BMJ 2002;325:430-432 ( 24 August )

Education and debate

Anti-vaccinationists past and present

Robert M Wolfe, assistant professor, Lisa K Sharp, assistant professor. 

Department of Family Medicine, Northwestern University's Feinberg Medical School, Morton Building 1-658, 303 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611-3008, USA

Correspondence to: R M Wolfe r-wolfe@northwestern.edu

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The British Vaccination Act of 1840 was the first incursion of the state, in the name of public health, into traditional civil liberties. The activities of today's propagandists against immunisations are directly descended from, indeed little changed from, those of the anti-vaccinationists of the late nineteenth century, say Robert Wolfe and Lisa Sharp

Much attention has been given on the internet to the "anti-vaccination" movementusing vaccination in its wider sense of "any immunisation"and its possible harmful effects on uptake rates of immunisations. Many observers believe that the movement is something new and a consequence of concerns arising from the large number of immunisations now given, but concern over vaccination began shortly after the introduction of smallpox vaccination and has continued unabated ever since. Methods of disseminating information have changed since the 19th century, but the concerns and activities of anti-vaccination movements in the United Kingdom and their counterparts in . . . [Full text of this article]

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