Vaccinated

"It’s a wonderful book because it gives both a history of vaccines as well as a biography of a man who most people probably have never heard of – Maurice Hilleman. Although he was not an easy man to work for, there are few people in the history of humanity who have saved more lives than Maurice Hilleman. This book tells his story well. “There are few people in the history of humanity who have saved more lives than Maurice Hilleman” There are tens of millions of people alive and healthy today because vaccines exist. The success of vaccines in addressing a whole range of health problems is amazing. Take polio. There’s a generation that has grown up without fearing polio, but it wasn’t long ago that everyone knew someone who lived in an iron lung, every kid knew you couldn’t swim for fear of catching it, and everyone knew that FDR was in a wheelchair because of it. When I went to medical school there was still an iron lung on the hospital ward. Polio used to disable 1,000 kids a day in the world when CDC, along with our global partners, began a campaign to vaccinate against it and now we’re at the brink of eradication. There are huge challenges that are remaining but I’m confident we’re going to get over the finish line and when polio is eradicated it will be a gift to every child born on the face of the earth for the future of humanity. Vaccines are, in a way, victims of their own success. People were terrified of polio and measles before – now they’re so rare that some parents may mistakenly believe that the vaccine is riskier than the risk of disease. That’s not the case. The more the public understands about vaccines and diseases, the better off we all are. So I think one of the things that the anti-vaccination movement has done is push us to be even more open and transparent. We have nothing to hide. “People were terrified of polio and measles before – now they’re so rare that some parents may mistakenly believe that the vaccine is riskier than the risk of disease” Some people takes the perspective that if my kid has only a one-in-a-million chance of getting a bad reaction from a vaccine but every other kid is vaccinated, my kid doesn’t need to be vaccinated. There are people in the movement who sincerely believe in the danger of vaccines, but there are many parents who may subconsciously make an assumption that I can protect my kid as long as everyone else is protecting their kid. What that brings us back to is the need to understand that we do all live together, we are all connected by the air we breathe, by the water we drink, by the food we eat and the health of any one of us can affect the health of other people. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Tuberculosis spread in the slums of New York City for many years and no one cared. Because no one cared much about what was happening in the slums, TB developed drug resistance and spread widely throughout New York City, infecting healthcare workers, prison guards and many others. If we had cared about those inner-city communities that were suffering from TB earlier on, it would never have become a huge, city-wide problem. Public health is about the connections within communities and strengthening those connections so that we can empower communities and empower individuals to live the lives they want to live."