Vaccines

Isabella D’Angelo

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English 3

Benjamin Franklin once said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” As a preventative measure, vaccinations are essential to quality of life, not only in this country, but across the globe because curing an illness that could otherwise be remedied by a vaccine ends up  costing more in time, effort, and money. There has been a growing trend against vaccination which stems from both misinformation and misunderstanding about the relationship between vaccinations and side effects. According to the propaganda campaigns being spread by the anti-vaccine movement, fear is being instilled in parents based on the alleged link between vaccinations and autism. To turn the tide of opinion from anti-vaccine to pro-vaccine, it is vital to continue to educate parents regarding the benefits of getting their children vaccinated which far outweigh any potential risks, not just to the children themselves, but to any person who comes in contact with an unvaccinated child.
It is first and foremost important, considering the anti-vaccine “hysteria” in the U.S. today, that everyone understand the different meanings and definitions of  “vaccines,” “vaccinations,” and “immunizations.” According to http://www.vaccines.gov, “A vaccine is a product that produces immunity from a disease and can be administered through needle injections, by mouth, or by aerosol. A vaccination is the injection of a killed or weakened organism that produces immunity in the body against that organism. An immunization is the process by which a person or animal becomes protected from a disease. Vaccines cause immunization, and there are also some diseases that cause immunization after an individual recovers from the disease.”

Unfortunately, fear is easier to ignite than to extinguish, but the reality is, vaccines are no more dangerous than the diseases they protect against. The controversy around them stemmed from the clinically unsupported fear that the shots could cause autism and other disorders. According to author and British medical doctor, Andrew Wakefield, based on a study he did on 12 children, there was a link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and an autism-like disorder. His paper was published in 1998, and once Anti Vaccination groups and the media heard about the alleged vaccine-autism connection, the news spread like wildfire. It even caught the attention of celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, who claimed that her son got autism from the MMR vaccine. However, there is no clinical basis between autism and similar type disorders and vaccinations. The article that had started the anti-vaccine buzz around the country was retracted in 2010 because there was no scientific proof of the link. While some side-effects of vaccines may include low grade fevers and other mild symptoms as well as the possibility of allergic reactions in very rare cases, the risk of unprotected exposure to diseases that vaccines prevent is more significant than the most serious of side effects.  

The benefit to the community are not just medical, they are financial. Vaccines are one of the most cost effective ways of protecting public health, helping to avert millions of illness cases as well as illness related costs such as loss of productivity (due to death/disability), caretaker productivity loss, and transport costs. Vaccinating kids has a high return on investment. It prevents 42,000 deaths per year and 20 million disease cases. It saves $13.6 billion in direct costs and a combined amount of $68.9 billion in indirect and direct costs. For example, the weighted average price of the Pentavalent vaccine is $2.58. This one vaccine can prevent 5 diseases: Hib, Hepatitis B, Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis (Whooping Cough). So not only is “an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure,” it also saves a lot of “Pounds,” (CDC).

According to the CDC, before Pertussis vaccines became available in the 40’s, about 200,000 children got it every year in the U.S. and 9,000 died due to the infection. Now those numbers have dropped significantly, with 10,000 - 40,000 cases reported each year and about 10 - 20 deaths, and that is all due to the Pertussis vaccine. So what can every parent learn from these facts? Could it be that vaccines are safe? That vaccines are effective? That vaccines work with the immune system, not against it? When all is said and done, vaccines help prevent disease because they are safe and effective, and because they work. There is not a parent in this world who would ever be able to forgive themselves, in this modern day and age, with all of the technology, research and medical care available, if even one child died of a disease as simply preventable as pertussis. In order to protect a child from disease, vaccinate that child.

Works Cited

http://www.vaccines.gov

"Making the Grade in Preventing Disease." Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Sept. 2015.

http://www.cdc.gov/

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15 May 2015. Web. 29 Sept. 2015.

http://www.who.int

"World Health Organization." WHO. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Sept. 2015.