Vaccine Reading List: What to Read to Learn More!
July 23, 2022
After many months of scouring the internet (and my local library) for the best books on vaccines out there, I have finally compiled a list of my ten favorites. This collection of books offers reading for all ages, levels, and interests. There are riveting stories about the race to make the first vaccine, there are conspiracy theory rebuttals, there are scientific analyses - you’re bound to find a new book to add to your shelf! All synopses featured below have been taken directly from the book’s online review, and all books are linked below.
1. Bad Advice: Or Why Celebrities, Politicians, and Activists Aren’t Your Best Source of Health Information — Paul A. Offit, M.D.
"Science doesn’t speak for itself. Neck-deep in work that can be messy and confounding and naïve in the ways of public communication, scientists are often unable to package their insights into the neat narratives that the public requires. Enter celebrities, advocates, lobbyists, and the funders behind them, who take advantage of scientists’ reluctance to provide easy answers, flooding the media with misleading or incorrect claims about health risks. Amid this onslaught of spurious information, Americans are more confused than ever about what’s good for them and what isn’t.
In Bad Advice, Paul A. Offit shares hard-earned wisdom on the dos and don’ts of battling misinformation. For the past twenty years, Offit has been on the front lines in the fight for sound science and public health. Stepping into the media spotlight as few scientists have done―such as being one of the first to speak out against conspiracy theories linking vaccines to autism―he found himself in the crosshairs of powerful groups intent on promoting pseudoscience. Bad Advice discusses science and its adversaries: not just the manias stoked by slick charlatans and their miracle cures but also corrosive, dangerous ideologies such as Holocaust and climate-change denial. Written with wit and passion, Offit’s often humorous guide to taking on quack experts and self-appointed activists is a must-read for any American disturbed by the uptick in politicized attacks on science."
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2. Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All — Paul A. Offit, M.D.
"In 2014, California suffered the largest and deadliest outbreak of pertussis, also known as "whooping cough," in more than fifty years. This tragedy was avoidable. An effective vaccine has been available since the 1940s. In recent years other diseases, like measles and mumps, have also made a comeback. The reason for these epidemics can be traced to a group whose vocal proponents insist, despite evidence to the contrary, that vaccines are poison. As a consequence, parents and caretakers are rejecting vaccines for themselves and their families.
In Deadly Choices, infectious-disease expert Paul Offit takes a look behind the curtain of the anti-vaccine movement. What he finds is a reminder of the power of scientific knowledge, and the harm we risk if we ignore it."
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3. Baby Medical School: Vaccines: Learn about the Science of Immunity and How Vaccines Keep Us Healthy! — Cara Florance
"Inside your body, you have a lot of little helpers that work together to keep you healthy. Vaccines are super helpers that make your immune system even stronger! But how? And with what? This baby biology book, written by experts Cara and Jon Florance, uses whimsical artwork and humorous text to create a love for science the next generation of geniuses will carry for a lifetime!
Baby Medical School: Vaccines is a wonderful doctor or nurse gift and makes a fantastic addition to other special gifts for your little one, such as science toys for toddlers, biology gifts, and doctor kits for toddlers. Gift the opportunity for your little one to learn with this doctor book for kids and help educate them about how vaccines work!"
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4. Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases — Paul A. Offit, M.D.
"Maurice Hilleman discovered nine vaccines that practically every child gets, rendering formerly dread diseases—including often devastating ones such as mumps and rubella—practically forgotten. Paul A. Offit, a vaccine researcher himself, befriended Hilleman and, during the great man’s last months, interviewed him extensively about his life and career.
Offit makes an eloquent and compelling case for Hilleman’s importance, arguing that, like Jonas Salk, his name should be known to everyone. But Vaccinated is also enriched and enlivened by a look at vaccines in the context of modern medical science and history, ranging across the globe and throughout time to take in a fascinating cast of hundreds, providing a vital contribution to the continuing debate over the value of vaccines."
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5. The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science and Fear — Seth Mnookin
"In 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist with a history of self-promotion, published a paper with a shocking allegation: the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine might cause autism. The media seized hold of the story and, in the process, helped to launch one of the most devastating health scares ever. In the years to come Wakefield would be revealed as a profiteer in league with class-action lawyers, and he would eventually lose his medical license. Meanwhile one study after another failed to find any link between childhood vaccines and autism.
Yet the myth that vaccines somehow cause developmental disorders lives on. Despite the lack of corroborating evidence, it has been popularized by media personalities such as Oprah Winfrey and Jenny McCarthy and legitimized by journalists who claim that they are just being fair to “both sides” of an issue about which there is little debate. Meanwhile millions of dollars have been diverted from potential breakthroughs in autism research, families have spent their savings on ineffective “miracle cures,” and declining vaccination rates have led to outbreaks of deadly illnesses like HIV, measles, and whooping cough. Most tragic of all is the increasing number of children dying from vaccine-preventable diseases.
In The Panic Virus, Seth Mnookin draws on interviews with parents, public-health advocates, scientists, and anti-vaccine activists to tackle a fundamental question: How do we decide what the truth is? The fascinating answer helps explain everything from the persistence of conspiracy theories about 9/11 to the appeal of talk-show hosts who demand that President Obama “prove” he was born in America."
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6. Complete Idiot’s Guide to Vaccinations — Michael J. Smith M.D. M.S.C.E and Laurie Bouck
"Vaccines usually bring relief, since society no longer has to worry about scourges of the past. But there’s been concern that these lifesavers can harm some. Which vaccines are necessary for the common good, and when should they be given? Here is all the information readers need to know about every vaccine, including: how vaccines work; which are required and recommended; which have been challenged; risks of not vaccinating; vaccines for travelers, injuries, and special populations, including seniors."
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7. Infectious: Pathogens and How We Fight Them — Dr. John S. Tregoning
"Nature wants you dead.
Not just you, but your children and everyone you have ever met and everyone they have ever met; in fact, everyone. It wants you to cough and sneeze and poop yourself into an early grave. It wants your blood vessels to burst and pustules to explode all over your body. And – until recently – it was really good at doing this…
The subject of infection and how to fight it grows more urgent every day. How do pathogens cause disease? And what tools can we give our bodies to do battle? Infectious is not only a vital overview of what goes awry in our bodies, but also a hopeful story of ongoing human ingenuity."
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8. The Vaccine: Inside the Race to Conquer the COVID-19 Pandemic — Joe Miller, Özlem Türeci, and Ugur Sahin
"Nobody thought it was possible. In mid-January 2020, Ugur Sahin told Özlem Türeci, his wife and decades-long research partner, that a vaccine against what would soon be known as COVID-19 could be developed and safely injected into the arms of millions before the end of the year. His confidence was built upon almost thirty years of research. While working to revolutionize the way that cancerous tumors are treated, the couple had explored a volatile and overlooked molecule called messenger RNA; they believed it could be harnessed to redirect the immune system's forces against any number of diseases. As the founders of BioNTech, they faced widespread skepticism from the scientific community at first; but by the time Sars-Cov-2 was discovered in Wuhan, China, BioNTech was prepared to deploy cutting edge technology and create the world’s first clinically approved inoculation for the coronavirus.
The Vaccine draws back the curtain on one of the most important medical breakthroughs of our age; it will reveal how Doctors Sahin and Türeci were able to develop twenty vaccine candidates within weeks, convince Big Pharma to support their ambitious project, navigate political interference from the Trump administration and the European Union, and provide more than three billion doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to countries around the world in record time.
Written by Joe Miller―the Financial Times’ Frankfurt correspondent who covered BioNTech’s COVID-19 project in real time―with contributions from Sahin and Türeci, as well as interviews with more than sixty scientists, politicians, public health officials, and BioNTech staff, the book covers key events throughout the extraordinary year, as well as exploring the scientific, economic, and personal background of each medical innovation. Crafted to be both completely accessible to the average reader and filled with details that will fascinate seasoned microbiologists, The Vaccine explains the science behind the breakthrough, at a time when public confidence in vaccine safety and efficacy is crucial to bringing an end to this pandemic."
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9. The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics, and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease — Meredith Wadman
"Until the late 1960s, tens of thousands of American children suffered crippling birth defects if their mothers had been exposed to rubella, popularly known as German measles, while pregnant; there was no vaccine and little understanding of how the disease devastated fetuses. In June 1962, a young biologist in Philadelphia, using tissue extracted from an aborted fetus from Sweden, produced safe, clean cells that allowed the creation of vaccines against rubella and other common childhood diseases. Two years later, in the midst of a devastating German measles epidemic, his colleague developed the vaccine that would one day wipe out homegrown rubella. The rubella vaccine and others made with those fetal cells have protected more than 150 million people in the United States, the vast majority of them preschoolers. The new cells and the method of making them also led to vaccines that have protected billions of people around the world from polio, rabies, chicken pox, measles, hepatitis A, shingles and adenovirus.
Meredith Wadman’s masterful account recovers not only the science of this urgent race, but also the political roadblocks that nearly stopped the scientists. She describes the terrible dilemmas of pregnant women exposed to German measles and recounts testing on infants, prisoners, orphans, and the intellectually disabled, which was common in the era. These events take place at the dawn of the battle over using human fetal tissue in research, during the arrival of big commerce in campus labs, and as huge changes take place in the laws and practices governing who “owns” research cells and the profits made from biological inventions. It is also the story of yet one more unrecognized woman whose cells have been used to save countless lives.
With another frightening virus--measles--on the rise today, no medical story could have more human drama, impact, or urgency than The Vaccine Race."
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10. Do Vaccines Cause That?!: A Guide for Evaluating Vaccine Safety Concerns
"Do Vaccines Cause Autism, Asthma, Diabetes? Get straight, science-based answers to this and other questions about the safety of vaccines. In this book you will find the facts--no advocating hype or anti-vaccine propaganda. You will discover how to: *Balance the risks and benefits of immunizations for your child. Recognize red flags that should raise alarms about vaccine- related information you read in the media. Determine whether or not a vaccine is the cause of an adverse event or disease. Find up-to-date, complete, and scientifically valid information about vaccines so you can make informed decisions about immunizations. "A detailed look at all the controversies swirling around vaccines. It should be required reading for parents who have vaccine concerns." Ari Brown, MD, FAAP, Pediatrician and author of Baby 411"
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