Anti Vaccination Pros And Cons

Vaccinations have gone through opposition and critics, but for the most part legislation has been slow, but treated vaccination fairly. To this day vaccination still faces many of the challenges that it faced in the early nineteenth century. The reasons have gone from personal freedom issues and just the overall effectiveness of mass immunization. The courts in the nineteenth century typically supported the enactment of mandatory vaccination programs. Most importantly for the future of mandatory vaccination policy, one important Supreme Court decision in the early part of the twentieth century acknowledged the power of state governments to mandate vaccination.

In the past, Americans did not have much say in their own health care. In today’s time, with the advent of new health-care bills and peaked interest in personal well being, Americans are now anxious to determine for themselves what they need to maintain their own and their loved ones’ health. However, there are still government-regulated requirements for people of all ages in regards to keeping the general public healthy. Vaccinations have always been a topic of contention in regards to younger children, but have been a staple of health for older adults. In fact, college requirements for vaccinations are mandatory, and failure to get the proper vaccines before college starts could result in holds on college students’ accounts or delays in

Unfortunately, little progress has been made since then, as reports from 2015 show only 72.2 percent of U.S. children are fully vaccinated (KFF, 2017). Healthy People 2020 recommends a national goal of 80 percent to maintain herd immunity (Child Trends Databank, 2015). Despite the life-saving importance of immunization, these stagnant rates show that many mothers of U.S. children do not adhere to vaccination recommendations. These critics and skeptics of vaccines are a part of the anti-vaccination movement. Originating upon the discovery of the first vaccine in 1796, this movement has progressed for hundreds of years. Currently, through media and prominent anti-vax social figures, the public can easily be relayed messages of vaccine controversies rather than scientific facts. Falsehoods include perceived low risk of contracting vaccine-preventable diseases, “overloading” the child’s immune system, mercury in vaccines, reports of negative reactions after vaccination, and the infamously popular myth that vaccines cause autism (Mittenzwei, Morrison, & Williams,

Although the negative claims behind anti-immunization stances are deceptive and discredited, some parents find it difficult to accept that vaccines are necessary and safe. Many of these reasons are due to personal or religious beliefs that have persuaded parents to bypass immunizations for their children. Consequently, health officials are seeing disquieting rises of diseases that are easily preventable. The CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) has reported hundreds of measles cases in the United States in 2011, the largest number in 15 years (Ben-Joseph, Elana). Essentially, almost all of these cases were in individuals who had not received a vaccine shot. Also found in the article was that a great amount of the quarrel over the shots comes from a 1998 study that tried to connect autism to a type of vaccine that defends against measles. However, there has been no scientific evidence that a vaccine or a combination of any of the shots induces autism. Undoubtedly, the doctor that wrote the article, calling vaccines a “deliberate fraud” ,lost his license for not submitting any evidence of his claim and causing people to neglect shots for that year. Sadly, due to that article, 1 in 4 parents still believe that vaccines are

Vaccinations have been widely discussed and debated about whether or not people should vaccinate their children. “Childhood vaccines offer protection from serious or potentially fatal diseases” (The Mayo Clinic, 2014)”. Vaccinations prevent diseases that can affect a child with symptoms of a cold or in some cases, the disease can be much more serious and can cause disability and death. The problem is that parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children against them. With choosing against vaccinating a child becoming a common occurrence, diseases that have been eradicated from the United States, are now starting to show back up in society. If there are no strict requirements on vaccinations, then diseases that have been dormant for decades from the U.S. will become into an epidemic. There are many reasons why parents state that they choose not to vaccinate their children. Some include religion, philosophical, and the possible connection to autism. These reasons have been proven to not be strong enough against the threat of the serious disease that vaccinations protect against. There are new regulations going into place, making it an educational and training process to the parents if they choose to not vaccinate their children. In addition to this, there are laws and regulations regarding who is liable in these situations. A child could possibly sue their parents or a third party could sue because they or someone in their family was affected from an infected

On the side of defending vaccinations, many people, as well as myself, stand firm in our beliefs, that vaccinations are good. The fact of the matter is there wouldn’t be such thing as vaccinations if they didn’t work. I believe a lot of the troubles come from the Autism scare, which I do understand is a frightening thought for a lot of parents, but with countless studies conducted and all pointing to a negative correlation of the two, I think its time to stop using that as an excuse, with Steven Salzberg a writer for Forbes saying, “Most of the anti-vax crowd have no scientific training or expertise, which might explain (but doesn’t excuse) their complete ignorance of the science. Over the past 15 years, dozens of studies involving hundreds of thousands of people have shown convincingly that neither vaccines nor any of the ingredients in them are linked to autism. Vaccines are not only safe, but they are perhaps the greatest public health success in the history of civilization” (Forbes 2015). It is due to the many people who believe they are smarter than science and medical research that we are having the measles and whooping cough scares that are occurring today. Without the use of vaccines many of the diseases that were under control, or completely depleted are now slowly starting to reappear. Measles being the biggest offender, with it said to have been fully eradicated in 2000, we had over 600 cases of measles in 2014. For all of the measles cases you read about, as

As children reach their teen years, their risk of becoming ill due to preventable, life-threatening infectious diseases considerably rises. In order to protect adolescents now and into adulthood, we strongly believe that ALL children should be vaccinated.

Recently the anti-vaccination movement has been on the rise. It all started with one study that suggested that the increasing rates of people diagnosed with autism is directly related to vaccines. Parents whose children were healthy babies and then started showing symptoms of autism were quick to blame vaccines. It is normal for symptoms of autism to not show up immediately, but some parents assume that this must mean that something caused it. Vaccines are something that many children get starting in their infancy so it is an easy target. The study that suggested that vaccines are related to the increase in autism was later falsified and there is currently no evidence that vaccines cause or have any relation to autism. Yet, many parents are concerned about their effects. Some parents are uncertain about whether vaccines have adverse effects so they better about not getting their children vaccinated. If given the choice between acting and potentially causing harm to their children and not acting and potentially causing harm people generally feel less guilt about not acting. This leads to people feeling safer about not vaccinating and putting their children at risk of a catching a disease than vaccinating and putting their children at risk for autism. While the number of people diagnosed with autism is increasing, this does not necessarily mean that the number of people who have autism has increased. The increased number of diagnoses is related to the increased ability to

Now, as stated above, misinformation fuels the anti-vaccination movement. The largest source of said misinformation is the abundance of zany conspiracy theories that pervade the Internet. Although there are many stories vaccination opponents cling to, the primary source of modern falsehoods is a fraudulent article published in 1998 by Dr. Andrew Wakefield in The Lancet, a renowned peer-reviewed medical journal. In his article, Wakefield described how his research showed a correlation between the onset of autism symptoms in children and the injection of the mumps, measles, and rubella vaccine. However, as Wakefield was found to have a slew of undeclared conflicts of interest and heavily manipulated results, The Lancet fully retracted his article in 2010, and his medical license was revoked (Douglas et al, 2014). At this point, however, the damage had already been done. The media carelessly circulated stories about Wakefield’s now-discredited article using sensationalist, fear-mongering headlines. The remnants of this massive reporting blunder now float in cyberspace like asteroids, colliding with parents worried about the safety of their children. These “asteroids” often convince naïve parents that childhood vaccinations are dangerous by implementing vicious scare tactics. Needless to say, nobody

Immunizations and vaccines have been around since the 1800s (Historic Dates). The idea of immunizing the population from deadly and unpleasant diseases is not a new idea. Yet many Americans, and people all around the world are beginning to question the effects of these vaccines, mainly on children and infants. It has been in more recent years that doctors have been recommending for children to start receiving vaccines as soon as they are born. The most common misconceptions of vaccines are that they cause autism, or that they cause the person being immunized to be a carrier of the disease. This causes a lot of new parents to rethink and hesitate to get their children vaccinated. However, the effects

Vaccinations are considered to be one of the greatest medical advancements of our time. The first vaccine was created in 1796 and many more have been created since. These deadly diseases such as smallpox, polio, and diphtheria are now being prevented. Since vaccines have been doing their job, we do not see them around anymore. The media is now displaying vaccines in a negative way and people are listening to the misconstrued knowledge. Parents are worried about the risks associated with the vaccines instead of the diseases they are preventing. They believe there may be a link between vaccines and the development of autism. Parents also believe there is an issue with the current immunization schedule. They believe that the children are getting too many vaccines at one time and this might cause other health related problems. This does not only affect the child who is not being vaccinated, it is a danger to children who cannot receive the vaccine due to weakened immune systems or other health related problems. The CDC states that there is no connection between vaccinations and autism. They also state that the immunization schedule is safe. Since more and more children are not being vaccinated, this might cause a global health epidemic in the future. These deadly diseases that were prevented from vaccines may reappear. It is important for health care workers to be up to date on the scientific facts regarding vaccinations so they can provide parents with accurate knowledge.

In 1998 Dr. Andrew Wakefield published a study in the Lancet showing a connection between vaccines and autism. Daley and Glanz explain that this appears to be the beginning of the doubts surrounding vaccinations. Here Daley and Glanz do not pull any punches. Daley and Glanz use crippling words to destroy Dr. Wakefield’s corrupt study. Each sentence in this paragraph digs Wakefield’s study a deeper and deeper hole. By doing this, Daley and Glanz paint an image that the whole anti-vaccine movement is constructed on a non-existent

More parents are choosing to not vaccinate their children these days because they fear for their own children’s safety from damaging side effects due to the shots. Parents worry about metal such as aluminum and formaldehyde in vaccine. Formaldehyde significantly increases the risk of asthma and allergy in young children. Parents actually believe vaccinations causes cancer. There are studies that say vaccines can and do cause cancer. The original paper that found a link between vaccines and autism was retracted by Lancet because they believed the statements in the paper were false without any ambiguity. Wakefield wrote the paper to make money. It was found that he didn’t disclose that he was a paid consultant to lawyers that were representing

People always have their own values and beliefs about social issues that arise in our society. Some of these issues have been a problem for several centuries and we haven’t been properly informed to know what causes certain epidemics. One of the problems is the question whether people should vaccinate or not. Opposition of vaccinations have existed since the 1800s, it has only been these past few years that I have started to hear about the increasing negative feedback about vaccinations. The terms pro-vaccination and anti-vaccination were introduced to me recently through the medias discussion about the two. The reason people are for or against vaccinations is based on many different unanswered questions such as, religion, research, personal incident, and other values people have about the subject. I will be discussing the benefits of vaccinations versus not taking vaccinations and bringing both of the ideas together by responding to a YouTube debate.

Should children be vaccinated? This is a question that has been a hot topic for some time now. All children should be vaccinated. We often ask “Why should we have our children vaccinated”? There are pros and cons to vaccinations. Vaccinations will reduce the risk of illness, provide a safer environment, and keep the parents from worry as much. In some cases, people think they cause more harm than anything.