The ethics and politics of compulsory HPV vaccination

On September 12, 2006, 3 months after the Food and Drug Administration licensed a vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV), Michigan lawmakers became the first in the United States to propose that vaccination be compulsory for girls entering sixth grade. Parents who objected would be able to opt out of the requirement under the same provisions that apply to other vaccinations. The bill passed the state senate by an overwhelming margin a week later and awaits consideration by the house. Other states are likely to follow Michigan's lead

"Science in a democracy" : the contested status of vaccination in the Progressive Era and the 1920s

In the first decades of the twentieth century, a heterogeneous assortment of groups and individuals articulated scientific, political, and philosophical objections to vaccination. They engaged in an ongoing battle for public opinion with medical and scientific elites, who responded with their own counterpropaganda. These ideological struggles reflected fear that scientific advances were being put to coercive uses and that institutions of the state and civil society were increasingly expanding into previously private realms of decision making, especially child rearing. This essay analyzes the motivations and tactics of antivaccination activists and situates their actions within the scientific and social climate of the Progressive Era and the 1920s. Their actions reveal how citizens of varied ideological persuasions, activists and nonactivists alike, viewed scientific knowledge during a period of swift and unsettling change, when the application of biologic products seemed to hold peril as well as promise

State and Local Government

Covers cases on municipal corporations—labor unions—right of municipal employees to strike—governmental and proprietary functions (Lehne); on the incorporation of municipalities—delegation of legislative powers (Colgrove); on the legislative power of first-class cities—use of parking meters for private advertising purposes upheld (Nutting); and on eminent domain—market value—valuation of mineral deposits (Colgrove)

Chronicle of an Epidemic Foretold: The Resurgence and Control of Tuberculosis in New York City

The Hertog Global Strategy Initiative is a research program that employs historical analysis to confront present and future problems in world politics. The 2011 topic is the History and Future of Pandemic Threats and Global Public Health. In this lecture, James Colgrove, associate professor in the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, discusses the tuberculosis epidemic in New York City in the 1990s