The disease is a simple handshake. Contagious viruses spread throughout the nations like wildfire. When a new sickness turns into an epidemic, panic spreads rampant and many may wonder if there exists a cure for protection. The answer to that question lies in vaccines. Vaccines are a collection of the inactive form of a disease that, once injected into the bloodstream, stimulates antibodies to protect the host from a virus. The injection of a vaccine is essential for keeping any disease away. However, many question the very existence and ethics of the vaccines themselves. A rumor of vaccines being a direct cause of autism surfaced and stimulated an uprising in parents refusing to vaccinate their children. As time proceeded, parents began to lean towards homeopathy and home remedies instead of getting their kids immunized. This has produced an era of infection and disease spreading without stopping. Parents making the decision that their children are not going to be immunized is a decision that will greatly decrease their child’s chance at survival past early life. Parents must be warned of the great need for immunization. In this day and age of modern and safe medicine, parents should be required to vaccinate their children.
Vaccinations have held a long history of trial and error that has resulted in the medical breakthrough of safe vaccines that the world knows today. Though routine immunization appointments are extremely common nowadays, vaccines are a thing of the future. The first ever inoculation shot was not even invented until the late 1700s. A British physician by the name of Dr. Edward Jenner was the first to test inoculation in 1796. He injected the diseased material of cowpox into an eight-year-old boy and, later, injected the child with smallpox. The boy did not receive smallpox within his lifetime (Donald Arthur). The first-ever vaccination began with Dr. Jenner and that eight-year-old child. Jenner uncovered a complete medical breakthrough, though his ethics were unsound. His medical practices were viewed as unsanitary, practices that would never be permitted in a hospital setting today. Though his ideology and methods were frowned upon, his actions began to pave the way towards creating immunity from disease for all. Jenner’s work was a success. However, the world did not respond quite as gladly. His ethics were flawed, especially with beginning his experiments on a young child. Not only that, but Jenner’s steps to vaccinating were horrifying. Back in the 1800s, parents were opposed strongly to vaccinations simply because of the process they required. According to Opposition to Vaccines has Existed as Long as Vaccination Itself, inoculating children back then included, “...scoring the flesh on a child's arm, and inserting lymph from the blister of a person who had been vaccinated about a week earlier” (Greenhaven Press). Again, vaccines were not always completely harmless. The process of getting vaccinated was not safe, as the technique required extreme pain and the possibility of infection. The history of vaccines is one that is gruesome, as it mimicked that of physical torture. The parental contempt against immunization was understandable back then. Nonetheless, vaccines have improved. But, despite the improvements, people still held animosity against them.
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Back then, vaccines were so awful that even religious organizations took action to call them evil and gain religious exemption from them. Though Christians were clearly strongly opposed to vaccinations from the beginning, Christianity was not the only religion that had animosity towards vaccines. According to Azhar Hussein, “The MMR vaccine, combined with the rubella vaccine, was originally derived from the cells of aborted fetal tissue” (Azhar Hussain). Since the original formula for MMR was taken from the cells of an aborted fetus, many Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and Jewish communities had strong disdain towards it, as abortion is looked down upon in many of their teachings. Though the additives have changed, people of certain religions still remain opposed to them. Religious organizations continue to hold the same disdain toward vaccines. Nowadays, people have the liberty to choose whether or not they want to vaccinate. According to Letitia Stein, “About 2,400 kindergartners statewide have religious exemptions for the current school year (Stein). This is a problem. Though religious freedoms should be allowed in schools, vaccinations should not be optional. The ability to opt out of a vaccine not only puts the child in danger of disease but also puts other kids at risk. Beyond religious obligation, many schools have allowed people to choose whether or not they want to vaccinate. In fact, almost all schools in America allow religious exemption from vaccination. According to NCSL, “...18 states allow philosophical exemptions for those who object to immunizations” (NCSL). This, in practice, allows people to opt out of vaccinating their children due to personal objections, not regarding religion. The allowance of these state laws is not as beneficial as one may presume. Allowing parents to decide for their children if, ethically, they want their child to be vaccinated puts their child at a greater risk for infection and disease. Not only that, but the option to withdraw a child from vaccines puts other children at heavier risk.
However, there is hardly a need for parents to be frightened about vaccinating children anymore, as vaccinations have improved very greatly over time and are currently better than ever. Before vaccines are approved, they have to go through an extensive process that is overseen by the FDA-- otherwise known as the Food and Drug Administration, a United States government organization that ensures the safety of food, medicine, and cosmetics before they are shipped off to the general public. Not only that, but licensing takes ten years to complete, as they go through a lengthy process of clinical trials before releasing the medicines (CDC). Vaccinations, though not 100% safe, have still come a very long way as far as becoming safe for the public. The clinical trials vaccines must go through to become safe are extremely important. The lengthiness of the trials is absolutely critical, as they ensure that there are no gruesome side effects and that the vaccine safely prevents the population from disease. In addition, the FDA’s approval is the perfect guarantee that the medicine is absolutely safe for consumption. Parents are urged to immunize their children because it is so simple to avoid disease and keep children living. The medicine will for sure protect children from harm. Despite a rough history, vaccines are safer than ever and provide complete protection from diseases and bacteria. Vaccines are the only effective way to guarantee immunity from diseases.
Unfortunately, though, some people do not see the bright future that vaccines can provide. Parents have flocked to believing all of the medical information that is shown in the media, no matter how outrageously unfactual. In 1998, a man by the name of Andrew Wakefield disturbed the simple minds of the general public. In his article titled The Lancet, he, “...suggested credence to the debunked claim of a connection between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and development of autism in young children” (Hussain). The radical claim that vaccines are the direct cause of autism was made to caution people away from the MMR vaccine. Wakefield, once an acclaimed scientist, created an uprising in parents refusing to vaccinate their children out of fear that their children would contract autism. The claims themselves were extremely dangerous, as their heavy implications warded parents away from giving their children the basic vaccinations that they need to participate in school. This ideology was fatal. Many people refused and opted out of giving their children vaccines, thanks to the philosophical exemption law. This ideology, as it turned out, was completely false. In accordance with Evidence Shows Vaccines Unrelated to Autism, the United States federal court deemed all of Wakefield’s claims to be completely false (Evidence Shows Vaccines Unrelated to Autism). His work earned him the title of a fraud. His scientific credibility was completely deterred. Wakefield’s autism claims, however, caused a detriment to society. Despite the fact that his theories were debunked, parents flocked to his claims. With fewer people vaccinating their children, it increased the risk of disease in society. The fact that the United States federal court debunked his claims should be enough to push parents into vaccinating their children.
Wakefield’s false claims left a path of destruction in their wake. Even though his paper was refuted, parents still believed what he said, despite the overwhelming evidence. In fact, there is absolutely, “...no evidence of a relationship between vaccination and autism or autism spectrum disorders,” (Arthur). Many scientists and federal agencies have verbally declared that Vaccines do not, in fact, cause autism, but rather many other variables. Genetics plays a large role in what each child will inherit. If a child has autism, it is not due to vaccines, but rather that both parents carried the gene to give it to their child. Beyond that, parents usually mistake vaccines causing autism because signs of autism usually show up around 18-24 months, after vaccines have already been distributed (Evidence Shows Vaccines Unrelated to Autism). Autism does not typically become detectable to a parent who does not have a background in medicine because the earliest signs of autism are extremely subtle. The most obvious signs show up after the MMR shots have been given to children. Though immunization plays no role in autism, parents will often mistake the correlation due to the timeline of events. The MMR vaccine does not give children autism, and will rather protect them from worse things, such as actual diseases that could kill them.
The media, however, has made it incredibly difficult to stop the spread of flawed information. Social media and biased news outlets are no help, either. As the years have passed and information has become more accessible, people tend to believe everything they see. This fact has been a large assist in helping spread false information. Beyond that, famous figures with large power platforms have allowed people with false prophecies to spread their misinformation to anyone willing to hear it. Andrew Wakefield, as mentioned prior, paved the way for celebrities with unfactual ideas to spread their hatred across the media. Jenny McCarthy, for example, is the head of Generation Rescue and is avidly against vaccinating her children. Large famous platforms such as Oprah Winfrey and Larry King have allowed her access to their television shows so she can share her beliefs. As mentioned on the Oprah Winfrey Show that McCarthy guest starred on, McCarthy gave her son, whom she claimed had autism, a “gluten-free diet, aromatherapies, B-12 shots, and vitamins, she also tried chelation therapy, which is meant to remove toxic substances from the body. Her son, she claimed, was 'cured” (Huedel). McCarthy wildly announced that her son’s autism was fully cured by changing his diet and avoiding vaccinations. Nonetheless, she was completely in the wrong. Her claims are not only fully false on the scientific standard that autism cannot be cured, but is also absolutely dangerous to believe her thoughts. Autism is a disease that cannot be cured and is not caused by anything besides genetics. Airing on the side of false advice, McCarthy not only discards medicine that could protect both children and adults alike but also implies that a new diet will completely cure an irreversible genetic condition. This is detrimental to new parents or parents who believe all they see in the media. Beyond that, her information was boldly inaccurate, as she claimed she retrieved her degree in medicine from “The University of Google” (Huedel). This ideology is extremely toxic and dangerous to society. McCarthy’s bold statements allow parents and viewers to believe that all information derived from the Internet holds completely true. Not only is her data false, but it also provides a false sense of security in illogical ideas. It allows parents who desperately wish to either cure their child’s autism or avoid it, to gain false hope. Parents need to consider vaccinating their children. Vaccines do not cause autism as the media has conveyed and lack of immunization will put children in harm’s way.
The false activism against vaccinations has unwillingly entered society into an era of epidemics that have been previously cured. Vaccines allow it to be possible for life-threatening diseases to be completely cured. But, the rise of the anti-vaccination movement has put a halt to the progress. Many destructive diseases have been eradicated, such as measles, malaria, and polio. But, the uprising in anti-vaxxers has brought back these extinct diseases. In fact, in 2014, “...there were 668 cases of measles in 2014, a more than ten-fold increase from the average rate in the 00's” (Chituc). The increased amount of measles cases is a direct correlation to the decreased number of people vaccinating their children. For a world striving towards avoidance of disease, the lack of vaccinated children and adults alike has decreased the population’s chances for herd immunity. Herd immunity is where there are enough vaccinated humans that the population is relatively safe from disease. Different diseases require a different amount of people to be vaccinated in order for herd immunity to go into effect. In accordance to Donald Arthur, “An immunization rate greater than 90% is required to provide herd immunity protection for a highly infectious disease such as measles” (Arthur). The fewer people vaccinating their kids has clearly caused the increase in the measles epidemic. Measles was completely eradicated with the MMR vaccine and was so effective that the disease was put to a halt. But, parents opting out of immunizing their children have brought measles back. This is not only unsafe for unvaccinated children. With vaccination rates plummeting, so is the goal of achieving herd immunity. Even children who receive their vaccines become at risk of catching an infection from unvaccinated children. Parents are absolutely urged to realize that a routine vaccination could be what is keeping their child living.
Vaccinations have seen the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. With the rough beginning they endured, it likely was not foreseen that immunization would improve or, rather, that it would become a modern-day necessity. In the near future, it should absolutely be required to have children vaccinated. There are so many obvious benefits to vaccines, from avoiding those sick days with the flu to keeping schools infection free. However, the most important reason is to keep children alive. Children who are not vaccinated will not live as long as unvaccinated children if they contract a deadly virus, such as measles. Parents fear that vaccines will cause autism is an unhealthy mentality. Even if they continue to believe that vaccines are the direct correlation of autism, parents need to look at which is worse: the possibility of an autistic child or a dead child.
Parents should stay warned and informed on the facts and statistics of immunizing children. Though no vaccine nor medicine can be 100% effective, vaccines are the absolute only way to fully protect the population from harm. Unfortunately, until parents reject the falsities they hear in the media, the population of unimmunized children will continue to grow, threatening the lives of many more. Herd immunity is an objective that the nation as a whole is urged to strive toward. Vaccines are the only way to ensure that children will live free of disease and, in some cases, live past their childhood. If action is not taken, the blood of these infected and dead children is in the hands of those who refuse to take care of their own.
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