Vaccination Essay

Throughout history, vaccinations have been used to help the prevention of infectious diseases; some of which can produce serious illnesses, crippling disabilities, and ultimately be the cause of death. There is evidence of ancient culture’s attempting to treat transmittable diseases with various forms of inoculations. Developments in the research of vaccinations increased during the mid-twentieth century because of the established of more advanced laboratories, improved equipment, and new innovations. The progression of medicine during history has helped further the development of research into vaccinations. Several cultural, ethical, and religious issues have resulted from the development and use of vaccinations in our society. The topic of vaccinations has caused a strong debate amongst our culture about the safety and danger of treating infectious diseases with such methods.

Vaccinations have been actively used for over 200 years now and have been effective for over 200 years as well. Western medicine’s introduction to the practice is said to have occurred within the eighteenth century, when a traveling British aristocrat, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, reported her observations of Turkish children being injected with pus from smallpox victims. Although this practice seemed quite harsh, most of these children would contract only a mild version of the illness. In return, these recipients would retain a lifelong immunity to this terrible disease (World of Microbiology & Immunology). Similarly, in the United States, a Puritan minister by the name of Cotton Mather learned about inoculation from his African slave, Onesimus. Onesimus claimed that he was inoculated with smallpox pus and never caught the tragic disease (Williams). This type of medicinal treatment was initially rejected by most Western practitioners. They felt it was a dangerous and barbarous practice, but vaccination gained a tremendous amount of support at the turn of the nineteenth century when English physician Edward Jenner created a new smallpox vaccine derived from the relatively mild cowpox virus (Riedel). There’s no doubt that history has shown the positive outcomes of immunization and continued to show them as technology and medicine progressed.

In recent years there has been a movement against giving vaccines to children, that now has nearly 40% of parents in the United States following along. But it is due to these vaccines that most children today have never experienced diseases such as polio or the measles such as their grandparents have. Since they have not seen these diseases, parents feel it is unnecessary to vaccinate them for fear of developing the possible side effects or because of reports they cause autism. However, these vaccines are critical for eradicating these deadly infectious diseases, and are vitally needed to keep them under control. Which makes it absolutely necessary that children who wish to attend school have mandatory vaccinations against diseases such as polio and measles, without exception. Therefor this paper will show the benefits of getting vaccinated far out weigh the risks such as potentially saving your child 's life, protecting your families, and saving your family time and money from enduring prolonged hospital stays. That the risks of getting the diseases such disfigurement, paralysis, even death, or the very serious threat posed to people with medical exemptions like those who are immunocompromised are worse than the side effects of the vaccines. And yes, vaccines do have side effects, but not one of them is autism, and there is ample scientific evidence to back it up. It is vital to everyone that the current laws for mandatory vaccination of school age

Immunizations are essential components in the primary and preventive care setting to ensure a healthier population. Immunizations are aimed to prevent illnesses such as Tetanus, Diphtheria, Varicella, Hepatitis A, Influenza and Pneumonia to mention a few. Upon their discovery and implementation, vaccines have aid to decrease the incidence of infectious diseases, which were once the leading causes of death in the country and around the world. Despite their validated benefits; amongst the adult population, there are existing misconceptions related to immunization usefulness and effectiveness resulting in an unacceptably low adult vaccination rates and unmet vaccine recommendations. Consequently, leading to approximately 40,000-50,000 preventable death and an increased spread of communicable illnesses("Adult Immunization:

In 1988, 350,000 cases of polio, an incurable virus that can cause permanent paralysis or death, were reported. In 2014, only 359 cases were reported (“Poliomyelitis”). The reason for this dramatic decline in cases was a global initiative to vaccinate children and eradicate the virus. No longer did parents have to warn their children away from crowded areas or swimming pools for fear of their child contracting polio. However, as the relief faded and polio became little more than a historical relic, a new movement gained traction. People started focusing more on the possible dangers of vaccines than on their numerous advantages. It culminated in an “anti-vaccination” movement, and ever since science and advocates have been fighting over the issue. Vaccines have since been studied closely for years, and a myriad of investigations have proven that vaccinations are crucial. Every person should receive necessary immunizations because they protect people from dying of preventable diseases, their benefits far outweigh the risks, and vaccinated people protect all members of their community, especially those who cannot receive vaccinations.

Vaccinations are a luxury of which many members of the modern first world do not often recognize the significance of. It has been a few generations since society has seen the devastation that can come from severe communicable disease. Those that lived through the horror of epidemics like measles, smallpox, polio and more were either too young to have realized the true gravity of what was happening around them. Those who survived to die of natural causes and are no longer here to remind us of that time. This lack of remembrance, however, does not erase the past. Diseases such as these devastated countries all around the world; thousands of children were killed due to a complete lack of prevention or protection. Only when vaccinations came about for each of these maladies did society finally escape the awful times. Despite the impact that was clearly made by these preventative measures, parent’s of today’s generation refuse to vaccinate their children. In response to misguided celebrities voicing distrust in the benefits of vaccinations, false studies linking developmental disorders to shots, and more, the number of guardians wary of giving their kids these injections grows. While research disproving the validity of these reports and studies has been published several times over the years, the news seems to fall more and more on deaf ears. This results in an increased group of individuals who leave their children and the rest of the world vulnerable to a resurgence of the most

Parents should be forced to vaccinate their children no matter what the circumstance. There are multiple reasons why parents should vaccinate their children. If a person does not want their child getting diagnosed with a viral disease, than why would they not want to vaccinate them? This seems like an issue that should not even need to be discussed because of the extremity of the consequences of not getting a child vaccinated. Without vaccines, epidemics of vaccine-preventable diseases would return (What Happens When You Don’t Vaccinate). This research paper will discuss many upsides and downsides of vaccinating children.

It’s always heartbreaking when a child or young adult is lost to an illness, especially one that could have been prevented by a simple immunization shot. There is a common belief that just because you don’t hear about a contagion, that means it has been fully removed as a threat to our health; however, this is far from the truth. Just because we do not hear about the polio virus in our country does not mean it has been eradicated. There are still a small handful of countries in the world where this disease still lurks, only a short trip away. We live in a society where diseases such as measles, polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and hepatitis A and B, once rare due to immunization campaigns, are reappearing in certain areas. In recent history, a growing population of parents are choosing not to have their children vaccinated; this choice causes problems for their children, for the children of others, and for the general population as well.

As a parent immunizations for a child are always a big decision. Most parents decide to vaccinate their children without a second thought, while some struggle with if the positives outweigh the negatives, negatives sometimes being serious side effects, and sadly there are some parents that simply cannot afford to vaccinate their children or do not have the necessary resources. There are many communities worldwide that do not use immunizations, due to religious reasons or a lack of resources. (Miller, 2006) These communities see many negative health complications due to people and children not getting vaccinated. Countries with vaccine programs have seen a decrease in preventable diseases due to the vaccines given to children at early

I actually spent awhile looking for an article I read a few years ago regarding a child who needed to get the polio vaccination and his parents were given the option of a shot or an oral form of the drug. They chose the oral dosage and after a few hours there once the precocious little boy had gone from a thriving child to a shell of a person who barely had the energy to walk or play with toys. this isn’t a story of why vaccinations shouldn’t be mandatory or how they are causing autism or genetic disorders but how a young boy simply received a treatment and developed poliomyelitis. (Virology blog). So, this child suffered from an illness that they didn’t even know could possibly affect their child. after receiving a vaccination simply because it that was mandatory (Virology

Before vaccines were discovered, millions life were taken due to various childhood diseases, including mumps, rubella, polio and measles. Therefore the discovery of vaccine was such a breakthrough in the medical field at the time. Not only did it help to cure simple diseases, such as cold, it also helps to eliminate some fetal infectious diseases, such as rubella and polio. However, for some mothers, they choose not to vaccinate their child simply because of the erroneous information and fear that were spread among mothers.

Hopes and dreams for their future saturate their thoughts and influence their every decision. Making the choice to vaccinate is no different. There are many legitimate concerns when it comes to vaccination. In the 1950s, the Cutter incident resulted in thousands of Americans developing vaccine-induced polio. Over seventy-thousand experienced extreme muscle weakness and ten individuals died (Parry). Understanding the risks associated with vaccinations and the probability of them occurring is crucial to the overall acceptance of vaccination programs. The MMR vaccine, for example, in some individuals can cause seizures, deafness, and brain damage. However, these side effects occur less than once per million vaccinations (CDC). According to the study published by the National Safety Council in 2010, the odds of dying in a car accident are one in four hundred and ninety-two. This statistic does not keep the general public from strapping their children into the minivan and heading to a play date. Measles, however, will be contracted by ninety percent of those who come in contact with it, provided they have not been inoculated. We must accept that there are risks associated with every action that is taken regardless of how inconsequential it may seem. By weighing the benefits to the community against the risks for the individual, we can determine that the greater good is served through the immunization

Vaccinations can protect children from serious illnesses and life threatening diseases, and some of these diseases can lead to complications such as amputations of arms or legs, paralysis of limbs, hearing loss, convulsions, brain damage and death(CDC, 2016, para.3.). According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), due to the effects of vaccinations, diseases such as smallpox have been eliminated and others such as polio, meningitis C, whooping cough and diphtheria have been significantly reduced almost to the point of elimination. All of these diseases are so rare now that it is easy to underestimate the importance of children’s vaccinations. While some of the diseases that vaccines protect children from have disappeared,

Vaccinations are important because they can save the lives of children and allow more protection against diseases. Before vaccinations, thousands of infants, children and adults died from different types of diseases. Because of advances in medical science, children can be protected against more diseases than ever before. Some diseases that once injured or killed thousands of children, have been eliminated and others are close to being. One example of the great impact that vaccines can have is the elimination of polio in the United States. Polio was once America’s most-feared disease, causing death and paralysis across the country, but today, thanks to vaccination, there are no reports of polio in the United States. Terho Heikkinen explains that “the rate of mortality from pneumonia and influenza among [people] dropped dramatically with the initiation of the vaccination program; however, after the program was discontinued, the excess mortality rates started to increase rapidly” (226). Liz Szabo writes, “according to the CDC, vaccines given to infants and young children over the past two decades will prevent 322 million illnesses, 21 million hospitalizations and 732,000 deaths over the course of their lifetimes.” Countless researchers have discovered that vaccinations have proven to protect individuals from deadly

“Standard immunization currently averts an estimated two to three million deaths every year in all age groups” (“General Information”). Children along with adults should be vaccinated because these Inoculations prevent diseases, even deaths, from going around, along with keeping the environment a safer place. As people know, kids get vaccinated from the time born to about the time the child reaches teen years, although getting immunized does not precisely stop at any age. In fact, required vaccinations continue throughout the years. Of course these medical treatments must be tested in order to be given to anyone. In spite of the fact many people themselves argue that inoculations are not safe for children, others are thoroughly certain in