Science News - January 1, 2011

Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All

Paul A. Offit

Vaccines, once the darlings of medical science, lost their reputation for safety in the 1980s and 1990s. After a flurry of disturbing “news-you-can-use” segments, some parents refused to get their kids immunized. For vaccines, the journey back to credibility has been slow.

Physician Paul Offit provides a road map for that voyage. In a meticulously researched tour de force, Offit exposes the lack of science underlying the claims of the anti-vaccine movement. Some fears were legitimate — polio and rota-virus vaccines, he notes, posed real risks for certain people. Both were replaced by safer vaccines.

But over the past 25 years, vaccines have been accused of causing multiple sclerosis, diabetes, learning disabilities and attention disorders. Under attack were shots for whooping cough, meningitis, measles and hepatitis B — all of which were later found to be safe.

Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature

Brian Switek

Notions of evolution have, for lack of a better word, evolved, and with wonderfully broad strokes science writer and long-time paleontology blogger Switek takes readers on a fascinating historical, scientific and cultural tour of the theory’s various incarnations.

Well before anyone came up with the
idea of evolution, theologians and phi-
losophers generally
ranked species from
“lower” to “higher”
forms along a Great
Chain of Being, with
humans represent-
ing the highest point
of Creation. Then
the fossil record
revealed that plants and animals had
changed through time, and the notion
of a march of progress along paths of
ever-increasing complexity took hold.

The cause célèbre was a 1998 scare
in which a British physician claimed to
link autism in 12 children with the mea-
sles vaccine. Several subsequent stud-
ies proved this claim false. But by then
four unvaccinated children had died of
measles and many more had gotten sick.
“We’ve reached a tipping point,” Offit
writes. “Children are
suffering and dying
because their par-
ents are more fright-
ened by vaccines
than by the diseases
they prevent.”
In 2009 and 2010,
U.S. courts ruled
against claims linking autism with vac-
cines. Still, many vaccine opponents
aren’t persuaded, and they have talk
show access and Hollywood friends. To
level the playing field, every doctor’s
office should have a copy of Offit’s book,
giving parents the other side of the
story. — Nathan Seppa

Basic Books, 2010, 288 p., $27.50.

As more and more fossils were unearthed, however, researchers recognized that evolution doesn’t proceed toward a single goal. Instead, as Switek illustrates through captivating timelines of discoveries, scientists found a much more haphazard process, resulting in a mélange of “primitive” forms living alongside their evolutionarily more-advanced relatives. It’s a pattern seen in many groups, from the wildly branching family trees of elephants and whales to those of horses and hominids.

Chapter by chapter, the author recounts how fish conquered the land, how reptiles evolved to produce birds and how fox-sized, deerlike creatures returned to the seas to become whales. Finally, Switek shows that many modern human traits can be traced back millions of years, and none of them deny Homo sapiens’ close relationships with other primates. Humans are apes, Switek says, just of a different sort. — Sid Perkins

Bellevue Literary Press, 2010, 246 p., $17.95.

From Jars to the Stars
Todd Neff

An engaging history
recounts how the Ball
Brothers Co. went from
making mason jars
to building the Deep
Impact spacecraft. Earthview Media,
2010, 327 p., $24.95.

Come See the
Earth Turn

Lori Mortensen, illustrations by Raúl Allén Aimed at kids age

7 to 9, this picture
book shows how Léon Foucault and
his pendulum demonstrated the
Earth’s spin. Tricycle Press, 2010,
32 p., $17.99.

Where Good Ideas
Come From

Steven Johnson

In what he calls a “nat-
ural history of innova-
tion,” a science writer
identifies patterns
throughout history, mining the past for
lessons in creativity. Riverhead Books,
2010, 336 p., $26.95.