Between Hope and Fear

Michael Kinch is a professor and vice chancellor at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of A Prescription for Change. Previously, he was a professor at Purdue University and a founder of the oncology program at the biotechnology company MedImmune.

“An important book. As Michael Kinch tells us in Between Hope and Fear, vaccinations have saved millions, possibly billions, of lives. Along with antisepsis and anesthesia, they rank as one of the greatest achievements of scientific medicine. It is therefore deeply disturbing that in recent decades a significant minority of people in the world’s wealthier countries has become opposed to them. If even a small number of parents decide not to have their child vaccinated because of an alleged (and usually spurious) risk from the vaccine, they are putting enormous numbers of children at risk of contracting the disease the vaccine protects against…. Kinch has done early scientists a great service by recounting their contributions. There are some fascinating episodes about the discovery and use of bacteriophages (viruses that attack bacteria) and the way in which they might become important again as antibiotic resistance is increasingly a problem.”