"Vaccine Hesitancy": When Safety Concerns Are Labeled a Mental Illness
New peer-reviewed paper reveals how the “vaccine hesitancy” narrative has eroded scientific progress and buried safety data.
For years, “vaccine hesitancy”— defined as delay or refusal of vaccination — has been treated like a mental health disorder.
A new peer-reviewed paper by Dr. Peter McCullough titled “Psychology of Fear: Vaccine Hesitancy, a Major Barrier to Full and Fair Balanced Reporting of Injuries, Disabilities, and Death after Vaccination” confronts this dangerous concept:
“Drawing on historical and contemporary evidence, there is a biased impact of vaccine hesitancy research in working to suppress full and fair-balanced reporting of vaccine adverse and serious adverse events. Such events may lead to injuries, disabilities, and death. Fear of amplifying vaccine hesitancy may impact the mental well-being of healthcare providers with the injection of guilt, remorse, and regret of not being truthful about side effects. Without balance in reporting and publication of vaccine safety, the medical literature has become distorted in representing real risks and theoretical benefits of immunization.”
Those who question safety signals are not debated — they are labeled. Instead of engaging the data, the system increasingly frames dissenters as psychologically defective, “hesitant,” misinformed, or unstable.
Imagine if airline engineers who questioned a mechanical flaw were diagnosed with “flight hesitancy disorder” rather than allowed to inspect the engine.
When skepticism is pathologized, scientific progress slows. Debate narrows. Research questions that could challenge dominant narratives struggle to receive funding or publication. The metric that quietly rises to the top is not safety, but uptake. The overriding objective becomes maximizing compliance — even in the face of documented deaths or disabilities.
As the paper concludes:
“Vaccine hesitancy has evolved to be a biased concept and measurement tool of a mental disorder without equipoise.”
It is time to retire the term “vaccine hesitancy” and stop wasting vast amounts of money researching and operationalizing it.
Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation
Support our mission: mcculloughfnd.org
Please consider following both the McCullough Foundation and my personal account on X (formerly Twitter) for further content.




The plandemic was a gift. It woke up so many to the harms of all vaccines.
It’s impossible to stop this avalanche of awakening.
Please share Del Bigteee’s film, An Inconvenient Study:
https://www.aninconvenientstudy.com/
I made up business cards with a QR code and the website address for people who are suspicious of using QR codes. I pepper restrooms on all my travels and give them out to strangers who have children. Also to waitresses when I pay for my meal.
We win this war from the bottom up. 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼
Yes. Agreed. I am mentally INCOMPETENT of comprehending a narrative of “my body my choice” if it involves killing a fetus but NO CHOICE when the issue is mandatory injection of an ineffective, toxic and dangerous injection. I truly do not get it.