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Jul 2023
40m 57s

The Original Anti-Vaxxer

Wnyc Studios
About this episode
In 1902, a Swedish-American pastor named Henning Jacobson refused to get the smallpox vaccine. This launched a chain of events leading to two landmark Supreme Court cases, in which the Court considered the balancing act between individual liberty over our bodies and the collective good. A version of this story originally ran on The Experiment on March 21, 20 ... Show More
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