You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation by Paul A Offit
Medical innovation has saved many lives, but it has not all gone well. Even common treatments today have had rocky starts. This book details many of these cases of tragedies with medical innovation. Blood transfusions had many challenges early on. Once AIDS come on the scene, hemophiliacs were susceptible to the virus before things were improved. People died from early doses of the polio vaccine because the virus was not properly killed. However, both of these treatments saved many lives and resolved their initial problems. Alas, in the hyper-litigation culture of today, we can halt promising treatments due to early deaths. A little bad publicity can set a treatment regime back years. Should we accept the risks to experiment? Or should we try to be 100% safe, even if it results in more deaths?
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