With all the hoopla surrounding the MMR vaccine we decided to safe rather than sorry with the boys. Even though I was 90% certain there was no substantiated link to autism, I didn’t have the time to research the issue enough to erase all doubt. So at their 15 month well-baby visit, I asked their pediatrician if he had each of the three components available in separate injections.

He made it clear that the science behind the alleged link to autism was faulty – and he had given both his sons the MMR. But he understood our caution. Yes, that meant an additional two shots/visits per boy, but we figured that was a small price to pay.

Just a few days later I was reading Vaccinated by Paul Offit and came to the part about the alleged link of autism to the MMR vaccine. After a few pages (and having read in the rest of the book about vaccine methodology), I changed my mind. The boys had their MMR injections the next week.

Briefly, Vaccinated chronicles the life of Maurice Hilleman, an American microbiologist who developed eight of the routinely recommended vaccinations: measles , mumps , hepatitis A and B, chickenpox , meningitis , pneumonia and Haemophilus influenzae bacteria.

Vaccinated is well written, though it doesn’t follow the flow of a regular biography. It’s almost more a biography of the vaccines themselves than of Hilleman, but that made it all the more enlightening since all manner of history, science, and sociology was thrown in as well.

The entire book was fascinating to me – just enough scientific jargon to communicate the concepts, but not overly taxing to my still-atrophied-from-pregnancy brain. (and isn’t the cover design cool?)

So, thank you to Parent Bloggers and Harper Collins for providing Vaccinated in such a timely manner! And many, many thanks to Maurice Hilleman for dedicating his life to preventing millions of needless childhood diseases and deaths.

(and to Paul Offit for writing about him!)