Chaos Theory Reviews

Some topics of discussion can really get parents riled up - cloth vs. disposable diapers, circumcise or not, breast vs. bottle, cry it out vs. co-sleeping, on and on and on. And another topic that can get heated is that of vaccinations. Do you vaccinate on schedule according to doctors, do you refuse them altogether, or do you pick and choose? I don’t want to debate that, thanks. At least not today. (My answer though? I followed most of the major vaccinations, took a couple of “optional” ones, and refused flu and chicken pox. There you go.)

My reason for bringing it up though is that, thanks to the Parent Blogger’s Network I was given the chance to read and review a free copy of Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases by Paul Offit, MD. He writes about a man whose name isn’t known to many people but we’re all familiar with his work - his name is Maurice Hilleman and he developed vaccines to combat mumps, measles, rubella, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chicken pox, pneumoccoccus, meningococcus, and Hib. Out of all those, I have had my children treated for all but, as I said, the chicken pox (and Breanna still needs her booster for MMR).

Had Hilleman not done this for us, my children could be at risk for dying or being severely disabled because of these diseases that we can now fight.

He was an interesting man who wanted to do as much good as he could for the medical community but tried to avoid too much limelight for his deeds. He downplayed his accomplishments and spoke as though anyone could have come to the same conclusions he did when he learned to use chicken eggs to force a human virus to mutate into something more tolerable to people.

The book is somewhat heavy reading but Offit does an excellent job of writing to the masses in layman terms that people without a medical degree can understand. If you’ve ever wondered how vaccinations work and how they were developed, you might find it really interesting too. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that he used people in his own lab as his first human testers, and really, it says a lot about him that they would be willing to allow him to inject a live strain of a dreaded disease into their bodies - clearly he gained a lot of trust based on his work.

If you’ve wondered about the proposed link between autism and vaccinations, particular the MMR vaccine, there are some reviews of various studies included in the book. Be forewarned though, obviously this book is on the pro side of the vaccination debate so know that going in. If nothing else though, it will give you a glimpse into the opposing side of the argument.

As for myself, the book neither confirms nor reverses my own choices when it comes to vaccinating. I made those choices and stand by them but I definitely have a greater appreciation for them now that I know more about the man who made them available.

(Note - I’m working on a separate review blog so that soon these entries will be over there. Woo)

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Book Reviews, Parent Bloggers Network. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.