINE vaccines! Diseases that used to commonly kill millions of children every year are now barely known and little feared. We in developed countries are very blessed and very complacent, but all it would take is a few years of parents not vaccinating their children (such as during a national crisis, or because of unfounded fear of autism) for us to again fall victim to measles, mumps, diptheria, rubella, etc.. "That's the problem with vaccines. When they work, absolutely nothing happens. Nothing. Parents go on with their lives, not once thinking that their child was saved from meningitis caused by Hib or from liver cancer caused by hepatitis B or from fatal pneumonia caused by pneumococcus or from paralysis caused by polio. " (pg. 178)
I really liked learning how Hilleman and other scientists literally made the vaccines. Of course I had always heard about Edward Jenner, in 1796, inventing the smallpox vaccination by sucking the pus out of someone infected with cowpox (a similar but less deadly disease than smallpox) and injecting it into a healthy person's arm. When Hilleman developed the mumps vaccine in 1963, he took a swab from his sick daughter's throat, injected it into an incubating egg, waited for the virus to grow around the embryo, then removed the virus and injected into another egg. He did that several more times, then removed one of the half-grown chick embryos, discarded its head, and chopped the body up and dissolved it with enzymes. These cells then reproduced in laboratory flasks, into which Hilleman injected the virus and watched as the virus destroyed the cells. As the mumps virus grew better at attacking chicken cells, it became less effective against human cells. When Hilleman injected the weakened virus into experimental children, they developed mumps antibodies but didn't get sick. Success! Over the years, vaccine developement has become more "scientific" and less crude (less chopping up baby chicks, more chemicals, etc.) and even more effective.
I'm still not convinced about the effectiveness of run-of-the-mill flu vaccines, though -- there are so many strains and they mutate so much and so quickly that even with scientists' best guesses, it's hit and miss at best. This book recounts a story of Hilleman indentifying a deadly influenza virus rampaging throughout Asia (I can't find it right now and don't remember the date) and being able to immediately commission 40 million units of vaccine for the United States. They reckon that millions of lives were saved, but lament that it could probably not happen today, with the overregulation of the FDA. So when that pandemic strikes in 2025, we may be out of luck.
That is only one of the fascinating facts and theories I took away from the book Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases. Author Paul Offit isn't the best writer around (he's a doctor and developer of the rotavirus vaccine) but the subject matter is so interesting that I give it 4 stars.
I am ashamed that, prior to reading this book, the name Maurice Hilleman wasn't familiar to me. We should all be grateful to this man who devoted his life to the study of diseases and development of vaccines. NINE vaccines! Diseases that used to commonly kill millions of children every year are now barely known and little feared. We in developed countries are very blessed and very complacent, but all it would take is a few years of parents not vaccinating their children (such as during a national crisis, or because of unfounded fear of autism) for us to again fall victim to measles, mumps, diptheria, rubella, etc.. "That's the problem with vaccines. When they work, absolutely nothing happens. Nothing. Parents go on with their lives, not once thinking that their child was saved from meningitis caused by Hib or from liver cancer caused by hepatitis B or from fatal pneumonia caused by pneumococcus or from paralysis caused by polio. " (pg. 178)
I really liked learning how Hilleman and other scientists literally made the vaccines. Of course I had always heard about Edward Jenner, in 1796, inventing the smallpox vaccination by sucking the pus out of someone infected with cowpox (a similar but less deadly disease than smallpox) and injecting it into a healthy person's arm. When Hilleman developed the mumps vaccine in 1963, he took a swab from his sick daughter's throat, injected it into an incubating egg, waited for the virus to grow around the embryo, then removed the virus and injected into another egg. He did that several more times, then removed one of the half-grown chick embryos, discarded its head, and chopped the body up and dissolved it with enzymes. These cells then reproduced in laboratory flasks, into which Hilleman injected the virus and watched as the virus destroyed the cells. As the mumps virus grew better at attacking chicken cells, it became less effective against human cells. When Hilleman injected the weakened virus into experimental children, they developed mumps antibodies but didn't get sick. Success! Over the years, vaccine developement has become more "scientific" and less crude (less chopping up baby chicks, more chemicals, etc.) and even more effective.
I'm still not convinced about the effectiveness of run-of-the-mill flu vaccines, though -- there are so many strains and they mutate so much and so quickly that even with scientists' best guesses, it's hit and miss at best. This book recounts a story of Hilleman indentifying a deadly influenza virus rampaging throughout Asia (I can't find it right now and don't remember the date) and being able to immediately commission 40 million units of vaccine for the United States. They reckon that millions of lives were saved, but lament that it could probably not happen today, with the overregulation of the FDA. So when that pandemic strikes in 2025, we may be out of luck.
July 28, 2014
I hardly know where to start with this book. Probably with...I teach microbiology to nurses, and I'm a rubella baby. That explains a lot in a nutshell for why I picked up this book. I certainly wanted to know more about the man who 'made' or developed a lot of the vaccines (including the MMR vaccine) which so many people now take for granted. I'm very perplexed as to why I have never heard Hilleman's name before, not in any books, not in med school. I don't care that he worked in corporate America, especially since he didn't profit off of it or gain honors from it. I understand his reasoning for going to work for Merck...they had the money to make things go fast. It sounds as if Hilleman's had an abrasive personality sometimes, which may have rubbed some people the wrong way. If it got things done who cares.
Offits gave a lot of good information about the history of vaccination. What drove the need for them, about other people who developed vaccines like Jenner and Pasteur, fights over live versus attenuated vaccines, etc. All of this was written in a very interesting book. I finished it extremely fast...and even read several relevant parts to my current microbiology classes. I guess my main complaint about the book is the 'rose-colored glasses' with which all of it was written with. As a person who survived my mom being exposed to rubella in the womb, and who is Deaf...and who also was given the rubella vaccine in the 1970's when I was 20...and who broke out in full-fledged rubella for 2 whole weeks because the doctors back then did not understand how latent viruses work, I'm kind of an expert on some of this stuff. Yes, I know all about Andrew Wakefield and his idiotic article in Lancet that the media ran with about the MMR vaccine causing autism...I've been fighting against that in my classrooms for years. But at the same time, though vaccines have been mostly good, that does not excuse the inexcusable mistakes made such as Willowbrook, and the giving of hepatitis to disabled students. As a disabled person myself, I'm not going to turn a blind eye to the mistakes American scientists made, supposedly in the pursuit of doing good. The Nazi scientists said the same things when they tested Xylon-B on the Deaf, and disabled. Many of these scientists were people who had private opinions about the 'uselessness' of the Deaf and disabled. Believe me...I went to medical school. I ran into many of these scientists, who thought I had no place in medical school. Please do not offend those of us with differences by pretending all of these men had good motives in their hearts. The author doesn't know for sure, unless he talked to all of them.
I'm not saying Hilleman wasn't a great man. He probably was. He didn't do any of the bad unethical cases we've heard about, though I cringed when I heard about him using the contaminated blood for vaccines (I'm from San Francisco Bay Area). I greatly admire what he did, and would have loved working under him. I just personally didn't like all the excuses that Offit was making for some of the men who did do some of the unethical studies.
Offits gave a lot of good information about the history of vaccination. What drove the need for them, about other people who developed vaccines like Jenner and Pasteur, fights over live versus attenuated vaccines, etc. All of this was written in a very interesting book. I finished it extremely fast...and even read several relevant parts to my current microbiology classes. I guess my main complaint about the book is the 'rose-colored glasses' with which all of it was written with. As a person who survived my mom being exposed to rubella in the womb, and who is Deaf...and who also was given the rubella vaccine in the 1970's when I was 20...and who broke out in full-fledged rubella for 2 whole weeks because the doctors back then did not understand how latent viruses work, I'm kind of an expert on some of this stuff. Yes, I know all about Andrew Wakefield and his idiotic article in Lancet that the media ran with about the MMR vaccine causing autism...I've been fighting against that in my classrooms for years. But at the same time, though vaccines have been mostly good, that does not excuse the inexcusable mistakes made such as Willowbrook, and the giving of hepatitis to disabled students. As a disabled person myself, I'm not going to turn a blind eye to the mistakes American scientists made, supposedly in the pursuit of doing good. The Nazi scientists said the same things when they tested Xylon-B on the Deaf, and disabled. Many of these scientists were people who had private opinions about the 'uselessness' of the Deaf and disabled. Believe me...I went to medical school. I ran into many of these scientists, who thought I had no place in medical school. Please do not offend those of us with differences by pretending all of these men had good motives in their hearts. The author doesn't know for sure, unless he talked to all of them.
I'm not saying Hilleman wasn't a great man. He probably was. He didn't do any of the bad unethical cases we've heard about, though I cringed when I heard about him using the contaminated blood for vaccines (I'm from San Francisco Bay Area). I greatly admire what he did, and would have loved working under him. I just personally didn't like all the excuses that Offit was making for some of the men who did do some of the unethical studies.
September 30, 2019
Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases by Paul A. Offit
“Vaccinated” tells the important yet little known story of the father of modern vaccines Maurice Hilleman. Professor of Vaccinology and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Paul A. Offit describes in wonderful detail the research behind the vaccines that transformed the world. This insightful 272-page book includes the following twelve unnumbered chapters: The Time Capsule, “My God: This Is the Pandemic. It’s Here!”, Jeryl Lynn, Eight Doors, The Destroying Angel, Coughs, Colds, Cancers, and Chickens, The Monster Maker, Political Science, Blood, Animalcules, An Uncertain Future, and an Unrecognized Genius.
Positives:
1. A well-researched, well-written book. Accessible for the masses.
2. Interesting topic, the little known story behind the man and his nine vaccines. “Hilleman talked to me about his life and work. This book—the story of the triumphs, tragedies, controversies, and uncertain future of modern vaccines—is largely his story.”
3. Offit is fair and backs his statements with facts and sound logic.
4. Effectively includes photos into the narrative.
5. Eye-opening facts throughout the book. “When it was over, the 1918 pandemic—the most devastating outbreak of an infectious disease in medical history—had killed between fifty million and one hundred million people worldwide, all within a single year. In comparison, since the 1970s the AIDS pandemic has killed twenty-five million people.”
6. Describes the life of Maurice Hilleman. “As a boy, Hilleman found solace in the pages of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, which he read and reread. “I was enthralled by Darwin because the church was so opposed to him,” he recalled. “I figured that anybody who could be so universally hated had to have something good about him.” Hilleman read everything he could find about science and the great men of science.”
7. The story behind the vaccine that originated from the back of his daughter’s throat. “Hilleman reasoned that as his daughter’s virus adapted to growing in chick cells, it would get worse at growing in human cells. In other words, he was trying to weaken his daughter’s virus. He hoped that the weakened mumps virus would then grow well enough in children to induce protective immunity, but not so well that it would cause the disease.”
8. The book addresses sensitive matter of ethics. “Retarded children living in large group homes suffered severe and occasionally fatal infectious diseases more commonly than other children. They weren’t tested because they were more expendable; they were tested because they were more vulnerable.”
9. The fascinating history and impact of deadly diseases. “In 1492, when Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean, seventy-two million Indians lived in North America; by 1800, only six hundred thousand remained. Smallpox—brought by European settlers—killed most of the rest. Indeed, smallpox has killed more people than all other infectious diseases combined.”
10. Differences between bacteria and viruses. “Martinus Beijerinck had recognized the single most important difference between bacteria and viruses. Bacteria, capable of independent growth, can multiply on the surface of furniture, in dust, in rainwater, or on the lining of the skin, nose, or throat. But viruses, incapable of independent growth, can reproduce only within the “living protoplasm of the cell.””
11. Describes techniques behind the vaccines. “Theiler’s technique of weakening human viruses by growing them in cells from other species remains the single most important method for making live weakened viral vaccines. His method has been used to make vaccines against measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, and polio. In 1951, “for his discoveries concerning yellow fever and how to contain it,” Max Theiler won the Nobel Prize in medicine.”
12. The impact of individual vaccines described. “Measles vaccines save more than seven million lives a year.”
13. The challenges of cold viruses. “Colds account for half of all acute medical conditions. But despite tremendous technological advances in isolating, identifying, sequencing, and cloning cold viruses, as well as advances in understanding how the immune system responds to these viruses, scientists and researchers have done nothing to prevent the common cold.”
14. The destructive force of rubella. “Although rubella virus was the first infection found to cause birth defects, it wasn’t the last. Bacteria such as Treponema pallidum, which causes syphilis; parasites such as Toxoplasma; and other viruses such as the chickenpox virus all cause birth defects. But no organism is more common, more thorough, or more consistent in its destruction of unborn children than rubella virus.”
15. Science. “The great thing about science is that authority doesn’t hold sway. Eventually scientific studies will be the deciding factor and outweigh prevailing opinion. Science is always self-correcting. Today’s heresy becomes tomorrow’s orthodoxy.””
16. When science meets religion. The ethics behind the use of fetal cells. “Seeing what I saw about the damage that rubella virus could do to infants,” he said, “I consider the use of [fetal] cells as 100 percent moral. Frankly, I think that our rubella vaccine has prevented more abortions than all the antiabortionists put together.”” “ALTHOUGH THE USE OF FETAL CELLS TO MAKE VACCINES REMAINS CONTROVERSIAL for some, the vaccines made from them are safe. Fetal cells allowed Hilleman and others to avoid contaminating viruses like chicken leukemia virus and SV40.”
17. Cancer, cancer, cancer. “Victims of chronic hepatitis B are at high risk for two possible fates: dying of cirrhosis, a progressive destruction of the liver, or dying of liver cancer. Hepatitis B virus is the third most common known cause of cancer in the world. The sun, which causes skin cancer, is the first; cigarette smoking, which causes lung cancer, is the second.” ““Hilleman’s heroic role in controlling the hepatitis B virus scourge ranks as one of the most outstanding contributions to human health of the twentieth century or any century,” recalls Thomas Starzl, a pioneer of liver transplantation.”
18. Disasters that impact the pharmaceutical industry. “The thalidomide disaster caused a reevaluation of the U. S. Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, passed in 1938. Congress amended it in 1962 to compel pharmaceutical companies to show that their products actually worked before selling them.”
19. The doctor behind the anti-vaccination movement and its damage. “WHEN SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE CONVINCINGLY REFUTED WAKEFIELD’S notion that MMR caused autism, antivaccine activists in the United States didn’t stop. They shifted their vaccines-cause-harm hypothesis to thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative contained in some vaccines. Thimerosal, they said, was causing autism. Again, Hilleman found himself in the middle of the fray.”
20. Bibliography provided.
Negatives:
1. Lacks charts and diagrams that would have complemented the excellent narrative. As an example, a chart depicting the deadliest diseases and their impact.
2. Notes included but not linked.
3. Some missed opportunities to tackle some additional topics.
In summary, I really enjoyed this book. Offit does a wonderful job of describing the history of Hilleman and his quest to develop vaccines. He keeps the hard-to-follow medical jargon to a minimum while successfully describing the wonderful biography of Maurice Hilleman. A worthwhile read for laypersons with a curious nature, I recommend it!
Further recommendations: “Deadly Choices”, “Do You Believe in Magic”, “Bad Faith” and “Bad Advice” by the same author, “Spillover” by David Quammen, “The Panic Virus” by Seth Mnookin, “The Story of the Human Body” by Daniel Lieberman, “The War on Science” by Shawn Lawrence Otto, and “The Great Influenza” by John M. Barry.
“Vaccinated” tells the important yet little known story of the father of modern vaccines Maurice Hilleman. Professor of Vaccinology and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Paul A. Offit describes in wonderful detail the research behind the vaccines that transformed the world. This insightful 272-page book includes the following twelve unnumbered chapters: The Time Capsule, “My God: This Is the Pandemic. It’s Here!”, Jeryl Lynn, Eight Doors, The Destroying Angel, Coughs, Colds, Cancers, and Chickens, The Monster Maker, Political Science, Blood, Animalcules, An Uncertain Future, and an Unrecognized Genius.
Positives:
1. A well-researched, well-written book. Accessible for the masses.
2. Interesting topic, the little known story behind the man and his nine vaccines. “Hilleman talked to me about his life and work. This book—the story of the triumphs, tragedies, controversies, and uncertain future of modern vaccines—is largely his story.”
3. Offit is fair and backs his statements with facts and sound logic.
4. Effectively includes photos into the narrative.
5. Eye-opening facts throughout the book. “When it was over, the 1918 pandemic—the most devastating outbreak of an infectious disease in medical history—had killed between fifty million and one hundred million people worldwide, all within a single year. In comparison, since the 1970s the AIDS pandemic has killed twenty-five million people.”
6. Describes the life of Maurice Hilleman. “As a boy, Hilleman found solace in the pages of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, which he read and reread. “I was enthralled by Darwin because the church was so opposed to him,” he recalled. “I figured that anybody who could be so universally hated had to have something good about him.” Hilleman read everything he could find about science and the great men of science.”
7. The story behind the vaccine that originated from the back of his daughter’s throat. “Hilleman reasoned that as his daughter’s virus adapted to growing in chick cells, it would get worse at growing in human cells. In other words, he was trying to weaken his daughter’s virus. He hoped that the weakened mumps virus would then grow well enough in children to induce protective immunity, but not so well that it would cause the disease.”
8. The book addresses sensitive matter of ethics. “Retarded children living in large group homes suffered severe and occasionally fatal infectious diseases more commonly than other children. They weren’t tested because they were more expendable; they were tested because they were more vulnerable.”
9. The fascinating history and impact of deadly diseases. “In 1492, when Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean, seventy-two million Indians lived in North America; by 1800, only six hundred thousand remained. Smallpox—brought by European settlers—killed most of the rest. Indeed, smallpox has killed more people than all other infectious diseases combined.”
10. Differences between bacteria and viruses. “Martinus Beijerinck had recognized the single most important difference between bacteria and viruses. Bacteria, capable of independent growth, can multiply on the surface of furniture, in dust, in rainwater, or on the lining of the skin, nose, or throat. But viruses, incapable of independent growth, can reproduce only within the “living protoplasm of the cell.””
11. Describes techniques behind the vaccines. “Theiler’s technique of weakening human viruses by growing them in cells from other species remains the single most important method for making live weakened viral vaccines. His method has been used to make vaccines against measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, and polio. In 1951, “for his discoveries concerning yellow fever and how to contain it,” Max Theiler won the Nobel Prize in medicine.”
12. The impact of individual vaccines described. “Measles vaccines save more than seven million lives a year.”
13. The challenges of cold viruses. “Colds account for half of all acute medical conditions. But despite tremendous technological advances in isolating, identifying, sequencing, and cloning cold viruses, as well as advances in understanding how the immune system responds to these viruses, scientists and researchers have done nothing to prevent the common cold.”
14. The destructive force of rubella. “Although rubella virus was the first infection found to cause birth defects, it wasn’t the last. Bacteria such as Treponema pallidum, which causes syphilis; parasites such as Toxoplasma; and other viruses such as the chickenpox virus all cause birth defects. But no organism is more common, more thorough, or more consistent in its destruction of unborn children than rubella virus.”
15. Science. “The great thing about science is that authority doesn’t hold sway. Eventually scientific studies will be the deciding factor and outweigh prevailing opinion. Science is always self-correcting. Today’s heresy becomes tomorrow’s orthodoxy.””
16. When science meets religion. The ethics behind the use of fetal cells. “Seeing what I saw about the damage that rubella virus could do to infants,” he said, “I consider the use of [fetal] cells as 100 percent moral. Frankly, I think that our rubella vaccine has prevented more abortions than all the antiabortionists put together.”” “ALTHOUGH THE USE OF FETAL CELLS TO MAKE VACCINES REMAINS CONTROVERSIAL for some, the vaccines made from them are safe. Fetal cells allowed Hilleman and others to avoid contaminating viruses like chicken leukemia virus and SV40.”
17. Cancer, cancer, cancer. “Victims of chronic hepatitis B are at high risk for two possible fates: dying of cirrhosis, a progressive destruction of the liver, or dying of liver cancer. Hepatitis B virus is the third most common known cause of cancer in the world. The sun, which causes skin cancer, is the first; cigarette smoking, which causes lung cancer, is the second.” ““Hilleman’s heroic role in controlling the hepatitis B virus scourge ranks as one of the most outstanding contributions to human health of the twentieth century or any century,” recalls Thomas Starzl, a pioneer of liver transplantation.”
18. Disasters that impact the pharmaceutical industry. “The thalidomide disaster caused a reevaluation of the U. S. Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, passed in 1938. Congress amended it in 1962 to compel pharmaceutical companies to show that their products actually worked before selling them.”
19. The doctor behind the anti-vaccination movement and its damage. “WHEN SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE CONVINCINGLY REFUTED WAKEFIELD’S notion that MMR caused autism, antivaccine activists in the United States didn’t stop. They shifted their vaccines-cause-harm hypothesis to thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative contained in some vaccines. Thimerosal, they said, was causing autism. Again, Hilleman found himself in the middle of the fray.”
20. Bibliography provided.
Negatives:
1. Lacks charts and diagrams that would have complemented the excellent narrative. As an example, a chart depicting the deadliest diseases and their impact.
2. Notes included but not linked.
3. Some missed opportunities to tackle some additional topics.
In summary, I really enjoyed this book. Offit does a wonderful job of describing the history of Hilleman and his quest to develop vaccines. He keeps the hard-to-follow medical jargon to a minimum while successfully describing the wonderful biography of Maurice Hilleman. A worthwhile read for laypersons with a curious nature, I recommend it!
Further recommendations: “Deadly Choices”, “Do You Believe in Magic”, “Bad Faith” and “Bad Advice” by the same author, “Spillover” by David Quammen, “The Panic Virus” by Seth Mnookin, “The Story of the Human Body” by Daniel Lieberman, “The War on Science” by Shawn Lawrence Otto, and “The Great Influenza” by John M. Barry.
April 19, 2021
This was a fascinating book to read any time, but as the world has waited and watched for the coronavirus vaccines, it was particularly relevant. The book focuses on Maurice Hilleman, MD who was the father of nine vaccines that nearly every child gets, including the measles, mumps, and rubella.. He spent much of his career working for the pharmaceutical company Merck, which may be why we don’t all recognize his name. His creative approach to capturing viruses, attenuating them, and finding methods turn them into safe and effective vaccines was a compelling read!
July 27, 2022
I read a lot about disease, microbiology, and vaccines and this was one of the best books for laymen I've read on these topics, and it's still full of lots of new information for me given my other reading. Paul Offit is a very reliable source and here he writes openly about both vaccines and some of the vaccine controversies of the recent era.
October 19, 2020
Great book about a great person ❤️❤️
February 3, 2023
Maurice Hilleman was a major player in the race to create vaccines for many deadly diseases from the mumps to hepatitis but is largely unknown to the public. It may have been good for him because vaccines and their promotors like Bill Gates are vilified by activists. A so called expert Andrew Wakefield with a personal injury lawyer Robert Barr made the accusation that vaccines caused autism. The man was toted as a heroic advocate against the drug companies but no one ever investigated his false claims. All he accomplished was to bring back diseases vaccination were eliminating. Celebrities like Cindy Crawford got behind this liar: proving that people care more about what they say than scientists. Maurice Hilleman as described by Offit was a hard working researcher that saved many lives without fanfare.
November 22, 2023
Non-Fiction>Science & Medicine History
I listened to this audio. It is well produced and was pretty easy to follow. This is an interesting title because it's a history of vaccines, but it's also a biography of Maurice Hilleman. Hilleman's life work really equates to the series of vaccines he produced. After completing his education, he decided to joint he private sector and it seems that he stayed out of the limelight in order to not draw attention to the private industry origins of his work. Not that it was a secret, just that it worked out better to have it NOT in everyone's face. Private is a dirty word when you're trying to do good works for the public, right?
In reading this, you'll learn more about the common vaccines we use and the diseases that they prevent. This is not a pound-his-fist and just demand you 'trust science' book---he explains the work, the concepts, the failings, and the ultimately positive outcomes for involved with these vaccines. This will help you understand what they do, how they were developed, the difference between growing vaccines in other animals vs in human blood, why stem cells became a part of this equations, what vaccines have to do with the abortion debate, what happens when regions stop using them--all explained here.
I've read other titles by Offit, and I find his style to be very informative but still accessible even if you don't see yourself picking up a 'science' book you'll be able to follow him.
I listened to this audio. It is well produced and was pretty easy to follow. This is an interesting title because it's a history of vaccines, but it's also a biography of Maurice Hilleman. Hilleman's life work really equates to the series of vaccines he produced. After completing his education, he decided to joint he private sector and it seems that he stayed out of the limelight in order to not draw attention to the private industry origins of his work. Not that it was a secret, just that it worked out better to have it NOT in everyone's face. Private is a dirty word when you're trying to do good works for the public, right?
In reading this, you'll learn more about the common vaccines we use and the diseases that they prevent. This is not a pound-his-fist and just demand you 'trust science' book---he explains the work, the concepts, the failings, and the ultimately positive outcomes for involved with these vaccines. This will help you understand what they do, how they were developed, the difference between growing vaccines in other animals vs in human blood, why stem cells became a part of this equations, what vaccines have to do with the abortion debate, what happens when regions stop using them--all explained here.
I've read other titles by Offit, and I find his style to be very informative but still accessible even if you don't see yourself picking up a 'science' book you'll be able to follow him.
March 26, 2025
Thank you Maurice Hilleman. You+other pioneers in vaccines saved so many lives, but as a first year immunology PhD student, your name didn’t come up once in courses. Necessary to know how we got to this point to determine where we go from here. In the age of genetic vaccines, they are safer and more effective than ever but politically charged and controversial. Fascinating how science has changed and how trust in scientists has waned. Despite the knowledge and benefits we gain from many of the trials (Jenner inoculating 8 yo Phipps, Hilleman circumventing regulations, Pasteur’s rabbies vaccine) there are obvious considerations to the fact that they could never be repeated today.
April 27, 2025
Despite the title, this is a biography, specifically of Maurice Hilleman, who ran vaccine research at Merck for many decades. Of the 14 vaccines which, when Offit published this in 2007, were commonly given to young children, Hilleman had a hand in developing 9. Those nine were, by Offit's count, "estimated to save about eight million lives a year," which seems plausible given the burden of the diseases involved (measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B, and on and on).
By this count, Hilleman rates highly on any list of scientists whose discoveries have saved a vast number of lives, up there with Haber and Bosch (for all their flaws), or Norman Borlaug. I, to be frank, partly read this because I like the idea of naming a kid after someone admirable and was wondering if "Maurice" fit the bill.
He certainly saved a lot of lives, but he was also, per this very sympathetic telling written by one of his close protégés, a real son of a bitch. “The most apt description of me," Hilleman tells him at one point, "was by Roy Vagelos, who said that on the outside I appeared to be a bastard but that if you looked deeper, inside, you still saw a bastard.”
His "tirades were legendary," Offit writes. He kept a collection of shrunken heads, which his daughter altered to look like people he fired, so he could look upon the large gallery of incompetents he had disposed of. He always worked weekends, and demanded his staff work weekends too, or he'd berate them for not taking their work seriously. "Now Merck tells [employees] that they don’t need to put in any extra time and that you have to balance your life," he says to Offitt. "And that you have to have enjoyment with your job; [that way] you can do a better job and have fun. It’s all just a pile of shit. What the company should be doing is kicking ass." His kids speak very fondly of him despite this suggesting he was rarely if ever home, and insist he made time for them anyway. I don't quite understand, arithmetically, how that's possible, but I am glad they loved him.
Was it all worth it? Hilleman certainly got a great deal done in that time in the office. The most memorable story is his creation of the mumps vaccine, which happened specifically because his daughter Jeryl Lynn got the disease. He did what any father would do in that situation:
Biomedical research in the 1960s seemed to consist overwhelmingly of doing horrific things to chicks, mice, and/or monkeys. I guess they died for a great cause — the Jeryl Lynn strain is still the main mumps vaccine that we all received as children in our MMR shots — and the chick here was young enough that I think the pro-choice side of my brain beats the animal rights side, but Jesus Christ.
Later in the book, we hear about his hepatitis B research, which required importing a very specific kind of monkey that would be less chockfull of the standard monkey viruses than the run-of-the-monkey-mill monkeys that most labs used. On advice from a friend, he decided he would "go to West Africa and pick up African green [monkeys], so-called grivets. There are a lot of them there. Bring them into the Madrid airport. No primates other than human beings come to Madrid. Then put them on a big transport airplane, transport them to New York, off-load them there, and you’ve got it made."
"No primates other than human beings come to Madrid" is a tourism slogan Spain should consider.
The most serious animal enemies of Hilleman, though, must be the chicks. Tucked into the book is a casual revelation that he played an important role in curing a specific chicken ailment, an ailment that had ironically been preventing the factory farming of chickens for meat:
Does helping cure nine disease outweigh the immense suffering caused by forcing broiler chickens to be bred so large that they can't walk and spend their lives in constant pain? These are the questions we need philosophers to be pondering. This is the bioethics I crave.
How important was Hilleman, personally, to those vaccines? Offit is strangely skeptical in one offhand sentence: "Most likely all of his vaccines would have been developed eventually by others, with two exceptions: the blood-derived hepatitis B vaccine and the mumps vaccine." Those are two important contributions, to be sure. But not the most important. A recent modeling paper from the WHO concludes from 1974 to 2024, vaccines saved 154 million lives and enabled over 10.2 billion additional years of healthy life. Using the latter figure, which feels more meaningful, the majority (5.8 billion) of years come from measles vaccination, followed by tetanus (1.3 billion) and whooping cough (about 1 billion). About 59 million years came from hep B vaccination; mumps was not a significant enough cause to list.
I do not mean this to come off too harshly. I have not, by any stretch of the imagination, been personally responsible for providing 59 million extra years of healthy life to people around the world. That's extraordinary, and Hilleman played an important, if not counterfactually pivotal, role in the 5.8 billion lives saved by measles vaccines too. It's an impressive record. My bigger takeaway, though, is less that Hilleman was a one-of-a-kind giant and more that the whole field of vaccinology was really cooking from the 1950s through 1970s, and many participants from Hilleman to his frenemy Albert Sabin to the team of John Enders, Thomas Weller, and Frederick Robbins all played important roles.
That in turn makes me wonder whether Hilleman really needed to be such an asshole to so many people. Maybe everyone else doing good work was an asshole too — but I doubt it.
By this count, Hilleman rates highly on any list of scientists whose discoveries have saved a vast number of lives, up there with Haber and Bosch (for all their flaws), or Norman Borlaug. I, to be frank, partly read this because I like the idea of naming a kid after someone admirable and was wondering if "Maurice" fit the bill.
He certainly saved a lot of lives, but he was also, per this very sympathetic telling written by one of his close protégés, a real son of a bitch. “The most apt description of me," Hilleman tells him at one point, "was by Roy Vagelos, who said that on the outside I appeared to be a bastard but that if you looked deeper, inside, you still saw a bastard.”
His "tirades were legendary," Offit writes. He kept a collection of shrunken heads, which his daughter altered to look like people he fired, so he could look upon the large gallery of incompetents he had disposed of. He always worked weekends, and demanded his staff work weekends too, or he'd berate them for not taking their work seriously. "Now Merck tells [employees] that they don’t need to put in any extra time and that you have to balance your life," he says to Offitt. "And that you have to have enjoyment with your job; [that way] you can do a better job and have fun. It’s all just a pile of shit. What the company should be doing is kicking ass." His kids speak very fondly of him despite this suggesting he was rarely if ever home, and insist he made time for them anyway. I don't quite understand, arithmetically, how that's possible, but I am glad they loved him.
Was it all worth it? Hilleman certainly got a great deal done in that time in the office. The most memorable story is his creation of the mumps vaccine, which happened specifically because his daughter Jeryl Lynn got the disease. He did what any father would do in that situation:
He walked down the hallway, knocked on the housekeeper’s door, and told her that he would be gone for a while. Then he went back to his bedroom, picked up his daughter, and put her back to bed. “I’ll be back in about an hour,” he said. “Where are you going, Daddy?” asked Jeryl. “To work, but I won’t be long.” Hilleman got into his car and drove fifteen miles to Merck. He rummaged around his laboratory, opening and closing drawers, until he found cotton swabs and a vial of straw-colored nutrient broth. By the time he got home, Jeryl had fallen back to sleep. So he gently touched her shoulder, woke her up, stroked the back of her throat with the cotton swab, and inserted it into the vial of broth. Then he comforted her, drove back to work, put the nutrient broth in a laboratory freezer, and drove home.
…When he got back to his laboratory, he took the broth containing Jeryl’s virus and inoculated it into an incubating hen’s egg; in the center of the egg was an unborn chick. During the next few days the virus grew in the membrane that surrounded the chick embryo. Hilleman then removed the virus and inoculated it into another egg. After passing the virus through several different eggs, Hilleman tried something else. He took an egg that had been incubating for twelve days and removed the gelatinous, dark brown chick embryo. Typically it takes about three weeks for an egg to hatch, so the embryo was still very small, weighing about the same as a teaspoon of salt. Hilleman cut off the head of the unborn chick, minced the body with scissors, treated the fragments with a powerful enzyme, watched the chick embryo dissolve into a slurry of individual cells, and placed the cells into a laboratory flask. … Chick cells soon reproduced to cover the bottom of the flask. Hilleman passed Jeryl Lynn’s mumps virus from one flask of chick cells to the next and watched as the virus got better and better at destroying the cells. He repeated this procedure five times.
Biomedical research in the 1960s seemed to consist overwhelmingly of doing horrific things to chicks, mice, and/or monkeys. I guess they died for a great cause — the Jeryl Lynn strain is still the main mumps vaccine that we all received as children in our MMR shots — and the chick here was young enough that I think the pro-choice side of my brain beats the animal rights side, but Jesus Christ.
Later in the book, we hear about his hepatitis B research, which required importing a very specific kind of monkey that would be less chockfull of the standard monkey viruses than the run-of-the-monkey-mill monkeys that most labs used. On advice from a friend, he decided he would "go to West Africa and pick up African green [monkeys], so-called grivets. There are a lot of them there. Bring them into the Madrid airport. No primates other than human beings come to Madrid. Then put them on a big transport airplane, transport them to New York, off-load them there, and you’ve got it made."
"No primates other than human beings come to Madrid" is a tourism slogan Spain should consider.
The most serious animal enemies of Hilleman, though, must be the chicks. Tucked into the book is a casual revelation that he played an important role in curing a specific chicken ailment, an ailment that had ironically been preventing the factory farming of chickens for meat:
Chicken farmers are in the business of converting carbohydrate (grain) into protein (meat). “There are two kinds of chicken breeders in this world,” recalled Hilleman. “There are those who breed chickens to get maximum egg production, and those who breed for maximum meat production. They all, with the exception of one company, would breed for resistance to Marek’s disease.” The one company was Hubbard Farms of Walpole, New Hampshire.
In 1921 Oliver Hubbard, one of the first students to graduate from the University of New Hampshire with a degree in poultry farming, founded Hubbard Farms. By the early 1930s, Hubbard had developed the New Hampshire chicken, a breed unrivaled for egg and meat production. But there was one problem. The New Hampshire chicken was more susceptible to Marek’s disease than any other breed. “Hubbard Farm chickens were by far the most productive means of converting carbohydrate to protein than any other chicken in the world,” remembered Hilleman. “But if you got Marek’s into the flock, you were done.” Hilleman saw an opportunity for Merck. “Merck was out for an acquisition, and it was obvious what to do. We’ll buy Hubbard! [We’ll combine] these efficient carbohydrate-to-protein chickens with the vaccine that compensated for their genetic susceptibility to Marek’s disease.”
In 1974, Merck bought Hubbard Farms for $70 million. Hilleman’s vaccine, the first to prevent cancer in any species, revolutionized the poultry business. Excess production caused the price of chickens to drop from $2 per broiler to forty cents and of eggs from fifty cents per dozen to five cents. Soon everyone could afford chickens, and for a while, Merck, one of the more conservative pharmaceutical companies in the United States, was the biggest chicken and egg producer in the world.
Does helping cure nine disease outweigh the immense suffering caused by forcing broiler chickens to be bred so large that they can't walk and spend their lives in constant pain? These are the questions we need philosophers to be pondering. This is the bioethics I crave.
How important was Hilleman, personally, to those vaccines? Offit is strangely skeptical in one offhand sentence: "Most likely all of his vaccines would have been developed eventually by others, with two exceptions: the blood-derived hepatitis B vaccine and the mumps vaccine." Those are two important contributions, to be sure. But not the most important. A recent modeling paper from the WHO concludes from 1974 to 2024, vaccines saved 154 million lives and enabled over 10.2 billion additional years of healthy life. Using the latter figure, which feels more meaningful, the majority (5.8 billion) of years come from measles vaccination, followed by tetanus (1.3 billion) and whooping cough (about 1 billion). About 59 million years came from hep B vaccination; mumps was not a significant enough cause to list.
I do not mean this to come off too harshly. I have not, by any stretch of the imagination, been personally responsible for providing 59 million extra years of healthy life to people around the world. That's extraordinary, and Hilleman played an important, if not counterfactually pivotal, role in the 5.8 billion lives saved by measles vaccines too. It's an impressive record. My bigger takeaway, though, is less that Hilleman was a one-of-a-kind giant and more that the whole field of vaccinology was really cooking from the 1950s through 1970s, and many participants from Hilleman to his frenemy Albert Sabin to the team of John Enders, Thomas Weller, and Frederick Robbins all played important roles.
That in turn makes me wonder whether Hilleman really needed to be such an asshole to so many people. Maybe everyone else doing good work was an asshole too — but I doubt it.
July 16, 2025
4.5/5 - This was exceptionally well written and edited (the actual content is a little over 200 pages). The author perfectly balanced making this topic well researched but easy to understand and follow as a average reader. I really enjoyed the focus on Maurice Hilleman, someone I was completely ignorant of before now, and his contributions to public health. I did find the organization of the book to be a bit strange and hard to follow at times. A general timeline of vaccine discoveries/events would have helped, especially given the narrative nature of the writing. I also disliked that the forward had been updated since the original publishing, but it didn't really tie the themes of the book together for a current lens. I wish an afterward/additional chapter taking a better look at the content of the book from a post COVID-19 perspective had been included instead.
November 2, 2018
Certainly an unique book.
Offit writing style is quite plain, but he makes up for that giving plenty of good information in a very sensible way.
He manages to go into the science deep enough for readers to understand what's actually going on, but he avoids jargon-ridden explanations which would be somewhat confusing.
So I would say he managed to write a very balanced book.
Vaccinated is the story of Maurice Hilleman, who developed not one but nine! of the most important vaccines.
We are told shortly about his personal life, and mainly about his career. Very often his work is related to other people's discoveries and investigation, so we are told about those too. As a result this book feels very complete.
The only thing I actually disliked is that the author tries to present some facts is a very sugar-coated way.
So they used to test vaccines on disabled children. That would be unethical today but back then it was common practice. Offit tries to convice us that scientist actually meant to do the best for those children, that they cared specially about them. Most likely they tested on however was avaliable, and they did not think them in either a good or bad way, they did not consider these children disposable neither tried to save them - they simply did what was usually done in those cases.
It's easy to judge practices from the past (it's harder when it's right in front of your nose) and I think that it's unfair, but trying to prove them right by today's standards is futile. Excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta.
Offit writing style is quite plain, but he makes up for that giving plenty of good information in a very sensible way.
He manages to go into the science deep enough for readers to understand what's actually going on, but he avoids jargon-ridden explanations which would be somewhat confusing.
So I would say he managed to write a very balanced book.
Vaccinated is the story of Maurice Hilleman, who developed not one but nine! of the most important vaccines.
We are told shortly about his personal life, and mainly about his career. Very often his work is related to other people's discoveries and investigation, so we are told about those too. As a result this book feels very complete.
The only thing I actually disliked is that the author tries to present some facts is a very sugar-coated way.
So they used to test vaccines on disabled children. That would be unethical today but back then it was common practice. Offit tries to convice us that scientist actually meant to do the best for those children, that they cared specially about them. Most likely they tested on however was avaliable, and they did not think them in either a good or bad way, they did not consider these children disposable neither tried to save them - they simply did what was usually done in those cases.
It's easy to judge practices from the past (it's harder when it's right in front of your nose) and I think that it's unfair, but trying to prove them right by today's standards is futile. Excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta.
August 27, 2013
A good, solid book and at 200 pages a modest commitment. Maurice Hilleman's story is told swiftly and includes lots of interesting details. Hilleman comes across as a very modest man and this may explain the book's brevity. (The author met with Hilleman several months before his death from cancer.)
The author, the creator of the Rotavirus vaccine, does a very good job explaining the history of vaccines and the challenges in developing vaccines. In the end, the author's reverence of Hilleman seems completely justified.
I probably would have rated this book a bit higher if I hadn't just read The Panic Virus by Seth Mnookin. It's unfair to compare the books because they're largely different but The Panic Virus was so good this book was slightly diminished to me. The ideal solution is to read this book first if you have any interest in the history and development of vaccines.
The author, the creator of the Rotavirus vaccine, does a very good job explaining the history of vaccines and the challenges in developing vaccines. In the end, the author's reverence of Hilleman seems completely justified.
I probably would have rated this book a bit higher if I hadn't just read The Panic Virus by Seth Mnookin. It's unfair to compare the books because they're largely different but The Panic Virus was so good this book was slightly diminished to me. The ideal solution is to read this book first if you have any interest in the history and development of vaccines.
November 28, 2009
An interesting look at Maurice Hilleman, who developed most of the vaccines that are in use today. We are definitely blessed to live in a day where we can prevent disease by vaccination. However, it concerns me that we rely so completely on them rather than continuing to develop more antibiotics (and looking for safer methods of prevention).
I was bothered by the "guinea pig" style testing of vaccines on those persons institutionalized, homeless, or poverty-stricken. The author is a doctor and is completely in favor of all things medical, but there is also a dark side to all this vaccination stuff that he just doesn't acknowledge--or acknowledges but completely discounts.
I thought the writing in this book was a bit stilted and choppy, but I enjoyed the medical history it covered.
I was bothered by the "guinea pig" style testing of vaccines on those persons institutionalized, homeless, or poverty-stricken. The author is a doctor and is completely in favor of all things medical, but there is also a dark side to all this vaccination stuff that he just doesn't acknowledge--or acknowledges but completely discounts.
I thought the writing in this book was a bit stilted and choppy, but I enjoyed the medical history it covered.
March 31, 2008
this author is paid by the pharmasuetical companies. He profits a lot from vaccines. they pad his pocket.
March 1, 2024
*2.75
While the subject of the book is very interesting, I'm not so sure about the way it talks about marginalized people. Trying to justify the treatment of disabled children as guinea pigs because the author has rose-tinted glasses on does not sit well with me.
(vaccines are an incredible tool and I'm glad they were invented, by the way)
While the subject of the book is very interesting, I'm not so sure about the way it talks about marginalized people. Trying to justify the treatment of disabled children as guinea pigs because the author has rose-tinted glasses on does not sit well with me.
(vaccines are an incredible tool and I'm glad they were invented, by the way)
June 22, 2015
This was amazing. It's the history of vaccines, most of them created by one man: Maurice Hilleman. I minored in microbiology in college and had never heard of this man. I don't know why he's not revered more than he is. He's the reason we have the measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B, HiB, and pnuemococcus vaccines, plus 3 others I can't remember right now. He was a genius.
I got more and more infuriated at the ignorance of people who refuse to vaccinate their children as the book went on.
Vaccines save lives. Period.
"That's the problem with vaccines. When they work, absolutely nothing happens. Nothing. Parents go on with their lives, not once thinking that their child was saved from meningitis caused by Hib or from liver cancer caused by Hepatitis B or from fatal pneumonia caused by pneumococcus or from paralysis caused by polio. We live in a state of blissful denial. But somebody was getting those diseases. Before pharmaceutical companies made the Hib vaccine in the early 1990s, every year about ten thousand children were stricken with meningitis, leaving many blind, deaf, and retarded. Today, fewer than fifty children every year suffer this disease. But who are those thousands of children who aren't getting Hib today? What are their names? We don't know. And that's what makes vaccines - or any prevention - much less compelling than treatment. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on bone marrow transplants and lung transplants and kidney transplants and heart transplants. These therapies are extraordinarily expensive, and they certainly don't save money for the health care system or society. But when we know a person is sick, we'll stop at nothing to help. Unfortunately, we seem perfectly willing to withhold life-saving vaccines when we don't know who is going to be sick. We're willing to take that gamble - a gamble that many children will inevitably lose."
I'd recommend this to anyone.
I got more and more infuriated at the ignorance of people who refuse to vaccinate their children as the book went on.
Vaccines save lives. Period.
"That's the problem with vaccines. When they work, absolutely nothing happens. Nothing. Parents go on with their lives, not once thinking that their child was saved from meningitis caused by Hib or from liver cancer caused by Hepatitis B or from fatal pneumonia caused by pneumococcus or from paralysis caused by polio. We live in a state of blissful denial. But somebody was getting those diseases. Before pharmaceutical companies made the Hib vaccine in the early 1990s, every year about ten thousand children were stricken with meningitis, leaving many blind, deaf, and retarded. Today, fewer than fifty children every year suffer this disease. But who are those thousands of children who aren't getting Hib today? What are their names? We don't know. And that's what makes vaccines - or any prevention - much less compelling than treatment. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on bone marrow transplants and lung transplants and kidney transplants and heart transplants. These therapies are extraordinarily expensive, and they certainly don't save money for the health care system or society. But when we know a person is sick, we'll stop at nothing to help. Unfortunately, we seem perfectly willing to withhold life-saving vaccines when we don't know who is going to be sick. We're willing to take that gamble - a gamble that many children will inevitably lose."
I'd recommend this to anyone.
November 4, 2018
This book is an excellent, quick account of the history of development of most major vaccinations, mainly in the twentieth century. The development of vaccines has saved literally millions of people around the globe. It's also the story of the man responsible for most of this amazing success, Maurice Hilleman. The most startling thing to me is that Hilleman is such an obscure figure when he should be venerated with the likes of Pasteur, Salk, and Sabin in the annuls of world medicine. Author Paul Offit tries to right this wrong with the writing of this book. It's a good read and Offit is a no-nonsense writer. 4.5 stars in my estimation.
Paul Offit himself is a man to be venerated in world medicine. He has unflinchingly stood up to the 'vaccine scare' of the past decade, meticulously pointing out the true science, the extreme value of vaccines, and helping to expose the scare mongers. And he's taken plenty of unwarranted heat for his service to mankind. So thank you Dr. Offit and I encourage readers to enjoy any of his several books on this and other medical subjects.
Paul Offit himself is a man to be venerated in world medicine. He has unflinchingly stood up to the 'vaccine scare' of the past decade, meticulously pointing out the true science, the extreme value of vaccines, and helping to expose the scare mongers. And he's taken plenty of unwarranted heat for his service to mankind. So thank you Dr. Offit and I encourage readers to enjoy any of his several books on this and other medical subjects.
June 29, 2009
This book does an excellent job of personalizing the history of vaccinations. Offit clearly admires his main subject, Hilleman, but is willing to show his flaws. The book captured my attention as it mixed history and science and helped me to better understand disease, genetics, biology, and chemistry in an interesting way. I was amazed as I read about the horrible diseases that caused blindness, deafness, mental retardation, birth defects, and death not long ago, but are now virtually non-existent in the US due to vaccinations. Offit also addresses some of the criticisms of vaccinations in a clear, understandable way. I finished this book feeling so grateful for the work of these men and women.
June 30, 2009
I would have given this 4.5 stars if I could.
This book chronicles the accomplishments of Dr. Maurice Hilleman, the man who was integral to the development of many vaccines, but who none of us know about. It was fascinating. I learned an incredible amount about the science behind the creation of vaccines, and feel much more informed about the process and scientific principles behind it. This is partly because the author doesn't just focus on Hilleman, but also included vignettes describing the work of other scientists that later informed Hilleman's accomplishments.
The one negative point - from my perspective - is that the author clearly idolizes Dr. Hilleman, and this comes across in the writing. It can be distracting at times, but overall, I thought it was an excellent read.
This book chronicles the accomplishments of Dr. Maurice Hilleman, the man who was integral to the development of many vaccines, but who none of us know about. It was fascinating. I learned an incredible amount about the science behind the creation of vaccines, and feel much more informed about the process and scientific principles behind it. This is partly because the author doesn't just focus on Hilleman, but also included vignettes describing the work of other scientists that later informed Hilleman's accomplishments.
The one negative point - from my perspective - is that the author clearly idolizes Dr. Hilleman, and this comes across in the writing. It can be distracting at times, but overall, I thought it was an excellent read.
April 24, 2011
This is a good book with a few flaws that keep me from rating it 5 stars.
I felt the author oftentimes excused things that were simply atrocious that used to happen when testing vaccines. Testing vaccines on mentally challenged children isn't kosher no matter how he tried to spin it. He would've been better off not trying to excuse it in my opinion.
I also felt that this book jumped around a lot from different points in time as well as different discoveries and people. I found myself lost if I had to stop anywhere other than between chapters. The formatting of the book could have been a lot better.
Otherwise, this book was very informative while remaining interesting and not too technical. Overall I'd recommend it for anyone interested in vaccines.
I felt the author oftentimes excused things that were simply atrocious that used to happen when testing vaccines. Testing vaccines on mentally challenged children isn't kosher no matter how he tried to spin it. He would've been better off not trying to excuse it in my opinion.
I also felt that this book jumped around a lot from different points in time as well as different discoveries and people. I found myself lost if I had to stop anywhere other than between chapters. The formatting of the book could have been a lot better.
Otherwise, this book was very informative while remaining interesting and not too technical. Overall I'd recommend it for anyone interested in vaccines.
October 24, 2014
Maurice Hilleman developed many of the vaccines in use today, though his name is unknown to just about everybody. Offit's biography is a lovely tribute to the man who has saved so many lives with his work.
The science parts of the book are well-written and accessible--the painstaking methods used to develop vaccines are fascinating and it's hard to believe how sophisticated the work was without computers and other technology that now makes quick work of tasks that used to take weeks.
Offit brings the book up to the present day with Andrew Wakefield and the anti-vaxxers--Hilleman developed the MMR triple vaccine. Heartbreaking.
The science parts of the book are well-written and accessible--the painstaking methods used to develop vaccines are fascinating and it's hard to believe how sophisticated the work was without computers and other technology that now makes quick work of tasks that used to take weeks.
Offit brings the book up to the present day with Andrew Wakefield and the anti-vaxxers--Hilleman developed the MMR triple vaccine. Heartbreaking.
November 2, 2018
This book feels like the biography the Maurice Hilleman presented here would have wanted: one that focused more on his accomplishments and less on himself. Not just the story of Hilleman and his 9 world-changing vaccines, it also discusses the history of the search for a cure for disease, concurrent discoveries that relied on or made his possible, and the effect of the fraudulent report connecting vaccines and autism.
The author does a great job of both explaining the importance of vaccinations and the hows and whys of their production in plain, comprehensible English. Required reading for those on the fence about vaccinating their children.
The author does a great job of both explaining the importance of vaccinations and the hows and whys of their production in plain, comprehensible English. Required reading for those on the fence about vaccinating their children.
September 19, 2018
4.5 stars. This was a fascinating account of vaccines and how they came to be. I loved learning about those involved in the science and especially about Hilleman who was a front runner and leader in so many vaccines for diseases. I have great appreciation for his work although I, much like many, had never heard his name.
June 22, 2013
Excellent book. Worth reading!
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