The Wisdom of Prevention

Abstract

Abstract The teaching and communal practice of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has embodied an ethic of prevention to retain good health and minimize the ravages of disease. This chapter provides two primary illustrations of this preventive ethic, the 19th-century revelation known as the “Word of Wisdom” and 20th- and 21st-century advocacy of vaccinations. The Word of Wisdom’s structure of invitation, restriction, permission, and promises is illustrative of a covenantal principle of responsibility for health. The prevention ethic of vaccinations was initially greeted with skepticism by members of the LDS community as a further infiltration of state hostility to religious liberty, but ecclesiastical teaching beginning in the 1970s and continuing through international humanitarian programs of vaccination exhibit a generalized acceptance of the value of vaccines. The new vaccine to prevent the most prevalent sexually transmitted infection, HPV, has raised practical ethical questions for LDS students, parents, and professionals committed to ecclesiastical teachings on sexual morality.