You Bet Your Life

—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 “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 Expand reviews