The Vaccine Bug: A personal history of the world of immunity 1978-2011

The Vaccine Bug is a fascinating story of more
than 30 years of vaccine research and discovery,
told by an insider who has earned international
acclaim for his contributions to this field. It is also
a revealing personal history—Jaap Goudsmit’s
honest, wry and often entertaining account of
how he learned the art of science and caught the
‘vaccine bug’. Goudsmit takes the reader on a
historical tour of the efforts to protect our world
against diseases like AIDS, polio, influenza, SARS
and rabies. Along the way, he provides intriguing
insights into how scientific discovery happens,
the politics of public health and the reasons why
opposition to vaccination is growing. Vaccine
skeptics and supporters should read this book.

The Vaccine Bug completes a trilogy of books by Jaap Goudsmit focusing on viral threats and how to fight them. It follows Viral Sex, which explored the nature of the emerging AIDS epidemic, and Viral Fitness, which explains how viruses gain ground in human populations and why they are so difficult to combat.

Jaap Goudsmit (1951) is a Dutch scientist and writer who is best known for his ground-breaking research into AIDS and influenza.