Monday, March 6 — Seemingly out of nowhere, the issue of mandatory vaccinations has been in the news in recent years. But governmental involvement in vaccination traces back to this date in 1810. That’s when Massachusetts enacted a law to “diffuse the benefits of inoculation for the Cow-Pox.” Such vaccinations of the mild, bovine cowpox virus immunized humans from smallpox, then a leading cause of disfiguring illness and death. This particular discovery dated from Great Britain just 14 years earlier. From producing simple medicines to complex vaccines and antibiotics, the pharmaceutical industry encompasses some 1,200 establishments doing about $170 billion of yearly business.
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