Some terms and techniques brought my mind back to graduate school. Alas, these also made me recall some of the unscrupulous practices that occur in laboratories when competing for grants and pharmaceutical contracts. Thus, I know that the mention of how anti-vaccine parents of autistic children must be paying off researchers for results supporting their claim can probably be countered with similar instances from the "opposite side."

Hilleman is definitely described as an important scientific figure, and his challenges are seen as coming from a "good guy" versus "bad guy" type struggle, particularly amongst today's skeptics. I agree that he was a brilliant man and he didn't get the credit he deserved for his contributions, but I don't think things are so black and white. Of course, the subject of a biography should always be the hero! And that he was unsung was even better.

Some of you may wonder, so... what did they say about the alleged autism connection? After all, the Wrights of Autism Speaks and The National Autism Association are having a public feud over this issue, and the Vaccine Court is having testimony this week.

Not surprisingly, Vaccinated refuted that there is any connection: be it from the triple vaccine MMR or from the mercury preservative thimerosal. But interestingly, right after discussing that with the elimination of thimerosal in most vaccines incidents of autism didn't drop, Dr. Offitt talks about how the number of vaccines given has increased dramatically.

Without taking up a huge debate over the issue, I'll say that neither side has me convinced. There are holes in studies on both sides. In college and grad school I was the "Confound Queen" because I would always point out the loopholes in particular studies.

I do think that for sensitive kids, the sheer number of vaccines may be problematic. This isn't that the vaccine "causes" autism, but rather that too much too soon combined with other factors may serve as an environmental trigger (more likely a catalyst for other environmental triggers) to show the various symptoms that are now classified as being on the autistic spectrum.

But the main thrust of this book is not about autism or the vaccine controversy, and it shouldn't be. There is a great deal of amazing science and history well before what is going on today. Many of us today don't remember what life was like before vaccines.

My mother recalls when her best friend came down with polio. They had to gesture to each other from several backyards away since they couldn't play together anymore. Parents used to fear many of the diseases that are now part of the routine immunization schedule. There are some items about abortions and other sensitive topics in here; but with vaccines, those decisions need not be made for the same reasons.

I understand the concept of "herd immunity" and recognize that without vaccines, the world would be a sicker, scarier place. The book reads, "When [vaccines] work, absolutely nothing happens. Parents go on with their lives not once thinking that their child was saved from meningitis caused by Hib or from liver cancer caused by hepatitis B or from fatal pneumonia caused by pneumoccocus or from paralysis caused by polio."

However, I wonder at what point it becomes more harmful than good to add vaccines to the schedule. Can't we overheat if we pile on down coats when going out into the snow? I certainly wouldn't want to go without any immunizations, but I wonder if there is a way to stagger geographically and temporally the various vaccines to avoid overloading our immune systems in an attempt to be "preventative" - or whether new diseases will just keep coming (Natural Selection! Siss-Boom-Bah!) regardless of our efforts.

"Today's heresy becomes tomorrow's orthodoxy"
- Stanley Plotkin, quoted on pg 88, Vaccinated.

Indeed, what we believe later will be different than what we know now. But regardless of what that might be, Maurice Hilleman was a pioneer. And Vaccinated is worth a read: thought-provoking, entertaining, and educational.

Pick up a Copy!