Vaccine Nation Science, reason and the threat to 200 years of progress

‘ This book tells the story of how vaccines transformed the public health landscape and suggests what we might do to restore public trust in their e?cacy and safety.’ Professor Trish Greenhalgh OBE, University of Oxford Vaccine Nation, from world-leading epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre, examines the history of vaccines, how vaccines work, vaccine safety, public policy, new technologies like mRNA and the effects of the COVID pandemic on the anti-vaccination movement. At the same time as vaccination rates are falling globally, miraculous new developments in vaccines means we have new tools to fight cancer and other chronic diseases. At a critical time when the threat of an influenza pandemic is looming and disinformation is booming, MacIntyre argues that science must reclaim the stage, or we may lose centuries of gains that vaccines have brought to the world.

Raina MacIntyre is Professor of Global Biosecurity and NHMRC Research Fellow. She heads the Biosecurity Program at the Kirby Institute, UNSW. Her vaccine expertise is in older adults and immunosuppressed people, and she has done several clinical trials of vaccines in adults and transplant patients. She is on the WHO COVID-19 Vaccine Composition Technical Advisory Group and the WHO SAGE Smallpox and mpox advisory group. She is the author of Dark Winter (NewSouth, 2022).

1. The miracle of vaccines 2. How do vaccines work? 3. Vaccine safety 4. Anti-vaccination – from fringe to the medical mainstream 5. ‘ I don’ t want mRNA in my body!’ 6. Influenza 7. Fur, feathers and farms – the spectre of H5N1 8. A pox on your houses 9. Herd immunity 10. Measles, measles everywhere 11. Coercion or persuasion to increase vaccination rates? 12. The dark underbelly of medicine and global health 13. Pneumonia is not the old man’ s friend 14. If there was a vaccine against heart attacks, would you take it? 15. COVID killed public health 16. Who will reclaim the stage? References