Stanley Plotkin, 93, the scientist behind foundational vaccine development, recently said he regrets living long enough to watch public health collapse. Thomas Levenson's new book, 'A Pox on Fools,' explains why that collapse was not sudden.
Levenson's central argument: anti-vaccine rhetoric has no new arguments. Every claim circulating today maps onto one of three historical archetypes, true believers, grifters, and cynics, categories that predate germ theory itself. In the early 18th century, smallpox inoculation knowledge came to Western medicine from Ottoman women and an enslaved African. Opposition followed immediately. By the 19th century, roughly 40 percent of children died of infection before age 5, and people still pushed back on the interventions that would change that number.
The book is worth reading in full not for its conclusion but for its taxonomy. Levenson does not just document opposition, he traces the specific rhetorical lineage of each category across centuries. Understanding which type of opponent you are dealing with changes how you respond. That framework is the actual payload here.
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