Synopsis:
A history of the origins and controversies in the debate over vaccine safety.

Review:
The Panic Virus is well-researched and provocative, and lays out a convincing case that the furor over vaccines was fueled by fear, charlatanism, ignorance, and bad science. However, I don’t think it will convince anyone who is totally opposed to vaccines. But for me, as someone who was persuaded by many of the anti-vaccine arguments even as I believed in the public health good of vaccines, I came away feeling confident in my decision to vaccinate and fearful of the return of vaccine preventable diseases.

Being a parent is hard and I often question whether I am making the right decisions. I am angered at the so-called experts and fraudulent doctors who exploited that natural uncertainty for their own benefit at the expense of children who have either died from diseases, or who have autism that medicine still does not understand because doctors and researchers have been sidetracked by the vaccine debate.