Book Review: Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All

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Book Review: Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All By

A. Offit

Review by Seppa

Vaccines, once the darlings of medical science, lost their reputation for safety

in the 1980s and 1990s. After a flurry of disturbing " news-you-can-use "

segments, some parents refused to get their kids immunized. For vaccines, the

journey back to credibility has been slow.

Physician Offit provides a road map for that voyage. In a meticulously

researched tour de force, Offit exposes the lack of science underlying the

claims of the anti-vaccine movement. Some fears were legitimate — polio and

rotavirus vaccines, he notes, posed real risks for certain people. Both were

replaced by safer vaccines.

But over the past 25 years, vaccines have been accused of causing multiple

sclerosis, diabetes, learning disabilities and attention disorders. Under attack

were shots for whooping cough, meningitis, measles and hepatitis B — all of

which were later found to be safe.

The cause célèbre was a 1998 scare in which a British physician claimed to link

autism in 12 children with the measles vaccine. Several subsequent studies

proved this claim false. But by then four unvaccinated children had died of

measles and many more had gotten sick. " We've reached a tipping point, " Offit

writes. " Children are suffering and dying because their parents are more

frightened by vaccines than by the diseases they prevent. "

In 2009 and 2010, U.S. courts ruled against claims linking autism with vaccines.

Still, many vaccine opponents aren't persuaded, and they have talk show access

and Hollywood friends. To level the playing field, every doctor's office should

have a copy of Offit's book, giving parents the other side of the story.

Basic Books, 2010, 288 p., $27.50.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/67723/title/Book_Review_Deadly_Choice\

s_How_the_Anti-Vaccine_Movement_Threatens_Us_All_by__A._Offit