“Healthy young child goes to the doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of vaccines, doesn't feel good and changes. - AUTISM! Many such cases” (Trump 5)
Millions of parents around the world are anti-vaccine or vaccine-hesitant because of that reason. Vaccines, however, have saved many lives. Although there are risks, the benefits do outweigh the risks. Vaccines are beneficial because they have saved many lives in the past, the risks of them are very minimal and rare, and there are many more risks if you don’t get immunized.
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Vaccines have saved many lives in the past. To understand this better we should go back to 1796 when vaccines were created. Edward Jenner helped create a method to cure or stop smallpox. Smallpox killed many children and was linked with the Black Plague. Edward Jenner invented a method called arm-to-arm inoculation. There is where he took material from the blisters of an infected person and injected it into a non-infected person thus protecting the person from the disease (“Vaccine History” 1.). Smallpox was officially eradicated in 1980. “It is impossible to know exactly how many people would have died of smallpox since 1980 if scientists had not developed the vaccine, but reasonable estimates are in the range of around 5 million lives per year, or between 150 and 200 million lives saved between 1980 and 2018” (Children’s Hospital “Vaccine” 63.) Edward Jenner not only saved millions of lives but he started the development of disease control through vaccines.
Another vaccine that saved many lives in the past was the polio vaccine. The polio disease hit in the 1950s and it killed many and left millions helpless. It was terrifying because it targeted mostly children and nobody knew where it came from. It started as cold but then left its victims unable to move. Polio started with only a few cases but it spread and grew to thousands of cases. Scientist Karl Landsteiner made a huge discovery, polio came from a virus (Nash). Now the struggle was to make a vaccine. Then the disease spread to President Franklin Roosevelt making people realize that the disease could spread even to the strong. Franklin Roosevelt was able to start a fundraiser for the epidemic, however. It was called the March of Dimes where people could send in dimes to help the victims of the disease (2). They got tons of money for the fundraiser. After many failed attempts by other scientists, Jonas Salk was able to make a vaccine with the help of the fundraising of the March of Dimes (3). Now he had to test it on people and help confirm that it was safe for the science community. After several tests, the vaccine was proven safe. Eventually, they were even able to make an oral way to take the vaccine (4). The polio vaccine was able to be eradicated in most countries which ended up saving more lives than even the smallpox vaccine did.
The risks of vaccines are very minimal and rare. Many parents get their kids vaccinated on different schedules, and quite a few parents now aren’t getting their kids vaccinated at all. According to Heather Rogers, a parent of a young child, “If you took your baby in the 1980s like by the time they were one they would have had something like 5 shots and today take your baby to get shots and they get something like 20 shots before the time they are one” (Rogers). This is why most parents are worried about getting their kids vaccinated. “A Pew survey came out that said that 43 percent of parents of young children think that vaccines come with medium or high risks” (1). That’s a big percentage so let’s look at the real risks of vaccines and if risks are as high as most people are thinking. Normal symptoms of vaccines are fever, pain, stiffness, and getting sick and vomiting which I have experienced. Some vaccines can cause a rash as well (2). Those are very minor symptoms and vomiting is exceptionally rare.
A more severe symptom that people are worried about is seizures and it is indeed that vaccines can cause seizures. However, the majority of people who get seizures that are caused by vaccines are caused by high fever. This means that the seizures don’t have any bad effects. It doesn’t cause brain damage or mental health illness (3). According to Professor Ingrid Scheffer from the University of Melbourne, many parents are worried about vaccines causing epilepsy because it has seemed to happen many times (4). They call it vaccine encephalopathy (5). They have done many studies on it and realized that there are many different types of epilepsy, some are genetic (6). They also realized that the kids that had gotten epilepsy from vaccines already had a type of epilepsy and it was just triggered by the vaccine (7). Even if the kid didn’t get vaccinated that child would have ended up getting policy by something else in their life like high fever (8). In the end, vaccines do not cause any severe problems and even non-damaging seizures from vaccines are quite rare.
Another huge concern about vaccines is that vaccines cause autism. “One in seventy people are diagnosed [with autism] in the U.S.” (Pemberton). That’s a lot of people. It is normal for people to have concerns and wonder where autism comes from considering the number of cases. Many people and doctors started to think maybe vaccines were doing more harm than good to our kids. Dr. Andrew Wakefield was one of these doctors (1). He did a study on twelve people and then concluded that vaccines cause autism (2). His stud, however, didn’t prove anything. He looked into the twelve people’s stomach saw some inflammation in it and declared that the MMR vaccine caused the inflammation. According to him, the inflammation caused autism (3). I’m no doctor or scientist but that doesn’t seem very reliable. Neither did other people think it was, so they conducted some more studies. Those studies showed that there was no correlation between the number of cases of autism and getting vaccinated, either way, there are around the same number of cases, sadly (4). Even Allison Singer, a mother of a child with autism, said, “We have dozens of studies none of which link vaccines and autism” (5). In the end the MMR vaccine nor did any other vaccines cause autism.
What about Dr. Andrew Wakefield's study? He ended up getting his license taken away because he allegedly forged the study by making up some of the patient's medical history (Rogers). It was too late though, the study was published in a major health journal The Lancet and many people saw it (1). It immediately satisfied the people’s concerns and even after the other studies were conducted the people were still set on the fact that vaccines had to cause autism. They started to look for another reason why vaccines might cause autism and they found it. The mercury in the vaccines could have caused autism people said. “The mercury that is sometimes used in vaccines as a preservative is called primary cell” and that is what people thought could have caused autism (2). Amy Colkrunner a public health researcher from the University of Wisconsin did a study with a group of kids that had been vaccinated with a vaccine with primaracell and a group that had been vaccinated with one that didn’t have primaracell, there was no correlation (3). People still think that vaccines could have caused autism but the fact is, vaccines do not cause autism.
There are many more risks if you don’t get immunized. Many parents decide not to give their kids the MMR vaccine because of the myth that it causes autism. This, however, has had a very bad effect on the United States. Parents have the excuse that measles is not that harmful and that they would prefer their kid to have measles rather than have the chance that they might get autism from the vaccine. The thought that measles is not harmful is very false! According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “In 2017, measles caused an estimated 110,000 deaths” (“Global Measles Outbreak” 4.) Also... “Because of vaccination, more than 21 million lives have been saved and measles deaths have been reduced by 80% since 2000” (1 5.). It is sad to say measles has come back to the U.S. in a huge outbreak. “From January 1 – July 31, 2019, 182 countries reported 364,808 measles cases to the WHO” (2 1.). Many of those cases are from the U.S. as well. The worst part of this outbreak is that measles is a vaccine-preventable disease (3 6.). The measles outbreak comes to show that there are many more consequences if you don’t get immunized not only for your kids but for the whole community as well.
Vaccines are beneficial because they have saved many lives in the past, the risks of them are very minimal and rare, and there are many more risks if you don’t get immunized. There are many concerns about vaccines but in the end, they have helped millions of people worldwide. Although you don’t see it as much today because of the strong disease control that has been developed, vaccines are still saving lives each day. Vaccines have stopped diseases from spreading and killing millions of people. Getting immunized not only protects you from diseases but it protects the people around you. Don’t be selfish and get immunized.
Works Cited
- HelenBranswell, Helen Branswell, and Helen Branswell. “Trump, Once a Vaccine Skeptic, Changes His Tune amid Measles Outbreaks.” STAT, 26 Apr. 2019, www.statnews.com/2019/04/26/trump-vaccinations-measlses.org
- Children's Hospital. “Vaccines.” Podcast. Health 101.
- Children's Hospital. “Vaccine History.” Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, 20 Nov. 2014, www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-history.
- “Global Measles Outbreaks.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4 Sept. 2019, www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/measles/globalmeaslesoutbreaks.htm.
- Koenig, Debbie. “2019 Measles Outbreak: What You Should Know.” WebMD, WebMD, 11 Apr. 2019, www.webmd.com/children/news/20190411/2019-measles-outbreak-what-you-should-know.
- Nash, Bruce, director. The Search for a Polio Vaccine. YouTube, YouTube, m.youtube.com/watch?v=qwS3da6r-0Q.
- Ochmann, Sophie, and Max Roser. “Smallpox.” Our World in Data, 28 June 2018, ourworldindata.org/smallpox.
- Oliver, John, director. Vaccines. YouTube, YouTube, m.youtube.com/watch?v=7VG_s2PCH_c.
- Palfreman, Jon, director. The Vaccine War. PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 27 Apr. 2010, www.pbs.org/video/frontline-the-vaccine-war/.
- Pemberton, Sonya, director. Vaccines: Calling the Shots. PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 11 Sept. 2014, www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/vaccinescalling-the-shots.
- Rogers, Leo. “Vaccines: Are They Safe?” Podcast. Podcast, 14 Sept. 2017
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