“Victims of Vaccination?”: Opposition to Compulsory Immunization in Ontario, 1900–90

Abstract

During the past two decades, many parents in Europe and North America have begun to question the routine use of immunization for the prevention of disease. Their concerns are the latest segment in the long history of lay people attempting to control the medical treatment they and their children receive. This article focuses first upon the social and political dimensions of one particular struggle over compulsory vaccination against smallpox in the city of Toronto during the first two decades of this century. Drawing upon newspaper accounts, minutes and reports of provincial and municipal departments of health, archival documents and pamphlets, it presents the opposing points of view in the battle over compulsory vaccination laws. The article then turns to the current controversy over the use of the pertussis vaccine, examining the work of the Committee Against Compulsory Vaccination, the group battling against immunization legislation. This examination raises the issue of how to resolve the conflict between “the public good”, and the rights of individual citizens to determine the scope and method of their own medical treatment.