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A Pox on Fools

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents A Pox on Fools by Thomas Levenson, read by Mike Cooper.

An urgent and timely history of anti-vaccine arguments and the dangers of their proliferation.

The promise of Robert F. Kennedy, the incoming Health Secretary in Donald Trump’s administration, to revoke the validation of the polio vaccine is a spectacular example of self-inflicted harm. The effective eradication of a terrible disease is under threat from a man who believes that vaccines – almost all vaccines – cause autism and other conditions, and that seed oils are a deadly threat to human health.

Tom Levenson’s brilliant, short historical book exposes the refusal of the anti-vax movement to accept the reality of communicable diseases and how to prevent them. Vaccines in earlier times provoked fear of the new and seemed to limit the liberty of individuals, but we are now dealing with historical amnesia on a grand scale: the anti-vaxxers have forgotten, or never knew, how terrifying life was with diseases like polio and mumps.

Critics Review

This is a passionate book, on a subject that deservedly raises passions. Lethal epidemics of smallpox, polio, measles, pertussis and COVID-19 have been parallelled by memetic epidemics of anti-vaccine scare-mongering. Thomas Levenson documents the history, from honestly mistaken sceptics of previous centuries (Alfred Russell Wallace, Herbert Spencer) to today’s villains (Andrew Wakefield, Donald Trump) and charlatans (Robert Kennedy Jr). At a time when vaccine science should be celebrating its greatest triumphs, this book could hardly be more important.
Richard Dawkins FRS, author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker
Brimming with righteous anger, this book should infuriate you for all the right reasons, and arm you to take on the grifters and their war against science.
Adam Rutherford, author of How to Argue with a Racist
This highly readable account of how vaccines have saved millions of lives is a call to arms for anyone who cares about the future of vaccine confidence.
Meredith Wadman
Levenson serves up this powerful, timely and important book about a technology that has extended and saved hundreds of millions of lives, and the incredible story of why we’ve begun to turn our backs on it.
Kevin Fong
In this desperately urgent book, Tom Levenson masterfully weaves science and history to explain why no health measure has saved quite so many lives as vaccines, and why it flies in the face of reason for health officials to turn their backs on them now. I hope absolutely everyone reads this.
Angela Saini
Since the 1800 dawn of the age of vaccines the life-saving miracles have had their opponents, decrying immunization its public health advocates. The anti vax arguments aren’t new, as Tom Levenson shows. Only the fear-mongering voices have changed, now led by RFK, Jr. A Pox of Fools is your go-to guide for countering the mendacity and conspiratorial thinking.
Laurie Garrett, bestselling author of The Coming Plague
A Pox on Fools is a triumph — a tiny, mighty book and a stark reminder that vaccines have made us victims of our own success. Vaccines have been so effective at controlling measles and other childhood infections that many of those diseases are essentially forgotten. Levenson's book shows how far we have come and calls out the lies and hypocrisy of anti-vaccine politicians who exploit our collective amnesia and endanger public health. It should be required reading for anyone living in this absurd and perilous time.
Adam Ratner, MD, MPH, author of Booster Shots

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