As a classical liberal, and an advocate for faster innovation, I am sympathetic to much in the health freedom movement. But I think some in the movement are making a mistake in being opposed to all vaccines. Some vaccines have done some harm, but overall the best vaccines are some of the greatest advances in medicine. I like Thomas Jefferson’s statement in the passage from the review quoted below.
(p. C8) In the 1780s Thomas Jefferson was serving as a diplomat in France when the Marquis de Lafayette brought him a message of unwelcome news from Virginia: His young daughter Lucy had died of whooping cough. The letter did not spare the absent father the grim truth: “Her sufferings were great.” Jefferson ultimately buried four of his children (including two girls named Lucy). He knew what he was saying when he wrote appreciatively to Edward Jenner, the English physician who discovered vaccination, that “medicine has never before produced any single improvement of such utility.”
For the full review see:
Kyle Harper. “Sickness And Civilization.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Jan. 24, 2026): C7-C8.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date January 23, 2026, and has the title “‘The Great Shadow’: Sickness and Civilization.”)
The book under review is:
Bauer, Susan Wise. The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2026.