Kristen A. Feemster, Medical Director and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine

Kristen A. Feemster, MD, MPH, MSHP, is a pediatric infectious diseases physician and health policy researcher at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the implementation of immunization recommendations, the epidemiology of vaccine-preventable diseases, and vaccine policy. She is Director of Research for the Vaccine Education Center and Medical Director of the Immunization Program at the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. Dr. Feemster has authored numerous peer-reviewed manuscripts and invited commentaries and regularly provides vaccine education to a wide range of audiences. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and two children.

Life has been made immeasurably better by the sharp decline in the incidence of infectious diseases, an improvement made possible through inoculations, especially of children, which protect people from contracting diseases and have led to the elimination or near elimination of maladies such as smallpox and polio. Yet public wariness of vaccines persists and has even in some cases increasedperhaps, ironically, owing in part to the decline in disease incidence produced by vaccines. This useful, fair-minded, and extremely informative book explains how vaccines are produced and how they work; discusses the diverse reasons behind some parents hesitancy to inoculate their children; explores the prospect of employing vaccines for not only preventing but also curing some diseases, including AIDS and even some cancers; and examines the potential for the total elimination of particular diseases, such as measles. - Foreign Affairs