Kent Heckenlively, New York Times bestselling author of Plague of Corruption, calls upon both common sense and legal precedence to fight against vaccine mandates around the country. "My body, my choice!" used to be the rallying cry of the left in the abortion fight. But now this same principle of bodily autonomy is the central argument of conservatives, such as that of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in fierce opposition to so-called "vaccine passports," which would limit whether an individual could attend movies or other public events, work, or even go to school, if they chose to decline a COVID-19 vaccine. While cities like New York close their doors to unvaccinated people, the fight against vaccine mandates is cobbling together an unexpected alliance across the political spectrum, such as the Black mayor of Boston, Kim Janey, who recently claimed, "there's a long history" in this country of people "needing to show their papers" and declaring any such passport as akin to slavery. The starting point agreed upon by all parties as to whether the government can bring such pressure to bear upon individuals is the 1905 US Supreme Court of Jacobson v. Massachusetts. In that case, a Lutheran pastor declined a smallpox vaccination and was fined $5, the equivalent of a little more than $150 in today's currency, or less than many traffic tickets. The Jacobson case sparked a shameful legacy in American jurisprudence, being used as the sole reasoning by the US Supreme Court to allow the forced sterilization of a female psychiatric patient in 1927. This ruling paved the way for the involuntary sterilization of more than sixty thousand mental patients and gave legal justification to the eugenics movement, one of the darkest chapters in American medicine. In The Case Against Vaccine Mandates, New York Times bestselling author Kent Heckenlively, whose books have courageously taken on Big Pharma, Google, and Facebook, now points his razor sharp legal and literary skills against vaccine passports and mandates, which he believes to be the defining issue as to whether we continue to exist as a free and independent people.

In The Case for Vaccine Mandates, Alan Dershowitz—New York Times bestselling author and one of America’s most respected legal scholars—makes an argument, against the backdrop of ideologically driven and politicized objections, for mandating (with medical exceptions) vaccinations as a last resort, if proved necessary to prevent the spread of COVID. Alan Dershowitz has been called “one of the most prominent and consistent defenders of civil liberties in America” by Politico and “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer and one of its most distinguished defenders of individual rights” by Newsweek. He is also a fair-minded and even-handed expert on civil liberties and constitutional rights, and in this book offers his knowledge and insight to help readers understand how mandated vaccination and compulsion to wearing masks should and would be upheld in the courts. The Case for Vaccine Mandates offers a straightforward analytical perspective: If a vaccine significantly reduces the threat of spreading a serious and potentially deadly disease without significant risks to those taking the vaccine, the case for governmental compulsion grows stronger. If a vaccine only reduces the risk and seriousness of COVID to the vaccinated person but does little to prevent the spread or seriousness to others, the case is weaker. Dershowitz addresses these and the issue of masking through a libertarian approach derived from John Stuart Mill, the English philosopher and political economist whose doctrine he summarizes as, “your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose.” Dershowitz further explores the subject of mandates by looking to what he describes as the only Supreme Court decision that is directly on point to this issue; decided in 1905, Jacobson v. Massachusetts involved a Cambridge ordinance mandating vaccination against smallpox and a fine for anyone who refused. In the end, The Case for Vaccine Mandates represents an icon in American law and due process reckoning with what unfortunately has become a reflection of our dangerously divisive age, where even a pandemic and the responses to it, divide us along partisan and ideological lines. It is essential reading for anyone interested in a non-partisan, civil liberties, and constitutional analysis.

This open access book discusses individual, collective, and institutional responsibilities with regard to vaccination from the perspective of philosophy and public health ethics. It addresses the issue of what it means for a collective to be morally responsible for the realisation of herd immunity and what the implications of collective responsibility are for individual and institutional responsibilities. The first chapter introduces some key concepts in the vaccination debate, such as ‘herd immunity’, ‘public goods’, and ‘vaccine refusal’; and explains why failure to vaccinate raises certain ethical issues. The second chapter analyses, from a philosophical perspective, the relationship between individual, collective, and institutional responsibilities with regard to the realisation of herd immunity. The third chapter is about the principle of least restrictive alternative in public health ethics and its implications for vaccination policies. Finally, the fourth chapter presents an ethical argument for unqualified compulsory vaccination, i.e. for compulsory vaccination that does not allow for any conscientious objection. The book will appeal to philosophers interested in public health ethics and the general public interested in the philosophical underpinning of different arguments about our moral obligations with regard to vaccination.

The untold story of how America's Progressive-era war on smallpox sparked one of the great civil liberties battles of the twentieth century. At the turn of the last century, a powerful smallpox epidemic swept the United States from coast to coast. The age-old disease spread swiftly through an increasingly interconnected American landscape: from southern tobacco plantations to the dense immigrant neighborhoods of northern cities to far-flung villages on the edges of the nascent American empire. In Pox, award-winning historian Michael Willrich offers a gripping chronicle of how the nation's continentwide fight against smallpox launched one of the most important civil liberties struggles of the twentieth century. At the dawn of the activist Progressive era and during a moment of great optimism about modern medicine, the government responded to the deadly epidemic by calling for universal compulsory vaccination. To enforce the law, public health authorities relied on quarantines, pesthouses, and "virus squads"-corps of doctors and club-wielding police. Though these measures eventually contained the disease, they also sparked a wave of popular resistance among Americans who perceived them as a threat to their health and to their rights. At the time, anti-vaccinationists were often dismissed as misguided cranks, but Willrich argues that they belonged to a wider legacy of American dissent that attended the rise of an increasingly powerful government. While a well-organized anti-vaccination movement sprang up during these years, many Americans resisted in subtler ways-by concealing sick family members or forging immunization certificates. Pox introduces us to memorable characters on both sides of the debate, from Henning Jacobson, a Swedish Lutheran minister whose battle against vaccination went all the way to the Supreme Court, to C. P. Wertenbaker, a federal surgeon who saw himself as a medical missionary combating a deadly-and preventable-disease. As Willrich suggests, many of the questions first raised by the Progressive-era antivaccination movement are still with us: How far should the government go to protect us from peril? What happens when the interests of public health collide with religious beliefs and personal conscience? In Pox, Willrich delivers a riveting tale about the clash of modern medicine, civil liberties, and government power at the turn of the last century that resonates powerfully today.

Introduction : our immunization social order -- How are vaccines political? -- The solution of the vaccine court -- Health and rights in the vaccine-critical movement -- Knowing vaccine injury through law -- What counts as evidence? -- The autism showdown -- Conclusion : the epistemic politics of the vaccine court.

The Immunization Safety Review Committee was established by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to evaluate the evidence on possible causal associations between immunizations and certain adverse outcomes, and to then present conclusions and recommendations. The committee's mandate also includes assessing the broader societal significance of these immunization safety issues. While all the committee members share the view that immunization is generally beneficial, none of them has a vested interest in the specific immunization safety issues that come before the group. The committee reviews three immunization safety review topics each year, addressing each one at a time. In this fifth report in a series, the committee examines the hypothesis that exposure to polio vaccine contaminated with simian virus 40 (SV40), a virus that causes inapparent infection in some monkeys, can cause certain types of cancer.

The story of an American hero who stood against all the forces of Gilded Age America to help enshrine our civil rights and economic freedoms. Dissent. No one wielded this power more aggressively than John Marshall Harlan, a young union veteran from Kentucky who served on the US Supreme Court from the end of the Civil War through the Gilded Age. In the long test of time, this lone dissenter was proven right in case after case. They say history is written by the victors, but that is not Harlan's legacy: his views--not those of his fellow justices--ulitmately ended segregation and helped give us our civil rights and our economic freedoms. Derided by many as a loner and loser, he ended up being acclaimed as the nation's most courageous jurist, a man who saw the truth and justice that eluded his contemporaries. "Our Constitution is color blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens," he wrote in his famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, one of many cases in which he lambasted his colleagues for denying the rights of African Americans. When the court struck down antitrust laws, Harlan called out the majority for favoring its own economic class. He did the same when the justices robbed states of their power to regulate the hours of workers and shielded the rich from the income tax. When other justices said the court was powerless to prevent racial violence, he took matters into his own hands: he made sure the Chattanooga officials who enabled a shocking lynching on a bridge over the Tennessee River were brought to justice. In this monumental biography, prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Peter S. Canellos chronicles the often tortuous and inspiring process through which Supreme Courts can make and remake the law across generations. But he also shows how the courage and outlook of one man can make all the difference. Why did Harlan see things differently? Because his life was different, He grew up alongside Robert Harlan, whom many believed to be his half brother. Born enslaved, Robert Harlan bought his freedom and became a horseracing pioneer and a force in the Republican Party. It was Robert who helped put John on the Supreme Court. At a time when many justices journey from the classroom to the bench with few stops in real life, the career of John Marshall Harlan is an illustration of the importance of personal experience in the law. And Harlan's story is also a testament to the vital necessity of dissent--and of how a flame lit in one era can light the world in another. --