OVERALL RATING Mediocre
STRENGTHS Provides excellent information; covers all aspects of vaccination
WEAKNESSES Lengthy and dense; technical language makes it difficult to read
AUDIENCE Parents
This book is meant to inform parents about the effectiveness and safety of the vaccines available for prevention of childhood infectious diseases. It is also clearly meant to help parents overcome fears about vaccines, which originate from a number of sources and have led some jurisdictions to decrease vaccine uptake with disastrous consequences. To be truly useful for parents, such a book should cover the range of vaccines available, pointing out why each is necessary in terms of the risk imposed by infection and disease, the degree of protection provided, important side effects, safety concerns and contraindications, and the dosing schedule. This should be provided in a format accessible for all parents, especially in terms of readability.
This book provides all of the requisite information and more. Beginning with an explanation of basic immune system functioning as well as the systems in place in Canada to assure vaccine safety, it looks at individual infectious diseases in detail, providing information about their agents and modes of transmission, the associated illnesses and their management, and what vaccines are available, including how they are produced, their side effects, and evidence of their effectiveness. Arguments about the general safety of vaccines are provided throughout, with examples of how disease can spread when vaccine uptake decreases. An extensive “Question and Answer” section and a list of other resources are provided at the end. Unfortunately, all of this detail comes at the expense of accessibility. The book is dense and lengthy, and the reading level is extremely high. Much technical language is used; although the authors attempt to clarify certain concepts with brief explanations, most lay readers will find this book difficult. For this reason, I would not recommend it to parents.