Lora Little’s son Kenneth died of measles and diphtheria when he was seven-years-old. She didn’t blame those vaccine-preventable diseases though. Instead, she blamed the smallpox vaccine that he had gotten to go to school earlier that year.
She soon became one of the most vocal anti-vaccine spokespeople of her time – the late 19th century. Her son was vaccinated in 1895.
In addition to speaking out against rules requiring vaccination to attend school, Little wrote a pamphlet, Crimes of the Cowpox Ring.
She even got an anti-vaccination law passed in Minnesota in 1903, one that made it so that children could not be made to get vaccinated as a condition to attend school. Not surprisingly, the state saw a smallpox epidemic in 1906.
For More Information on Lora Little:
- Pox: An American History
- Deadly Choices
- Vaccine
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