ConflictsWith the many benefits of vaccination, also came the protest to it. Most state governments required children to be vaccinated for certain diseases in order to attend school. Many individuals thought this was an invasion of human rights and that it should be their decision whether to vaccinate or not. Some people believed that vaccines caused more harm than good, for example many believed that the measles vaccines had links to causing autism,ADHD and AIDS (1).The debate over vaccination forced governments to assess the rights of the individual against the rights of the community. Did an individual have the right to resist vaccination when their actions put a community at risk? Some students and their families, however, sought the help of the courts to avoid the requirement. One case was considered by the U.S. Supreme Court, when Rosalyn Zucht, a student from San Antonio, Texas, was excluded from a public school for failure to present proof of vaccination (2). Rosalyn was not the only person to bring their issues with vaccines all the way to the government. Several cases popped up around the United States involving anti vaccine beliefs.
Doctors responded to this movement in different ways. Most chose not to remove patients from their practice because of refusing vaccination, but most advised strongly against it. Despite the people's resistance, in 1962 John F Kennedy signed the Vaccination Assistance Act into law, to support mass immunization (3). This also led to the licensing of many vaccines for several different diseases. |
How did this effect things? |
In a nation where federal and state authorities had consistently battled for supremacy, the powers of the Public Health Service were limited. Viewed with suspicion by many state and local authorities, PHS officers often found themselves fighting state and local authorities as well as epidemics—even when they had been called in by these authorities. As governments began to compel their citizens to be vaccinated, resistance to the vaccines grew. Anti-vaccination societies and groups became especially present during the late nineteenth and twentieth century. Many anti-vaccinators believed that vaccination was a 'filthy piece of witchcraft' (4). These beliefs in the 1900s led to the creation of many permanent anti vaccination group and hatred towards vaccinations for years to come. While there was such protest from many to not require vaccinations, in the 1980s the rate of non medical exemptions was only 1.32% (5). Vaccinations were one of the most important advancements in American health and history of the twentieth century. Though many people opposed them, the results show that vaccines did prevent diseases and ultimately keep people healthy. While many have tried to go to the government to change the laws on vaccination, most have failed in this (6). The movement against vaccines did effect the way people think about them, and started lobbyist group against them that would exist permanetly.
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Footnotes:
1. E.W. Campion,Suspicions about the safety of vaccines,N Eng J Med, 347 (2002), pp. 1474–1475
2."Anti Vaccination Movement." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
S0031393912000042.
3.ibid
4.ibid
5.The President and Fellows of Harvard College. "Timeline of Public Health."
Harvard School of Public Health. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/centennial/
timeline/.
6."Smallpox: Resistance to Vaccine." U.S National Library of Medicine.
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/smallpox/sp_resistance.html.
1. E.W. Campion,Suspicions about the safety of vaccines,N Eng J Med, 347 (2002), pp. 1474–1475
2."Anti Vaccination Movement." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
S0031393912000042.
3.ibid
4.ibid
5.The President and Fellows of Harvard College. "Timeline of Public Health."
Harvard School of Public Health. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/centennial/
timeline/.
6."Smallpox: Resistance to Vaccine." U.S National Library of Medicine.
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/smallpox/sp_resistance.html.