"Religious concerns about immunization have a long history, reaching back to those who rejected Edward Jenner’s 1796 mode of smallpox vaccination as contrary to God’s will. In the United Kingdom, the Anti-Vaccination League formed in 1853 in London to oppose compulsory vaccination acts. Similar events occurred in the Netherlands and elsewhere. In the United States, several Boston clergymen and devout physicians formed the Antivaccination Society in 1879. In contemporary cases, such objections involve blood products, porcine or bovine pharmaceutical excipients, or the remote fetal origins of cell-culture media and rubella strain RA27/3. In contrast, it is also worth remembering that some of the earliest descriptions of variolation to prevent smallpox involved the proponency of Buddhist religious women."