Online Book Display: Immunization Awareness

Mass vaccination campaigns are political projects that presume to protect individuals, communities, and societies. Like other pervasive expressions of state power - taxing, policing, conscripting - mass vaccination arouses anxiety in some people but sentiments of civic duty and shared solidarity in others. This collection of essays gives a comparative overview of vaccination at different times, in widely different places and under different types of political regime.

Arthur Allen reveals a history of vaccination that is both illuminated with hope and shrouded by controversy - covering Jenner's discovery to Pasteur's vaccines for rabies and cholera, to those that safeguarded the children of the 20th century.

Few were ready when a mysterious respiratory illness emerged in Wuhan, China in January 2020. Politicians, government officials, business leaders, and public-health professionals were unprepared for the most devastating pandemic in a century. Many of the world's biggest drug and vaccine makers were slow to react or couldn't muster an effective response. Zuckerman takes us inside the top-secret laboratories, corporate clashes, and high-stakes government negotiations that led to effective shots.

The Vaccine Debate provides a straightforward introduction to the interaction between vaccines and the immune system. The book documents the rise of the anti-vaccination movement, provides reasons for its prominence today, and explains the effects of vaccine refusal on public health. It also addresses concerns about the role of government in regulating vaccine production and administration, along with questions about vaccine safety. Additionally, a majority of the book examines in detail seven major vaccine controversies and mainstream medical positions on them.

A few months before the virus slammed the world, global public health experts declared the United States the most prepared for a possible pandemic. Instead, we watched as the disease killed half a million Americans. A stunned nation has been too busy grieving and doing damage control to ask why, or to comprehend just how much of the blundering and chaos of the pandemic response was either deliberate or entirely predictable.

We need to open our eyes and ears so that we can all have a better conversation about vaccine skepticism and its implications. Bernice Hausman argues that the heated debate about vaccinations and whether to get them or not is most often fueled by accusations and vilifications rather than careful attention to the real concerns of many Americans. She wants to set the record straight about vaccine skepticism and show how the issues and ideas that motivate it--like suspicion of pharmaceutical companies or the belief that some illness is necessary to good health--are commonplace in our society.

This handy visual aid guides clinicians in discussions with patients and parents about the importance of vaccines, the diseases they help prevent and the various vaccines recommended. The chart includes infographics and clinical images to help illustrate why vaccines remain important in preventing diseases. Vaccines covered include influenza, varicella (chickenpox), human papillomavirus infection, polio, meningitis, and much more. The chart also includes information for health care professionals about the origin and nature of the diseases and current recommendations for vaccine schedules.

Covering all aspects of vaccine research and development in one volume, this authoritative resource takes a comprehensive and systematic approach to the science of vaccinology focusing not only on basic science, but also on the many stages required to commercialize and navigate the regulatory requirements for human application, both in the United States and Europe. Reviews in detail the process of designing a vaccine, from the initial stages of antigen discovery to human application. Includes evaluation of vaccine efficacy and safety. Details clinical trial design, including regulatory requirements. Discusses the emerging field of active cellular immunotherapy.

A rich, multi-faceted examination into the attitudes and beliefs of parents who choose not to immunize their children. The measles outbreak at Disneyland in December 2014 spread to a half-dozen U.S. states and sickened 147 people. It is just one recent incident that the medical community blames on the nation's falling vaccination rates. Still, many parents continue to claim that the risks that vaccines pose to their children are far greater than their benefits. Given the research and the unanimity of opinion within the medical community, many ask how such parents—who are most likely to be white, college educated, and with a family income over $75,000—could hold such beliefs.

The last five years saw a significant return of epidemic infectious disease, culminating in COVID-19. In our new post-COVID-19 world, how do we prevent future illnesses by expanding scientific and vaccine diplomacy and cooperation, especially to combat the problems that humans have brought on ourselves? Modern diseases and viruses have been spurred anew by war and conflict as well as shifting poverty, urbanization, climate change, and a new troubling anti-science/anti-vaccination outlook. From such twenty-first-century forces, we have seen declines in previous global health gains. Preventing the Next Pandemic argues that we can--and must--rely on vaccine diplomacy to address this new world order in disease and global health.