Madeline+B’s+OpEd+Article



//By Madeline B.//
 * Vaccines: Not to be feared!**

The development of the first vaccine in 1796 was one of the most ground-breaking achievements in medical history. For the first time, people had a means of preventing devastating diseases by preparing their immune systems for the fight. Gone were the days when populations were completely wiped out by smallpox, diphtheria, polio, measles, whooping cough, mumps, rubella; the list could go on and on. What I don’t understand is why so many people (educated, upper to middle class people to boot!) are //intentionally// deciding not to vaccinate their children. Aren’t parents supposed to want what is best for their children? It seems as if a life without crippling, possibly even fatal illnesses would be something that a mother or father would want to //provide//, not deny to their offspring.

Vaccines, like anything in this world, are not without their risks. But people seem to be in complete denial when it comes to the true importance of this technology. Perhaps it is mere ignorance. Perhaps it is the fact that they may not know how vaccines operate- that they are composed of a dead or weakened form of a microorganism that initiates the person’s own immune response and in turn creates antibodies to be used in the body’s defense if it should ever encounter the virulent form of the actual disease. It isn’t a poison; it’s a less dangerous form of the same things that you are likely to encounter regardless of vaccination. The injected organism is so incapacitated that it has no chance against the body’s intrinsic mechanisms, assuming that the person has a healthy immune system. They do not make you sick. All they do is prepare your body for a future bout with the illness. The only way that you could possibly get an illness from a vaccine is if it were a live-virus vaccine and you were already sick with something else; if your immune system is previously weakened or preoccupied with the attacking of another organism, something else being introduced //may// have a chance to take hold and infect the body, but this is incredibly unlikely.

Vaccines do not guarantee complete immunity to a disease. Depending on the original capability of a person’s immune system, it may not be able to react to the vaccine at all or be able to produce the correct antibodies for storage. I personally got chickenpox several years after I got the vaccine, but since my body was already exposed to it, I only contracted a mild case. Isn’t this a better situation than never having been vaccinated at all and having died from the disease?

Those that claim that vaccines are “unsafe” or “ineffective” are just not taking the time to look at the facts. Vaccines, unlike antibiotics, cannot be overused in a population. While the overuse of antibiotics causes resistant strains of bacteria to appear, this is a much rarer occurrence with viruses except those with a high ability to mutate, such as influenza. In most situations, they produce a “herd immunity” effect, in which the majority of the population is immune to a disease, giving the entire populace a lower risk of contracting the illness. When parents choose to exempt their children from vaccination, they weaken this herd immunity; in effect, not only are they exposing their own children to dangerous, avoidable diseases, but they are exposing the entire community around them! Many people have made a connection between vaccines and autism. But according to Dr. Anju Goel, the deputy public health officer for Marin County, California, more than 20 medical studies have shown no link between autism and vaccinations. Others state the danger of the mercury-based preservative used to store the shots, but this preservative is no longer used!

One chiropractor Donald Harte proclaimed, “Vaccination is based on the medical fallacy that our bodies are stupid. The truth is that the body has nearly infinite capacity to protect itself against infection as well as other diseases. When I was a kid, everybody got measles, mumps, or chicken pox, and nobody died.” The logic of this statement completely eludes me… Vaccinations do not assume that our bodies are stupid. They UTILIZE the body’s natural defense system to produce our OWN immunity to diseases, but instead of having to brave the illness and face possible death, we can be exposed to a less dangerous form and gain the same level of immunity! And as for the claim that “back in the day” everybody just got sick and dealt with it fine (“nobody died”), the truth is that between 1958 and 1962 (according to the CDC) measles killed an average of 432 people and infected nearly 500,000 each year. Today, that disease still kills two out of every 1,000 infected! And as for chicken pox being harmless, as recently as 1999, one child per week died in the U.S. due to complications from the disease.

Others that claim that vaccines are so dangerous that it would be better to risk the disease itself should take a look at the measles vaccine. Yes, it can cause a severe allergic reaction in 1 out of every one MILLION people injected. But without the vaccination, measles causes pneumonia in SIX out of every ONE HUNDRED patients and death in two out of one thousand.

My father’s girlfriend Stephanie allowed her first two children to receive all of their recommended vaccinations, but the third has never had a single shot in her life. Just recently, there was reason to believe that she had contracted hepatitis B. She hasn’t yet had chicken pox, and if she gets it later in life it will be far more difficult to fight off than as a child. She is at risk for shingles in old age and whooping cough at any time. If she ever travels out of the country or to less-immunized areas, she will be at risk of contracting any deadly illness that comes her way.

But as Alison Clayton, the facilitator of the Marin Immunization Coalition, put it, “‘It's a lot harder to unscare people. Parents are scared, and all the data is not going to change anything.’” This is extremely distressing. People shouldn’t feel afraid of vaccines; they can wind up being the thing that saves your life or the life of someone that you love. Just think about it; without vaccines, diseases like smallpox would still be killing people by the millions, and you may not have lived past infancy.media type="file" key="madeleineb-muckraker-0910.mp3" width="240" height="20"

Check out these websites to learn more:

Rogers, Rob. "Refusal to Vaccinate Puts Kids At Risk." //Marin Independent Journal//. N.p., 11 April 2009. Web. 25 Mar 2010. .

"Refusing Flu Shots? Maybe You're a "Denialist"." //NPR//. N.p., 07 Nov. 2009. Web. 25 Mar 2010. .

Park, Alice. "How Safe Are Vaccines?." //TIME//. N.p., 29 May 2008. Web. 25 Mar 2010. .