Hesitancy toward vaccination has been a constant since the practice’s inception at the end of the eighteenth century, yet the mid-twentieth century introduced a complex paradox: the simultaneous rise of vaccine skepticism and the mass acceptance of compulsory childhood immunization. This presentation examines how historical trends in religious, political, and secular objections to vaccination have persisted and mutated over the last 200 years. It will describe the impact of modern social drivers—including shifting gender roles, environmental concerns, economic imperatives, and the valuation of children—on vaccination discourse from the latter-twentieth century to today. This historical contextualization will offer insight into how today’s vaccination resistance and rejection both mirror and depart from the past.

Professor Elena Conis is a historian of science and medicine whose research focuses on scientific controversies, science denial, and the public understanding of science. She is the author of How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT, which received the 2024 William H. Welch Medal and was a finalist for the 2023 National Association of Science Writers Book Award; Vaccine Nation: America’s Changing Relationship with Immunization, which received the 2015 Arthur J. Viseltear Award; and, with Aimee Medeiros and Sandra Eder, Pink and Blue: Gender, Culture and the Health of Children. Her current book project, Measles: A Global History, is under contract with Polity Press. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine, and the Science History Institute.