Immunization
How Vaccines became Controversial
Distributed for Reaktion Books
288 pages
|
6 x 9
- Contents
- Review Quotes
Table of Contents

Contents
1. What do Vaccines do?
2. Technologies: The First Vaccines
3. Technologies: Viral Challenges
4. Technologies: The Commodification of Vaccines
5. Policies: Hesitant Beginnings
6. Policies: Vaccination and the Cold War
7. Policies: Vaccination in a Globalizing World
8. The Roots of Doubt
References
Additional Reading
Acknowledgements
Index
2. Technologies: The First Vaccines
3. Technologies: Viral Challenges
4. Technologies: The Commodification of Vaccines
5. Policies: Hesitant Beginnings
6. Policies: Vaccination and the Cold War
7. Policies: Vaccination in a Globalizing World
8. The Roots of Doubt
References
Additional Reading
Acknowledgements
Index
Review Quotes
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"Blume grapples with the hot-button topic of immunization programs and public resistance to them in this persuasive, challenging chronicle of how vaccines improved human health—and the pharmaceutical industry’s bottom line. . . . Blume’s crucial history illustrates that vaccines have saved countless lives, but they must win the confidence of those who don’t recognize their universal benefit."
Times Higher Education
“This is a fascinating history of vaccination and its troubles.”
Library Journal
"From vaccine hesitancy to virulent anti-vaccine views, parents are questioning what used to be considered a triumph of public health—vaccines. As so often happens with debates on controversial issues, emotion often trumps information. . . . [Immunization] offer[s] refreshingly fact-based alternatives to the vitriol dominating the current conversation on vaccines. . . . From Cold War politics to neoliberal economics, Blume puts policy and advancement into a broader context in which public health sometimes takes a back seat to other, less noble concerns. His central argument, articulated in the final chapter, is that vaccine hesitancy is rooted in mistrust of the institutions that promote them—especially governments and pharmaceutical companies. . . . Readers who wish to be informed of the current debate and issues surrounding it will appreciate the clear, fact-based approach."
Rachel Dolan | Health Affairs
"While the book provides an interesting social history and an attempt to understand why people resist vaccinations, it also serves as a reminder that it’s a privilege of the developed world to be able to approach a matter of public health and saving lives as a philosophical concern."
Sanjoy Bhattacharya, director, Centre for Global Health Histories | University of York and Head, WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health Histories
“This is an important, comprehensive, and pathbreaking book. Eschewing simplistic, unipolar notions of the planning and delivery of international health, it places the history and contemporary provision of immunization on a truly global scale. This is a study that looks at all facets of a complex subject, where the troubled birth and expansion of the use of vaccines is examined thoroughly and fairly. This is scholarship at its richest, which reminds us all about the dangers of technological determinism in all matters of public health. A must read for academic, government, and international health agency audiences, especially those committed to the equitable introduction of vaccines around the world on the basis of careful and transparent consultations with target societies.”
William Muraskin, Queens College, City University of New York
“Blume’s Immunization is a clearly written, brilliant, and highly sophisticated look at the roots of the growing phenomenon of ‘vaccine hesitancy.’ He rejects the dominant, and superficial interpretation by public health officials of what is going on, and shows the reader what insights occur when you really stop and listen to what people are saying rather than assuming you already know what motivates them and pigeon-holing their supposed views into various unflattering categories.”
Brian Martin, University of Wollongong, Australia
“Immunization provides great insight into the vaccination issue precisely because it avoids the easy generalizations made by partisans on either side. Blume more usefully points to the complexities and contradictions in the history and social dynamics of vaccination. He presents vaccination as a technology, and as just one of several approaches to promoting health, and thus to be judged in a wider context than a narrow calculation of benefits and risks. Immunization is essential reading for anyone who wants to get beyond the usual polarized positions in the vaccination debate.”
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