Book Review: Vaccines: History, Science, and Issues

Abstract

Vaccines and vaccination in the United States have become topics of dispute in some circles in the last two decades, since Andrew Wakefield published a high-profile and now thoroughly discredited study in Lancet linking vaccines to autism disorder. Tish Davidson’s book, Vaccines: History, Science, and Issues, takes a look at the history of vaccines and vaccinations, their mechanism of action, potential side effects, and development and use. She also documents the anti-vaccine (anti-vaxxer) movement, which began in the eighteenth century and has found renewed adherents in the present day. Davidson’s research is scientific, meticulous, and dispassionate in its coverage of both vaccine proponents and detractors.