Kinch’s tale picks up speed and interest in the second half of the 19th century ... Kinch has done these early scientists a great service by recounting their contributions. There are some fascinating episodes about the discovery and use of bacteriophages ... It is vital that there is widespread public understanding of the importance of vaccination and above all of the need for high compliance rates. Kinch has practical suggestions as to how this might be done ... This is an important book, but one marred by the author’s tendency to pad the narrative with historical anecdotes of often marginal relevance.
We live in a world of risk and risk assessment. The trouble is that if you or your child happens to experience a one-in-a-million event, a remote possibility becomes a certainty. That’s good when it’s the lottery, bad when it’s a disease. Many people also increasingly distrust the 'experts' who are judging risk, especially when it comes to a child’s well-being ... Michael Kinch has spent his career studying vaccines, but he has sympathy for these parents. In Between Hope and Fear: A History of Vaccines and Human Immunity, he acknowledges the risk—real, if slight—that any vaccination might produce unwanted consequences, and he writes of several disastrous episodes ... This is a fine book, marred only by a few factual slips.
The benefits of vaccines are colossal, and claims that they can cause autism are absolutely false. Roughly two centuries after the introduction of a vaccine for smallpox, that horrific contagion has been eradicated ... Immunologist Kinch reviews the history of various infectious diseases, how vaccines work and their efficacy, relevant biomedical research, and the personalities who played pivotal roles in this field. Adversaries of vaccination have their reasons (religious beliefs, vulnerability to propaganda), but science is not on their side. Vaccines don’t trigger autism, while pathogenic microbes and ignorance can wreak havoc and result in countless unnecessary deaths.
Kinch, director of the Center for Research Innovation in Biotechnology at Washington University in St. Louis, studiously chronicles some of the worst disease outbreaks in human history and the development of the vaccines that stanched the tide of suffering. He traces the trail of smallpox from its early days as the 'Antonine Plague' in ancient Rome, through the arrival of the Spanish in the New World, to the eventual development of the smallpox vaccine by Edward Jenner in 1796 ... Kinch’s main purpose, however, is to warn against the dangers of the antivaccine movement, 'fringe elements in the public' who believe in discredited links between various vaccines and autism. Kinch’s argument in favor of reason and science over fear and charlatanism is cogent and well-researched, presenting a large-scale chronological narrative of disease and prevention.
Next to clean water, vaccines are the greatest lifesaver in modern society, so readers of this admirable account will thrill to stories of the conquest of historical plagues (smallpox, diphtheria, polio) and research into preventing today’s deadly infections (AIDS, tuberculosis, dengue, Ebola) ... A useful book that effectively conveys the challenges posed by infectious disease and relates a story of unparalleled successes in vaccines that have raised both the quality and quantity of life for all people.
