{"id":306,"date":"2008-11-07T21:44:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-07T21:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading2\/?p=306"},"modified":"2008-11-07T21:44:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-07T21:44:00","slug":"vaccine-by-arthur-allen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/2008\/11\/vaccine-by-arthur-allen.html","title":{"rendered":"Vaccine by Arthur Allen"},"content":{"rendered":"


Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver<\/a> is a dense book. I was interested in the recent controversies over the possible link between vaccines and autism and the recommendation for HPV vaccination in girls as young as twelve. Unfortunately, the book only lightly touches on the latter. <\/p>\n

I learned more than I meant to about the history of vaccines, their successes and failures. I hadn’t realized there were so many missteps or that the history of vaccine went so far back. Many people, regarding the HPV vaccine, have made the point that it’s too new and we don’t yet know what the end result will be. After reading this book, I think it’s a very valid point. Vaccines can be contaminated, can give the patient the disease they were intended to prevent, and can have unforeseen side effects or long term effects. Although modern medicine has learned a lot from past incidents, it seems wise to not be in the first wave of people being vaccinated.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the link between autism and vaccine just isn’t there. Most strikingly, there are different camps of the anti-vaccine crusade making completely different, and sometimes contradictory, accusations. Those who were betting on mercury are being disproven as mercury got eliminated in the US back in 2000 (and hasn’t been present in England for quite some time) without reducing autism levels. Of course there are other theories.<\/p>\n

The book is generally written to a lay person’s level of understanding but occasionally takes a more technical turn. It was heavy at times but worth reading. One of the most important points the book makes, over and over, is that vaccination is more for the good of the community, which accrues a significantly lower risk, than for the good of the individual, who incurs a slightly higher risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver is a dense book. I was interested in the recent controversies over the possible link between vaccines and autism and the recommendation for HPV vaccination in girls as young as twelve. Unfortunately, the book only lightly touches on the latter. I learned more than I meant to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}