[13] When vaccination was introduced into UK public policy, and adoption followed overseas, there was opposition from trade unionists and others, including sectarian ministers and those interested in self-help and alternative medicines like homeopathy.
[15] Catholic and Anglican missionaries vaccinated Northwest Coast Native Americans during an 1862 smallpox epidemic.
Resistance to compulsion grew, and in 1889, after riots in Leicester, a Royal Commission was appointed and issued six reports between 1892 and 1896.
[citation needed] Jehovah's Witnesses condemned the practice of vaccination in 1931 as "a direct violation of the everlasting covenant that God made with Noah after the flood",[17] but reversed that policy in 1952.
For example, in Aceh Province, an autonomous province of Indonesia with its own Islamic Sharia Law, eighty percent of people refuse all vaccinations due to concerns about pig, or its derivatives, being used to make some vaccines (eating pig is considered haram).
[29] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has made vaccination an official initiative in its humanitarian relief program.
"[33] In August 2021, the Church again encouraged vaccination, specifically against COVID-19, in a public statement from the First Presidency: "We know that protection from [Covid and its variants] can only be achieved by immunizing a very high percentage of the population.... To provide personal protection from such severe infections, we urge individuals to be vaccinated.
[40][41] The New York Times covered the Congregation of Universal Wisdom and noted that many families have used these religious memberships to avoid vaccination requirements.
School, the United States District Court in New York affirmed the permissibility of claiming religious exemption from vaccination on the basis of such membership.
96% of students at Yeshivas (who are essentially all Orthodox Jewish) in New York City were immunized according to information obtained in 2014, although this is a lower than average rate.
[51] In 2013, nine health workers administering polio vaccine were targeted and killed by gunmen on motorcycles in Kano, but this was an isolated incident.
[56][57] In 2011, a CIA spy ran a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign to search for Osama bin Laden; such actions were strongly condemned by US[58] and international health NGOs,[56] the doctor involved was jailed[59] and the CIA promised not to use vaccination as a cover again.
[64] According to a March 2021 poll conducted by The Associated Press/NORC, vaccine skepticism is more widespread among white evangelicals than most other blocs of Americans.
[65] In the U.S., all states except Mississippi, California, West Virginia, Maine and New York allow parents to exempt their children from otherwise-required vaccinations for religious reasons.
[68] The American Medical Association opposes such exemptions, saying that they endanger health not only for the unvaccinated individual but also for neighbors and the community at large.