Dr. Paul Offit is a scientist who has spent his career working on vaccines. During a visit to a museum with his son to view an exhibit entitled "101 Inventions That Changed the World", Dr. Offit realized that many life-changing inventions are destructive as well as beneficial. He spent several years interviewing fellow scientists to compile a list of scientific research gone wrong. This book is the result. The seven inventions he chooses to explore may not surprise you (opium, margarine, fertilizer, eugenics, lobotomies, pesticides, vitamins), though the details of his research yielded information that was new to me. And yet the true message here is that there are always many unintended and unanticipated consequences in all human enterprise. We must be alert to the dangers inherent in all our advances.
