Wakefield’s original claim that vaccinations are linked to autism in children “has been fully debunked,” tainted with “suspicions of fraud,” (Pierik, 2017, p. 221). Moreover, there has not been a single peer-reviewed study capable of substantiating Wakefield’s claim, which has been called “the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years,” (Flaherty, 2011, p. 1302). The reason why the anti-vaccination hysteria is considered a major public health crisis is because of the potential death toll that could arise from an unvaccinated public exposed to communicable diseases like measles and mumps. An unvaccinated person has a 90% chance of becoming infected with measles; the most recent outbreak in France led to 5000 patients being hospitalized and ten deaths (Pierik, 2016, p. 2). In fact, out of every 1000 infected children, one or two will die and as many as fifty will contract pneumonia as a result (Pierik, 2016, p. 2). Unfortunately, “the rate of not vaccinating children continues to rise and these unvaccinated children pose risk to others who are unable to receive vaccines and compromise the core herd immunity,” (Shapiro, 2016, p. 1). Herd immunity refers to the critical mass of people required to prevent an infectious disease from posing a threat. In generating concern about autism, parents are exposing their child—and the entire society—to deadly...
A recent survey revealed that while vaccination rates have gone up twelve percent since 2013, refusal rates have also risen from 2.5% to an astonishing four percent in 2016 (Fox, 2018).
Mandatory Vaccinations Ours is a privileged country. Serious communicable diseases are largely controlled in the United States, partly because we have a comprehensive network of public health systems to address pandemic threats, ready access to supplies of vaccines and medicines, hospitals prepared to address communicable disease risks, and because our public school systems require mandatory vaccinations as a requirement of attendance. Certainly, there are exceptions. Children whose parents object to vaccinations
government be allowed to overrule the desires of parents when it comes to public health issues like vaccinations? Support your position We live in the 2000s not the pre- and early '50s when polio was a disease as feared then as cancer is today. It is partially thanks to a determined and crippled president as well as to the public desire to eliminate the disease -- and to the courageous
Development in Modern Medicine In spite of the fact that vaccinations were able to eradicate smallpox, anti-vaccinationists continue to make arguments in opposition to the vaccines because, as Mariner, Annas and Glants show, they base their views on their own personal experience, which can include “bad reactions to earlier vaccinations” (582). The individual experiences of people like Henning Jacobsen, who claimed that vaccinations were neither effective for them nor healthy, may
history of vaccines, including who discovered them and their usage through the present day. Vaccines are one of the ways humans have learned how to protect themselves from dreaded diseases. Vaccines essentially work by helping the body develop immunity to certain diseases. They often set up a mild reaction in the body, which guards against the development of specific diseases. Examples include the polio vaccine, and the rabies vaccine.
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