Europeans have an ironic history with vaccines

Human Rights court rule that compulsory vaccinations could be necessary in democratic societies stretches back more than a century.

When the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg ruled last Thursday that compulsory vaccinations could be necessary in democratic societies, it was just the latest chapter in a saga that stretches back more than a century.

Mankind’s first-ever vaccine, a breakthrough in the fight against deadly smallpox in the 19th century, was made compulsory in some European countries, yet proved controversial even then.

The issue touches on the deepest fundamentals of society: a confluence of the state and its citizens with the concern for and control over one’s own body.

The ECHR ruling, the culmination of years of legal battles over a Czech law requiring vaccination of schoolchildren, comes at a crucial time as the world faces a new scourge: Covid-19.

In its ruling, the ECHR said compulsory vaccines required by Czech health authorities are in the “best interests” of children. “The objective has to be that every child is protected against serious diseases, through vaccination or by virtue of herd immunity,” said the high court.

Under Czech law, children must be vaccinated against nine diseases including diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and measles. The case was brought by families that had been fined or whose children had been refused access to a nursery for failing to comply with vaccination requirements.

In arguing for vaccinations, lawyers for the Czech health authority plumbed the question of what legal and moral obligations individuals have to their fellow citizens. “The more parents refuse to vaccinate, the greater the risk that diseases will spread,” they argued. “The plaintiffs benefit from the fact that others bear the burden of the responsibility for the health of the population.”

Vaccination and resulting immunity, first discovered by English country physician Edward Jenner, are considered among the greatest achievements in the history of medical science and public health. Jenner found that milkmaids appeared to be immune from smallpox because they had been infected with a non-lethal strain, the related cowpox virus. He then developed a process based on cowpox that could eradicate one of the most dreaded diseases of its day. The affliction had a mortality rate of 30 per cent and left the majority of survivors covered with deep pockmarks, including on their face. Eventually, fancy ladies flocked to Parisian salons filled with cows so they could be directly infected, or vaccinated, with the cowpox strain.

Yet when England and Germany moved to require vaccination with the new medical miracle, the push-back was surprising.

Medical historian Malte Thiessen told broadcaster Deutsche Welle that vaccines have always been political in Germany. “Inoculation has always been about more than just the jab. It’s also about a worldview,” he said. An imperial German vaccination law was put in force in 1874 after widespread smallpox infections across Europe killed tens of thousands of people in Prussia. While many willingly complied with the mandate, the “Lebensreform”, or life reform, movement gained adherents who instead advocated natural ways of strengthening the body such as sunshine or special diets. An association opposing compulsory vaccination soon had 300,000 members.

For them, vaccines were the “devil’s tool”, Thiessen said. “Something artificial, chemical getting injected into the body. That helps explain the huge opposition to vaccines in Germany’s alternative circles until today.”

In Victorian England, a similar movement took shape after the government passed a series of laws making vaccination against smallpox compulsory. Many citizens and healthcare professionals supported the initiative, but anti-vaccination feelings grew, reaching full force in the 1890s with the formation of a group called the National Anti-Vaccination League that organised protests and produced its own publications to promote anti-vaccine views.

Ultimately, the movement became too popular to ignore and the government made it possible for people to opt-out of vaccination.

One of the great historical ironies is that France, birthplace of Louis Pasteur, is perhaps the most vaccination-sceptical country in the world. Though the numbers have risen in recent weeks, previous polls showed that fewer than half of French citizens polled would take the new vaccines developed to fight Covid-19. Among his renowned achievements, Pasteur developed the first “attenuated vaccine” in the late 19th century. Using infected rabbits, he produced the first rabies vaccine.