Booster Shots
The Urgent Lessons of Measles and the Uncertain Future of Children's Health
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
A pediatrician and infectious disease specialist warns of the resurgence of measles, the antivaccine movement, and how we can prepare for the next pandemic
Every single child diagnosed with measles represents a system failure—an inexcusable unforced error. The technology to prevent essentially 100 percent of measles cases has been in our hands since before the moon landing. But this serious airborne disease, once seemingly defeated, is resurgent around the globe. Why, at a time when biomedical science is so advanced, do parents turn away from vaccination, endangering their own children and the health of the wider population?
Using a combination of patient narrative, historical analysis, and scientific research, Dr. Adam Ratner, pediatrician and infectious disease specialist, argues that the reawakening of measles and the subsequent coronavirus pandemic are bellwethers of forgotten knowledge—indicators of decaying trust in science and an underfunded public health infrastructure. Our collective amnesia is starkly revealed in the growth of the antivaccine movement and the missteps in our responses to the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, leading to preventable tragedies in both cases.
Trust in medicine and public health is at a nadir. Declining vaccine confidence threatens a global reemergence of other vaccine-preventable diseases in the coming years. Ratner details how solving these problems requires the use of literal and figurative “booster shots” to gather new knowledge and retain the crucial lessons of the past. Learning—and remembering—these lessons is our best hope for preparing for the next pandemic. With attention and care and the tools we already have, we can make the world much safer for children tomorrow than it is today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Measles is a biological agent that preys on human inequity," according to this penetrating debut analysis. Ratner, a professor of pediatrics at NYU, contends that the virus's history illustrates how social factors determine who gets sick. For example, he describes how in the late 19th century, poor children in England died from measles at significantly higher rates than their wealthier peers because malnutrition and cramped tenements increased their vulnerability. Protection from viruses depends on much more than vaccine efficacy, Ratner argues, discussing how the rollout of the first measles vaccines in the early 1960s was hampered by the lack of a centralized distribution plan, confusion over which of the two options was better for which patients, and inadequate messaging from health experts on the vaccines' benefits. Elsewhere, Ratner covers how a recall of a 1992 measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine in England and a fraudulent 1998 scientific article positing a link between MMR vaccines and autism spurred an anti-vaccine movement that contributed to measles outbreaks in California and New York in the 2010s. Ratner provides fascinating scientific insight into measles, explaining how the virus induces a kind of immunological amnesia by targeting immune cells responsible for remembering how to counteract previously encountered viruses, and he makes a strong case that health depends on much more than biology. This will open readers' eyes.
