The epithet “anti-vaxxer” is common in our time for anyone who resists mandates or resents the enormous legal privileges, protections, patents, and subsidies the industry receives today. It also pertains to those who attempt to bring attention to vaccine injury and death, a sensitive and even suppressed subject for an industry that relies on a utilitarian measure to demonstrate its social value. 

The label does not always or often make sense. The dominant theme of the movement now – and this has always been true – is to reject intervention and instead regard this industry as any other in a free marketplace (hamburgers, bottled water, washing machines, etc.), neither subsidized, nor mandated, nor protected from liability from imposed harms. If that goal were achieved, the “anti-vaxx” movement would shrink dramatically. 

The trouble is that no matter how deep we look into the history of vaccination in Western countries, and the US in particular, we find that vaccination has never been treated as a normal market good to accept or reject based on consumer preference. 

Indeed, if this pharmaceutical product were as obviously glorious as advertised, it should be able to elicit sufficient economic demand to sustain itself profitably and competitively like any other product. It’s simple: let this industry be subjective to the cold winds of a ruthless free market and see what happens. 

From the outset, however, the vaccine industry has enjoyed some form of privilege under the law. I’ve detailed some of this history here. 

This naturally gives rise to suspicions that something isn’t quite right. Perhaps these products are neither safe nor effective, else why would the population need such heavy-handed nudging? Injury from shots further fuels the fervor to at least make them voluntary and stop the subsidies and liability protections. What’s more, mandates have historically not led to higher vaccination rates but only more population resistance and lower rates. 

An excellent example is the Leicester Anti-Vaccination League of the 1870s and 1880s England. This was one of the more effective anti-vaccine mandate movements in Western history. It rose up in response to the Vaccination Act of 1867 as passed by........

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