Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs

by Mark Olshaker

So successful was the effort to curtail or eradicate the range of childhood diseases that the public started taking their absence for granted. This, among other things, has given rise to an antivaccine movement, whose members are wary of vaccines, particularly childhood vaccines, believing that they may cause autism, or even the diseases they are supposed to prevent. There is no scientific evidence to support these charges, but that doesn’t stop a good many sophisticated, educated people from backing away from vaccines that were once considered miraculous. Ironically, this resistance recalls the dawn of vaccines, when smallpox vaccinators were harassed and attacked by suspicious opponents. But they, at least, had the excuse of lack of established knowledge.