Ron Peters's Reviews > Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver

Vaccines have always been controversial. Starting with the earliest Western experiments against smallpox in the 18th century, the story of vaccination has been muddied by politics, personal beliefs, and profits.

Using arguments remarkably like those still used today, anti-vaxxers were there from the get-go, opposing the 18th-century efforts of Cotton Mather and Edward Jenner. Initially, smallpox vaccination (variolation) was opposed mainly by physicians, since the advice arose from such clearly untrustworthy sources as milkmaids, old women, and slaves employing African folk practices.

The early years were extremely rough since governments took their sweet time getting around to regulating the quality of vaccine production and administration. A golden age followed World War II, with the vaccination of millions of soldiers, a general increase in the public repute of medicine, and the development of many effective vaccines.

While the greatness of these advances is beyond doubt, it was also a period of growing personal, economic, and political opportunity, characterized by professional jealousies, harms caused by pig-headed certitude, unethical experimental treatments administered without consent, political hay-making and rapid about-faces, and injuries caused by pharmaceutical companies cutting corners and worse.

As the mandated vaccination schedules for infants and children grew steadily, so did anti-vaccination sentiments, including death threats against vaccination researchers. Allen reviews the controversies over polio vaccines, pertussis vaccines, rotavirus, the rise of autism, and the availability of vaccines in the developing world. The stories are interesting, eye-opening, and will give anyone living through the COVID-19 pandemic a strong sense of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.