Mandatory Measles Vaccination in New York City - Reflections on a Bold Experiment

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.”
– Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Though a vaccine has been available for more than 50 years, measles has recently reemerged as a public health threat in the United States. Outbreaks have arisen where vaccination rates have waned, and local governments have responded.

In Detroit, officials and religious leaders of an affected community collaborated, encouraging vaccination to control an outbreak. Los Angeles quarantined people exposed to the virus. New York City and Rockland County have seen the most cases, and their extensive vaccination efforts have included free clinics, meetings with community leaders, and email messages to clinicians. They also issued orders restricting the liberty of people who neither had nor were exposed to the virus…

Prosegui la lettura su “The New England Journal of Medicine“