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The introduction of vaccines against infectious diseases has been one of the most important contributions to public health of the last century. Diseases like smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, whooping cough, and rubella were far and away the major killers of human beings until the beginning of the twentieth century. Nowadays, these diseases have been dramatically reduced or even eliminated, as a result of large-scale vaccination programs. A very large majority of parents voluntarily enrol their children because they are convinced by the beneficial effects of vaccination. At the same time, since the introduction of these programs certain groups of parents have persistently refused to vaccinate their children. Until recently, non-vaccination in the Netherlands was mainly confined to ‘pietistic reformed’ protestant communities (bevindelijk gereformeerden) in the Bible Belt. However, in the last two decades, a broader anti-vaccination movement has emerged. This is a multifaceted movement, including anthroposophists, homeopaths and adherents of ‘natural’ and ‘alternative healing.’ They question the self-evidence with which government provides and promotes large-scale vaccination programs. Some argue that diseases such as measles could – in the case of otherwise healthy children – contribute to mental growth and to immunity building. This, so they argue, provides someone with greater resilience against diseases like cancer and allergies later in life. Others emphasise the negative effects of vaccines, because, so they argue, they contain dangerous toxic chemicals and overwhelm the immune system of young children. The most famous example of such a backlash against vaccination programs is the MMR-vaccine causes autism-controversy a decade ago, in the wake of the publication of Andrew Wakefield’s notorious 1998 paper in The Lancet.1 By now, the claim is debunked, the paper is retracted, and the author is stripped of his medical license and academic reputation.2 Still, the suggested vaccine-autism link remains ‘the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years.’3 The claim was widely reported in the media and went viral on anti-vaccination websites. It resulted in a sharp drop in the vaccination rates in the UK and Ireland, followed by an significantly increased incidence of measles and mumps, and ending in severe

The Return of the Measles to the Low Countries: A Legal-Philosophical Exploration