Vaccination policy of the United States
This policy has been developed over the approximately two centuries since the invention of vaccination with the purpose of eradicating disease from the U.S. population, or creating a herd immunity.
[3] Once vaccines are introduced to the market, the FDA regularly inspects their production facilities, tests their quality, and receives reports of adverse reactions.
[5][6] In the opinion, judge Brett M. Kavanaugh (joined by Judith W. Rogers and Stephen F. Williams) therefore rejected the challenge on standing grounds.
In addition, the other thirteen required vaccines prevent highly contagious diseases communicable through the respiratory route, while HPV is spread only through sexual contact.
The early movement towards school vaccination laws began at the local level including counties, cities, and boards of education.
[22] An example of this political controversy occurred in 1893 in Chicago, where less than ten percent of the children were vaccinated despite the twelve year old state law.
[24] The court ruled that a school could deny admission to children who failed to provide a certification of vaccination for the protection of the public health.
The right to practice religion freely doesn't include liberty to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill health or death.
Research establishes a link between the rise of vaccine-preventable diseases and non-medical exemptions from school vaccination requirements, with the increased use of such exemptions contributing to loss of herd immunity within high-vaccine refusal communities ("clusters"), and hence an increasing number of infectious disease outbreaks,[40][41][42] including measles outbreak in 2018 and 2019.
[45] A 2014 study of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five cities founded that, as of 2010, about 79% of these systems required "schools or child-care facilities to report immunizations to local education or public health departments or allow them access to their records" and required provision of this information for children to attend school or for a child-care facility to receive and maintain its license.
[46][47] The San Diego Unified School District attempted in 2021 to set additional student vaccination rules, but the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2023 that, under California law, "the vaccinations required for school attendance present a statewide issue subject to statewide criteria.
American soldiers in other countries have spread diseases that ultimately disrupted entire societies and healthcare systems with famine and poverty.
As a military police power and as colonizers the United States took a very hands-on approach in administering healthcare particularly vaccinations to natives during the invasion and conquest of these countries.
[50] Unknowingly, American soldiers acted as agents of disease transmission, fostering bacteria in their haphazardly made camps.
Military personnel used Rudyard's Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" to explain their imperialistic actions in Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico and the need for the United States to help the "dark-skinned Barbarians"[50] reach modern sanitary standards.
If entire villages refused the army's current sanitation policy at any given time they risked being burnt to the ground in order to preserve the health and safety of soldiers from endemic smallpox and yellow fever.
This period began the United States' movement toward an expansion of medical practices that included "tropical medicine" in an attempt to protect the lives of soldiers abroad.
Chief among these is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which is co-managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
[53] Compensation covers medical and legal expenses, loss of future earning capacity, and up to $250,000 for pain and suffering; a death benefit of up to $250,000 is available.
[57][failed verification] As of October 2019, $4.2 billion in compensation (not including attorneys fees and costs) has been awarded over the forty-three year history of the program.
[58] According to the World Health Organization (WHO), vaccines build the body's immune system to protect it from illnesses like measles, mumps, and other life threatening diseases.
[61] Because there are no official vaccine requirements to visitors temporarily entering the US, policies are enacting so as to ensure the spread of diseases among US citizens are regulated.
For this reason, the US enacts specific policies regarding foreign travel in order to ensure a minimal spread of disease within its borders.
As stated by the US Center For Disease Controls and Prevention (CDC), this task has been given to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and coincides with the work of the Division of Global Migration Health (DGMH) to regulate the isolation and quarantine of suspected airline or ship passengers experiencing elevated symptoms of certain diseases.
