Raina MacIntyre is one of Australia’s most respected epidemiologists. She was a familiar face and calm voice during the COVID-19 pandemic. So when I was asked to review her new book Vaccine Nation I was delighted to accept.

Review: Vaccine Nation: Science, Reason and the Threat to 200 Years of Progress – Raina MacIntyre (UNSW Press)

Interestingly, MacIntyre initially planned to become a cardiologist, but was drawn instead into infectious diseases and vaccines. Her subsequent career has spanned everything from fieldwork during Australia’s early rollout of the Hib vaccine – which protects against potentially fatal respiratory infections, including meningitis – to advising governments on biosecurity and bioterrorism. Her previous book, Dark Winter, explored pandemic threats and biosecurity.

Vaccine Nation is, in many ways, a natural sequel to that earlier work – though this time, the threats are as much social as they are biological. The book blends a sweeping history of public health with a clear examination of our messy present. It delivers a timely, urgent and often deeply personal account of vaccination’s role in our world.

Despite its 247 pages and more than 400 references, Vaccine Nation is anything but dry. MacIntyre is a natural storyteller. She opens with a haunting scene from 1953: a five-year-old girl named Martha Dillard contracted polio after attending a birthday party. Dillard would spend the rest of her life in an iron lung.

“Imagine being imprisoned in a metal casing, unable to walk or see the world,” MacIntyre writes. “People have lived like that for up to 70 years.”

From there, the book takes readers on a brisk and engaging tour through the triumphs of vaccination – its success in all but eradicating smallpox, polio, Hib and measles. These quiet public health revolutions have boosted life expectancy and saved millions of children.

MacIntyre doesn’t shy away from vaccination’s more troubling stories, either. She acknowledges the rare but real risks of side-effects, and discusses the disastrous

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