Public medicine and health

We promote evidence-based, humanist perspectives on public health and medical issues, grounded in reason, science, and compassion. We are committed to developing and promoting informed positions on issues of public health such as fluoride and folic acid in our food and water. We also research and promote scientific positions on pressing public health concerns, including the growing challenge of vaccine hesitancy.

Policy summary

Problem:
Some public voices oppose public medicine and health decisions being made on a rational basis, instead voicing false medical claims.

Consequences:
Not trusting the scientific method can lead to public health issues. For example, vaccine hesitancy is contributing to a resurgence of measles and polio in some regions, reversing decades of progress in disease prevention. This can lead to serious complications and even death, particularly among vulnerable populations.

Our policy:
We support evidence-based policies in public medicine and public health and interventions that are calculated to improve health and wellbeing for all, for example: vaccinations being offered in all schools; the state encouraging vaccine uptake; fluoride being present in tap water; folic acid being included in flour; and public education efforts to enable people to identify and challenge false medical claims.

Recommendation:
Public bodies responsible for public health should pursue a rational, secular approach to medical decision-making.

We did a lot of work during the pandemic to encourage uptake of vaccines by the non-religious. Unscientific vaccine hesitancy is a growing problem that is leading to serious public health outcomes.

In depth

Humanists form their views on the often-conflicting ideas and unpredictable consequences arising from, for example, new developments in medical science, using reason, evidence, and compassion and putting human wellbeing and the wellbeing of other sentient animals at the centre of their thinking. We base our responses on the humanist principle that individuals should have the right to live by their own personal values and the freedom to make decisions about their own lives, as long as these do not result in harm to others or to the general aim of minimising suffering and advancing human happiness.

We do recognise that some values are not shared by everyone. Humanists do not share the attitudes to ‘interfering with nature’ or ‘playing God’ or the same definitions of personhood held by some religious people. We respect the right of those holding religious beliefs about the sanctity of life and the limits of medical intervention to not participate in some procedures. Equally, they should be denied the right to impose their beliefs on others.

This leads us to support evidence-based policies in public medicine and public health and interventions that are calculated to improve health and wellbeing for all.

In practical terms, interventions we have focused on in recent years include the addition of folic acid to flour to reduce birth defects, supporting public health through vaccine take-up. We also in recent years advocated for a move from an ‘opt-in’ to a ‘soft opt-out’ organ donation system, which has now happened across the UK and Crown Dependencies.

What we’re doing

In 2026 we welcomed the launch of a chickenpox vaccination programme in England and Wales, where eligible children receive the vaccine during routine GP appointments.

In 2024 we welcomed the UK government decision to add folic acid to flour to reduce birth defects, following the Welsh and Scottish governments’ action on this in 2018. This measure, which will come into force at the end of 2026, aims to reduce the number of debilitating brain and spine defects caused by folic acid deficiency during pregnancy.

We support the addition of fluoride to tap water, viewing it as an evidence-based intervention that can promote public health and reduce dental disease, especially in communities that may be vulnerable.

We encourage people to get vaccinated, unless they have good medical reasons not to. Unscientific beliefs around the supposed harms of vaccinations are a growing problem that in 2025 led to a child dying in Merseyside of measles. We also encourage people to register as organ donors, providing information on our website as to why this is a good idea, and also on the NHS website in partnership with NHS Blood and Transplant.

Appendix: Past work on this issue

The NHS itself is a humanist innovation. Since its inception, it has represented fundamentally humanist values: that scientific advancements can be harnessed for social progress, that people with differing beliefs can cooperate for the common good, and that every human being should be treated with dignity, compassion and respect. The creation of the NHS is credited to three innovative campaigners who all happened to be humanists: William Beveridge, Nye Bevan, and Clement Attlee.
During the pandemic we strongly encouraged non-religious people to get vaccinated against Covid, explaining the humanist position and the evidence behind the vaccines.
A survey of our members and supporters found 95% saying they would be vaccinated, with public opinion polls also showing more humanists saying they would be vaccinated than the population as a whole.
We also organised a joint statement from patrons like Stephen Fry, Alice Roberts, Richard Dawkins, Sandi Toksvig, Jim Al-Khalili, and Polly Toynbee, encouraging people to get vaccinated, while Churches Together in England and the Scottish Church Leaders Forum issued a parallel statement.
We were members of the UK and Welsh Government’s Covid Moral and Ethical Advisory Groups, providing ethical and scientific input to public policy during the pandemic. And we were a part of the equivalent group in Northern Ireland.
We were instrumental in bringing about the new opt-out system of organ donation in Wales and England, giving oral evidence to the Welsh Assembly Government Committee Inquiry and working closely alongside the Department for Health and Social Care. We were also involved in the roll-out in Northern Ireland, and our sister charity Humanist Society Scotland was involved in Scotland. After the introduction in England we worked with NHS England to develop resources to encourage humanists to donate.