Primer: Compulsory Vaccination
The latest on vaccine safety - and why skeptics still oppose required shots.
by Kate Tuttle
September 15, 2008
As kids return to school, parents find themselves drowning in paperwork — my daughter's high school sent us, among other pieces of paper, an emergency contact form, student behavioral contract, weapons policy handout, photo release agreement, and several health forms, all of which need to be completed and handed in before she can enter the building. My toddler son's daycare is similar (though the weapons policy there might apply only to plastic swords and the sharper Happy Meal toys).
Among the piles of paperwork, for many families, is a form requesting proof that your child is vaccinated against diseases ranging from chicken pox to hepatitis. While state laws vary somewhat, every state requires that students entering public elementary school be vaccinated against the diseases listed on the schedule set forth by the Centers for Disease Control, or else that their parents provide medical, religious, or (in some states) personal reasons to claim exemption. Private schools, though not required by law to ask their students to be vaccinated, tend to adopt similar requirements.
So how did these regulations come into being, and why doesn't everyone just follow them? Who's getting vaccinated these days, and who's not? And what should you know if you have a kid starting school?
Ever since the first vaccine was invented in the late eighteenth century, laws mandating vaccination have met with opposition, sometimes by religious leaders, sometimes by those who object on political or libertarian grounds, sometimes by those who are certain that vaccines do more harm than good. The term "conscientious objector" first emerged during battles over the 1898 Vaccination Act in England, and in the United States, groups such as the Anti-Vaccination Society protested early laws requiring inoculation among schoolchildren in Boston in the mid-nineteenth century.
The rumored link between autism and vaccination, despite debunking, just won't go away.
Some of these early objectors believed that vaccination was itself an affront to the God who had sent disease to punish sinners, while others, like today's anti-vaccination activists, feared that the shots meant to protect the public good would inflict harm on individuals.
Still, by the twentieth century most states in the U.S. coupled compulsory vaccination with public school attendance (since 1986, all federal vaccine research and safety monitoring takes place under the Department of Health and Human Services' National Vaccine Program). Through the mid-century, when Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, most Americans got their shots without much fuss; most of the diseases now routinely vaccinated against, were still prevalent enough to remind people what the shots prevented.
For today's parents, though, measles, mumps, and rubella aren't on the list of most-feared diseases. Autism is. And the rumored link between autism and vaccination, despite frequent and authoritative debunking (including a new study just last month) simply won't go away. You can blame the Internet, with its echo chamber of like-minded non-scientists posting link after spurious link. You can blame pop culture, with its fondness for elevating the opinions of celebrities to something nearing received wisdom. And you can most certainly blame our scientifically illiterate society, in which most readers can't evaluate the relative value of competing claims, even when some come from peer-reviewed medical journals and some from non-medical environmental organizations commenting on issues far outside their expertise or, worse, random people on their computers, preying on parents' worst fears.
©2008 Kate Tuttle and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Kate Tuttle is a writer and editor raising two children just outside Boston. |
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