You Bet Your Life

From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation

By: Paul A Offit MD MD

Narrated by: James Noel Hoban

One of America’s top physicians traces the history of risk in medicine—with powerful lessons for today

Every medical decision—whether to have chemotherapy, an X-ray, or surgery—is a risk, no matter which way you choose. In You Bet Your Life, physician Paul A. Offit argues that, from the first blood transfusions four hundred years ago to the hunt for a COVID-19 vaccine, risk has been essential to the discovery of new treatments. More importantly, understanding the risks is crucial to whether, as a society or as individuals, we accept them.

Told in Offit’s vigorous and rigorous style, You Bet Your Life is an entertaining history of medicine. But it also lays bare the tortured relationships between intellectual breakthroughs, political realities, and human foibles. Our pandemic year has shown us, with its debates over lockdowns, masks, and vaccines, how easy it is to get everything wrong. You Bet Your Life is an essential read for getting the future a bit more right.

Critic reviews

“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

“Offit is a fluid storyteller armed with decades of knowledge, and he provides an educative…reading experience.”—Kirkus

Balanced presentations until the end

While each novel medical technique or therapy was conscientiously presented in a balanced format, reminding the reader of what was and was not known at the time, the social and societal setting, and the emphasis of these investigators to help humanity, I felt this format became very cursory as the last topic--Covid-19--was addressed. The vaccine technologies are in use in targeted therapy synthesis, long-term studies are not available as they are occurring along side the daily need to treat infected patients, over 400 Million cases worldwide and nearly 6 Million deaths. "Watchful waiting" has a significant cost.

SKEPTICAL OR STUPID

Like Siddhartha Mukherjee’s “The Emperor of All Maladies”, Paul Offit reflects on patients who risk their lives based on medical treatment and prescribed drugs by educated scientists, physicians, and drug manufacturers. Both Mukherjee and Offit write of the medical causes of death and attempts made by the medical profession to save lives. What both books have in common is that the medical industry, just as in all life’s work, is influenced by money, power, and prestige. Those influences carry risks and rewards.

Doctors, scientists, drug manufacturers, and medical employees make good and bad decisions based on educational achievement, hands-on medical experience, and personal motivation. That is true in all forms of work employment. The difference is we who are not part of the medical industry are intimately and mortally affected by its practice and advertisement. Bad medical decisions can end a life; good medical decisions can save a life. Government oversight, like the FDA, CDC, USDA, and the World Health Organization work on minimizing risk to society but risk reduction is a work in progress.

The lesson one draws from these two physicians is that the public has a right to be skeptical but there is no right to be stupid. Dying will always be a part of our lives, whether mistakes are made or not.

A doctor makes an argument for vaccine choice.

this book is so important during these times of government overreach and forced vaccination. we all have the right to make a choice with our health and experimental drugs

Enjoyable and informative

If you are interested in the history of medicine and medical ethics, you will find this book fascinating. Offit focuses on major advances in medicine and discusses the human cost that led to these advances. History can be dry, but the best histories are the opposite when they bring persons and personalities back to life--this is true here. It is difficult not to be invested in the human dramas Offit describes. After the first chapter or two you begin to anticipate the plot: Oh no! Here is another person I am being introduced to, and if they are in this book, things almost certainly won't end well for them! Impending medical tragedy! But despite that, the book includes details that make you really care about these people and get sucked into what happened to them. Another thing I appreciated was how fresh the material was for me. I am a medical ethicist, a philosopher by training, and although I had studied the Jesse Gelsinger case before, most of the other episodes were partially or entirely new to me. I finished the book feeling like I had learned a lot about important moments in medical history and details that will enrich my understanding of medical advancements and how they affect people. So it wasn't just the human drama from the book I enjoyed, I also liked the book because I felt I learned so much. I had to give a couple of presentations this week and I found myself referring to something I had learned about in the book both times.

A great detailed book.

I enjoyed every chapter and its details.
The reader was great. I highly recommend this title to All.