Compulsory vaccination, an old and complex controversy

Compulsory vaccination is a health decision that has caused controversy since the first treatments were discovered, and that has returned to public debate with COVID-19.

Austria will impose vaccination on all adults from February 4. It is the first European country to make that decision.

It’s a political decision.”the subject of a very intense and passionate debate”, recognized the Austrian Chancellor, Karl Nehammer, at the end of January.

The debate has not arisen with the COVID crisis. It has been appearing and disappearing for two centuries, to the sway of political and historical vicissitudes, since the first vaccine against smallpox was invented at the end of the 18th century.

Some Scandinavian countries imposed compulsory vaccination between 1800 and 1810. Around 1853, the United Kingdom passed a law to that effect.

Paradoxically, it is these countries that are now the most reluctant to impose forced inoculations now. France, on the other hand, imposes numerous vaccines on its population, although the debate lasted a long time.

“At the time when France decided the obligation”, at the beginning of the 20th century, “England abandoned it and never took it up again.”, sums up the doctor and philosopher Anne-Marie Moulin.

The Spanish vaccination expedition

In Latin America, the path of compulsory immunization follows the ups and downs of colonial history.

The Royal Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition, promoted by the Spanish doctor Francisco Javier Balmis, went around the world between 1803 and 1806, to impose the smallpox vaccine in all corners of the Empire, although with mixed success.

In Mexico, compulsory vaccination against smallpox was imposed in 1926, and in 1973 the obligation was extended to four essential vaccines: against polio, measles, diphtheria (DPT) and tuberculosis (BCG).

In Argentina, a 1983 law also stipulates compulsory and free vaccination and sets a national calendar.

On December 25, Ecuador began to apply mandatory vaccination against the coronavirus for all citizens over five years of age.

Riots and Passports

In the United Kingdom, a series of violent riots in the first decade of the 20th century in Leicester led the authorities to reverse their decision to force the population to be immunized.

One hundred years later, in the 2000s, “public health specialists thought that politically it could no longer be forced: it seemed useless, unpleasant and undemocratic”, emphasizes Moulin.

France gave up imposing the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis at that time.

In the public debate the notion arose that “the Anglo-Saxon countries have abandoned the obligation, only the backward Latin countries remain”, highlights Moulin. “That climate lasted until COVID“, Explain.

Many countries, particularly Scandinavian, have excellent vaccination rates, without forcing their respective populations. But is that free choice a cause or a consequence of each citizen’s willingness to be vaccinated?

With the introduction of health passports, the debate enters another dimension. Citizens are not required to be vaccinated, but without this document, their daily lives become enormously complicated.

“There is a fundamental difference”, indicates the French historian Laurent-Henri Vignaud, a specialist in vaccination. “In one case it is ‘the protective State assumes its responsibilities and tells you what you have to do’”.

“At the other extreme is ‘do what you want, but depending on your choice, you can participate fully in social life or not‘” he concludes.