A history of vaccine mandates

Kenneth Bridges, Ph.D.

The proverb “an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure” is an important idea in medicine to avoid major health crises. As part of this, vaccinations have been a part of health care for years with successful results.

One of the earliest vaccine mandates dates to the American Revolution. Smallpox left millions dead and many others disabled or disfigured. Gen. George Washington knew that the health of his troops could determine the success of an entire campaign. In the winter of 1777, while his troops were at their encampment in Morristown, N.J., Washington ordered variolation for all troops who had not had smallpox. Variolation, the grinding up of smallpox scabs to be inhaled by patients to create immunity, began in the 1720s in the American colonies.

After development of the first successful smallpox vaccine by Dr. Edward Jenner in 1796, the U.S. government began actively considering measures to provide vaccines for the public. In 1798, President John Adams signed a law that gave the government power to order quarantines in the wake of a yellow fever epidemic that left thousands dead across the country. Medicine was still in a primitive state and doctors were not certain how the disease operated or spread, but the effectiveness of quarantining the infected was undeniable.

By 1917, smallpox vaccinations were a requirement in Arkansas for school attendance. Though there were a handful of court cases attempting to challenge quarantines and vaccine requirements, they were dismissed in favor of preventing the disease and saving lives.

Smallpox was eradicated in the United States by 1952, Europe by 1953, and South America by 1971. As a result, the Centers for Disease Control recommended ending mandatory smallpox vaccinations in 1971. Concern existed among some doctors that it was too soon, but only a small number of cases were being reported in remote areas of the world. In the United States, the mandatory vaccination ended in 1972, and the last recorded case of smallpox in the world was in 1978. Smallpox was declared eradicated by the World Health Assembly in 1980.

By the early 1950s, up to 50,000 children each year were infected with polio. Parents watched in horror as their children became paralyzed in a matter of days from the disease, some children died. With the first public trials of the new polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, more than 2 million children across the country participated. Mass vaccinations were held and public response was overwhelmingly positive.

With the vaccine a clear success, President Eisenhower invited Salk to the White House in 1955 and publicly thanked him for “saving the children of America.” Many schools enacted vaccine mandates, and by 1963 only four cases of polio were reported in Arkansas, down from the state’s high of nearly 1,000 cases in 1949. Polio was declared eradicated in the United States in 1979.

The Arkansas state legislature passed a law mandating vaccinations for polio, diphtheria, tetanus and measles in 1967 for all public and private students, with rubella added in 1973. The result was measles, mumps and rubella were eliminated in the state within a few years.

The science of vaccines is beyond dispute. The result of vaccination mandates has been a healthier population and less lives lost to preventable diseases.

Kenneth Bridges, Ph.D., is a professor of history at South Arkansas Community College in El Dorado.

https://www.swtimes.com/story/opinion/2021/09/26/oped-history-vaccine-mandates/8363060002/