Historical Origins of the Personal Belief Exemption to Vaccination Mandates: The View from California.

A number of states, starting with California, have recently removed all non-medical exemptions from their laws requiring vaccinations for schoolchildren. California was also one of the earliest states to include a broad non-medical, or personal, belief exemption in its modern immunization law, which it did with a 1961 law mandating polio vaccination for school enrollment, Assembly Bill 1940 (AB 1940). This paper examines the history of AB 1940's exemption clause as a case study for shedding light on the little-examined history of the personal belief exemption to vaccination in the United States. This history shows that secular belief exemptions date back further than scholars have allowed. It demonstrates that such exemptions resulted from political negotiation critical to ensuring compulsory vaccination's political success. It challenges a historiography in which antivaccination groups and their allies led late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century opposition to vaccination mandates while religious groups drove mid-twentieth century opposition. It also complicates the historiographic idea of a return to compulsion in the late 1960s, instead dating this return a decade earlier, to a time when belief exemptions in polio vaccination mandates helped reconcile the goal of a widely vaccinated population with the sacrosanct idea of health as a personal responsibility.

[Vaccine hesitancy in Spain (1801), Ruiz de Luzuriaga responses in defense of vaccination]. / La duda vacunal en España (1801), Ruiz de Luzuriaga en defensa de la vacunación.

The rapid diffusion of the jennerian method was founded in simplicity to practice, in its apparent effectiveness in combating smallpox and its epidemiological opportunity, as it appeared at the time of greatest recrudescence of the disease. The initial impulse for it's propagation, which originated a recognized movement to protect population health, was not without controversy. At the same time that defenders of the vaccine were added, opposite opinions appeared that used diverse critics to discredit it. The most common was to reveal their alleged failures using the media of the time, so cases were reported that occurred in the children of notable people in society. Ignacio María Ruiz de Luzuriaga (1763-1822), as secretary of the Royal Academy of Medicine he assumed a catalytic role, becoming the protagonist of the initial history of vaccination in Spain. It has been considered as an introducer, disseminator and ardent defender of the vaccine, as can be seen from the analysis of the bulky correspondence generated between 1801 and 1802 cataloged as "Papeles sobre la vacuna". These documents, preserved in the Academy library, show their activity as a propagator of the method and its capacity to respond to the doubts and concerns related to their possible adverse effects, avoiding jeopardizing the continuity of vaccines.

La rápida difusión del método jenneriano se cimentó en la sencillez para practicarlo, en su aparente eficacia para combatir las viruelas y en su oportunidad epidemiológica, ya que apareció en el momento de mayor recrudecimiento de la enfermedad. El impulso inicial para su propagación, que originó un reconocido movimiento de protección de la salud poblacional, no estuvo exento de controversia. A la vez que se iban sumando defensores de la vacuna, aparecían opiniones contrarias que utilizaban críticas diversas para desprestigiarla. La más común era divulgar sus supuestos fracasos utilizando los medios de comunicación de la época, para lo que se aireaban casos ocurridos en los hijos de personalidades notables de la sociedad. Ignacio María Ruiz de Luzuriaga (1763-1822), en calidad de secretario de la Real Academia de Medicina Matritense asumió un papel catalizador, convirtiéndose en protagonista de la historia inicial de la vacunación en España. Ha sido considerado como introductor, divulgador y ardiente defensor de la vacuna, tal como se desprende del análisis de la abultada correspondencia que generó entre 1801 y 1802, catalogada como "Papeles sobre la vacuna". Estos documentos, conservados en la biblioteca de la Academia, muestran su actividad como propagador del método y de su capacidad para dar respuesta a las dudas e inquietudes relacionadas con sus posibles efectos adversos, evitando que se pusiera en peligro la continuidad de las vacunaciones.

Vaccine hesitancy: More than a movement.

Vaccines are some of if not the most successful public health endeavors ever put into practice. Countless lives have been saved and the occurrences of vaccine preventable diseases are at a fraction of the rate experienced before vaccines. Vaccines and the realization of their compulsory scheduling are highly studied, safe, and purposeful. Despite these realities, there are an alarming number of parents who do not permit the vaccination of their children as scheduled. This is known in the health community as vaccine hesitancy and commonly portrayed in popular media as anti-vaccination sediment. This analysis opens with the topic as it was addressed during a September 2015 debate for the Republic Party's 2016 presidential nomination. Some key historical aspects of vaccine hesitancy are presented. This history leads to a description of the 2014-2015 measles outbreak in California. The factors that aide in the recruitment of under vaccination are then explored. Finally, select strategies to control, combat, and potentially attenuate vaccine hesitancy are presented.

Werther Goes Viral: Suicidal Contagion, Anti-Vaccination, and Infectious Sympathy.

The fear that suicidality could spread through textual contagion-that textually represented suicide could enter the reader's mind and cause self-destruction-took hold long before Émile Durkheim theorized it in the Victorian period. This article argues that the fear of suicidal contagion and the horror of vaccination, both of which raged in Britain in the long eighteenth century, were linked to ideas about sympathy and the importation of the Other into the Self. With reference to the psychoanalytic notions of extimité and étrangerété; the eighteenth-century medical theories of William Rowley and Edward Jenner; the philosophy of "sympathy," as adumbrated in the work of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume and Edmund Burke; and two key novels of sensibility (Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Julie and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther), this article examines the root of a belief that exists even today: that, in a suicidal process, the invading Other could become the Self and, Trojan horse-style, destroy it from the inside.