When Did Mandatory Vaccinations Become Common and The Federal Government backed by the 3 branches make historical decisions?

in 1798, Congress returned to the issue after a high percentage of marine workers succumbed to yellow fever. For the first time ever,, Congress required privately employed sailors to own insurance and authorized the collection of a monthly payroll tax to fund it. John Adams promptly signed the law when it reached his desk.

Chapman states that few founders contested the federal government’s responsibility to protect the population from epidemics like yellow fever. The real issue, he reports, “was which level of government should enact and enforce quarantine.” This was the same question that arose years later when vaccination gained popularity in the medical field. Wendy K. Marine, George J. Annas, and Leonard Glantz explain that while Jeffersonians were uncomfortable with a strong federal role, Jefferson himself favored a bill that required the federal government to “guarantee and distribute effective vaccine” and signed it into law in 1813. Ultimately, Congress decided that the best approach was to leave the implementation of vaccination efforts up to state and local authorities.

America had many years of experience with vaccinations. The Puritans provided for vaccinations against smallpox after an outbreak devastated New England. But immunizations weren’t required anywhere in the United States until 1809, when Boston imposed mandatory vaccination to quell recurring outbreaks of smallpox that patchy, voluntary vaccination was permitting. Subsequently, some states adopted similar legislation. Scholars Alexandra Minna Stern and Howard Markel report that incidences of smallpox markedly declined between 1802 and 1840, but made major reappearances in the 1830s and 1870s when public memory of life imperiled by disease had dimmed and “irregular physicians” of the but made major reappearances in the 1830s and 1870s when public memory of life imperiled by disease had dimmed and “irregular physicians” of the 1850s challenged the practice of immunization with “unorthodox medical theories.” One skeptical leader, British immigrant and reformer William Tebb, claimed, facts notwithstanding, that vaccination induced 80% of smallpox cases. Further, he alleged 25,000 children were “slaughtered” in Britain each year thanks to the program. The arguments were preposterous and contrary to evidence, but resonated with the public.

There’s a striking parallel to current anti-vaxxer scares playing on people’s fears, like the discredited and recanted study that alleged vaccination induced autism. Anti-vaccinationist Dr. J.F. Banton warned that vaccination would introduce “bioplasm” into the bloodstream and expose subjects to the “vices, passions, and diseases of the cow.” Stern and Markel relate that critics of vaccination claimed it was a “destructive and potentially defiling procedure of heroic medicine” akin to blood-letting. Many working-class people voiced the fear you hear today that the work of scientists was an “assault on their communities by the ruling class” and an “intrusion of their privacy and bodily integrity.”

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https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/158827