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The Vaccine Revolt of 1904 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

By 

René F. Najera, DrPH

February 23, 2020

In 1904, the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil . The reason for the riot was the resistance to a compulsory vaccination law that had been passed by Congress earlier that year. Citizens who had been displaced by gentrification of the city and were among the most disadvantaged groups banded together with anti-vaccine and anti-government groups, including some members of the armed forces. When the government began to try to forcefully vaccinate against smallpox, violence broke out. By the end of the riots, dozens were dead and hundreds were wounded. The government had somehow managed to stave-off a coup, and the Brazilian President decided not to press further with the compulsory vaccination. A little over one hundred years later, Brazilians after an epidemic swept to the country, demonstrating yet again that vaccine policy is innately political. As Paul Offit, MD, once said, the vaccine controversy is a cultural one, not a scientific one. The following video is in Portuguese, but the closed captioning is in English. It tells the story of the “Vaccine Revolt.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i6v9f_aWjg You can also watch a great video on this (about 22 minutes long) by visiting the Oswaldo Cruz Virtual Library:

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