Paul A. Offit, MD, is the director of the Vaccine Education Center, an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and a professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The author of ten works of narrative nonfiction, he lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
"Dr. Offit, a pediatrician, vaccine expert and prolific author, is
exquisitely attuned to the burden shouldered by the earliest
recipients of medical treatments and technologies."
--David A. Shaywitz, Wall Street Journal
"Riveting and filled with fascinating details...His latest
book--YOU BET YOUR LIFE-- couldn't be more timely."
--Nature
"Offit is a good storyteller, and he has some terrific stories to
tell."
--Cass R. Sunstein, The New York Times Book Review
"A well-written and informative look at the reality of medical
advancement, including poignant examples of its often-fatal
repercussions."
--Library Journal
"The way Offit tells the story of each medical advance is
fascinating...this thorough survey is as entertaining as it is
informative."
--Publishers Weekly
"Offit is a fluid storyteller armed with decades of knowledge, and
he provides an educative...reading experience."--Kirkus
"In You Bet Your Life, Offit elucidates, using compelling case
studies, how we come to know what we know in science and medicine:
through a mix of imagination, experimentation, successes, misses
and tragedies. It's a riveting story of what is possible when
confidence and humility meet, and what seems inevitable when hubris
dominates. Illuminating the Covid-19 pandemic and how we got to
safe and effective vaccines so quickly, it is also a timeless read
for anyone interested in science, ethics, discovery and how we can
better prevent the next pandemic."--Chelsea Clinton, vice chair of
the Clinton Foundation
"What makes Paul Offit so special, beyond his extraordinary talents
as a physician, vaccine-developer, and children's advocate, is his
ability to bring complicated scientific subjects to life. You Bet
Your Life is the latest example--a thoughtful, beautifully written
account of the risks and rewards of medical technology told through
the eyes of the inventors and their patients. Tragedy is an
inevitable part of the process; breakthroughs come at a human cost,
even those that have saved untold millions of lives. To read this
elegant book is grasp these ethical complexities--with a masterful
medical writer as our guide."--David Oshinsky, winner of the
Pulitzer Prize in History for Polio: An American Story
"Paul Offit is a national treasure. He has emerged from the ranks
of doctors and scientists as one of the world's most effective
communicators. In You Bet Your Life he astutely tracks the
development of a variety of monumental medical breakthroughs
constantly reminding us that each carried with it not only
predictable and unpredictable risks but terrible failures. It is a
hard message that most of us, in thinking about the price of
biomedical progress, do not want to hear. But post a horrific
pandemic where blunders abounded and unnecessary deaths occurred at
a staggering rate, we had better heed his clear message that
acknowledging and managing risk, not pretending it does not exist
or simply ignoring the truth, is the key to a healthier future for
you, your children and their descendants." --Arthur Caplan, Mitty
Professor of Bioethics, NYU Grossman School of Medicine
"This book is exquisitely timed for a moment in which biomedicine
has delivered miraculous vaccines to a public disastrously
skeptical of science. In a series of vignettes including botched
polio vaccines and the first death in a gene therapy treatment,
Offit shows that while science must maintain its humility in the
face of complexity, the public can't afford to lose its trust in
medical science despite the inevitable tragedies that occur in
pursuit of progress."--Arthur Allen, author of Vaccine
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