Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Children's Rights Litigation
Publication Date
2019
Volume
21(4)
First Page
27
Abstract
(Excerpt)
Today, U.S. children are typically vaccinated against 11 deadly, and formerly common, diseases: diphtheria, Hib disease, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, pertussis (whooping cough), polio, rubella, pneumococcal disease, tetanus, and varicella (chicken pox). But it wasn’t always so. Vaccines are a relatively recent development in medical history. The world’s first vaccine, for smallpox, was discovered in the late 1700s. A hundred years later, Louis Pasteur discovered the second vaccine, for rabies. By the mid-1900s, technological and medical advances drove more rapid vaccine development, and in 1963, the first measles vaccine was approved.
Before the measles vaccine became available, up to four million Americans contracted the disease every year. By 2004, that number was reduced to just 37 individuals. Measles was therefore declared “eliminated” in the United States years ago, but outbreaks still occur when travelers from other countries enter the United States and transmit the disease to unvaccinated individuals here. These outbreaks have led to fierce debate between supporters of the measles vaccine and those opposed to it. And those debates, in turn, have led to vaccine mandates and to challenges to those mandates. This article reviews some of that history.
Comments
©2019. Published in Children's Rights Litigation, Volume 21, Issue 4, Summer 2019, by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association or the copyright holder.