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

In 2014, California suffered the largest and deadliest outbreak of pertussis, also known as "whooping cough," in more than fifty years. This tragedy was avoidable. An effective vaccine has been available since the 1940s. In recent years other diseases, like measles and mumps, have also made a comeback. The reason for these epidemics can be traced to a group whose vocal proponents insist, despite evidence to the contrary, that vaccines are poison. As a consequence, parents and caretakers are rejecting vaccines for themselves and their families.

In Deadly Choices, infectious-disease expert Paul Offit takes a look behind the curtain of the anti-vaccine movement. What he finds is a reminder of the power of scientific knowledge, and the harm we risk if we ignore it.

Paul A. Offit, MD, is the chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. A professor of vaccinology and pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the author of several books, he lives in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.