CYIL vol. 13 (2022)

MARTIN ŠOLC CYIL 13 ȍ2022Ȏ Nevertheless, a part of the public is very sceptical towards vaccination, stressing their alleged threats to health. While the opposition to compulsory vaccinations is as old as vaccines themselves, vaccine hesitancy has recently been recognised as a global health challenge since immunisations rates in many regions of the world have plateaued or started to decline. 4 Refusal to undergo compulsory vaccination contributed to the development of the concept of conscientious objection at the turn of the 19 th and 20 th centuries. 5 Nowadays, it is coming back as a challenge to national constitutional laws as well as international systems of human rights protection. In this paper, we present the contemporary system of compulsory vaccination in the Czech Republic and analyse its permissibility from the perspective of the Czech constitution, the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European Convention on Human Rights), as well as a more fundamental ethical (or legal-philosophical) approach. 1. Compulsory Vaccination in the Czech Perspective Czech vaccination programmes have a long and successful history. The first vaccines against smallpox were administered as early as around 1800, several years after the world’s first smallpox vaccine experiment carried out by Edward Jenner in England. Based on an imperial decree, a massive vaccination campaign was launched in 1821. In eight years, almost half of young children were vaccinated. Massive vaccination campaigns against other diseases (such as diphtheria, tuberculosis, or whooping cough) were started after the end of the Second World War. These efforts proved highly successful, effectively eliminating some of the dangerous diseases just in a few years. Regular vaccination of children in a form similar to today’s system was commenced in 1959. 6 In the last decade, there has been a lot of discussion about dropping vaccination rates. There is no truly complex data on the matter: public health authorities control the vaccination rates on the basis of randomly chosen first letter of the children’ names each year. Nevertheless, it seems that vaccination rates have been even slightly increasing since the mid 2010s, now being at around 95 per cent of children. 7 It seems that vaccine denial, while an important and potentially dangerous issue, is often seen as much more widespread than 4 See LARSON, H. J., GAKIDOU, E., MURRAY, Ch. J. L. The Vaccine-Hesitant Moment. New England Journal of Medicine. (2022, Vol. 387, No. 1), p. 59. doi: https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra2106441. 5 See SALMON, D. A., TERET, S. P., MacINTYRE, C. R. SALISBURY, D., BURGESS, M. A., HALSEY, N. A. Compulsory vaccination and conscientious or philosophical exemptions: past, present, and future. The Lancet. (2006, Vol. 367, No. 9508), pp. 436–442. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(06)68144-0. 6 See V českých zemích se očkuje od roku 1821. První vakcína byla proti pravým neštovicím. [Vaccinations Have Been Taking Place in the Czech Lands Since 1821. The First Vaccine Was Against Smallpox.] ČT24. (6 February 2020.) accessed 25 August 2022, or V českých zemích se očkuje už 200 let. Díky tomu zmizela řada chorob. [Vaccinations Have Been Taking Place in the Czech Lands for 200 Years. Thanks to This, Many Diseases Disappeared.] iDNES. (27 December 2020.) accessed 25 August 2022. 7 See Očkováno proti spalničkám, zarděnkám a příušnicím je 90 procent dětí do dvou let [90 percent of Children Under the Age of Two Are Vaccinated Against Measles, Rubella, and Mumps]. Týden. (18 May 2022.) accessed 23 June 2022.

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