Argumentative Essay On Immunizations In Public Schools

When it comes to vaccinations, there are many different opinions on immunizing a child, especially when that child’s parent has a strong like or dislike towards vaccinating. Immunizations have been around for at least a thousand years and as technology advances more, there are new vaccines being designed to help protect our children from contracting contagious and sometimes deadly diseases, such as Bordetella pertussis, polio, and even influenza. For decades, all 50 states have required that parents vaccinate their children against various diseases, including polio and measles, as a prerequisite to enrolling them in public schools (Ciolli, 2008). Enrollment in public school requires up to date vaccinations in order to protect the children and even the adults from contracting and spreading a disease, possibly causing an epidemic. Although all public schools require immunizations, there are still children in the schools whose religion exempts the use of vaccinations. The goal of this paper is to further explain
the history of vaccinations, as well as examine the views and opinions of parents on the issue, and the importance of vaccinations in school enrollment. To understand the history of vaccines, the first major outbreak of smallpox has to be explained.
The modern history of the smallpox disease begins in the seventeenth century, with detailed records of cases and epidemics, as well as the earlier accounts of variolation, a precursor to contemporary immunization which involved inserting particles obtained from smallpox lesions under the skin or into the nostrils of a person who had never had smallpox (Baciu et. al., 2005).
In 1796, Edward Jenner, a doctor based in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, performed his first inoculation on his gardener’s son by scraping his skin with metal contaminated with cowpox.
Once the child recovered from the cowpox disease, Jenner then tried to infect the child with smallpox, but the young man proved to be immune. “It seemed that this attempt at vaccination had worked. But Jenner had to work on for two more years before his discovery was considered sufficiently tested by the medical profession to permit widespread introduction” (Alexander, 2003). Beginning in 1831 and culminating in 1835, due to increasing vaccination, smallpox deaths were down to one in a thousand. In 1853, it was deemed obligatory for all children born after the first of August to receive routine immunizations. By 1898, one hundred years after Edward Jenner’s unveiling of the vaccine, smallpox in London had fallen dramatically – to one in every 100,000 (less than 50 people per
year).
Numerous parents believe in vaccinating their children with every immunization necessary for the elimination of the uncontrollable and life-threatening diseases known to man, nevertheless there are still a number of parents who believe that vaccinations are the primary cause of disorders such as autism, and even Guillain-Barre syndrome, an acute form of polyneuritis, proceeded by a respiratory infection, causing fatigue and paralysis of the limbs. Most people in their twenties or younger have never witnessed the despair of such diseases as smallpox and polio, therefore it can be tempting to believe that a child should not be immunized for the diseases, but unless a disease has been eradicated, the immunizations have to be kept to date to prevent the disease from coming back into circulation (Alexander, 2003). In the previous generation, children were given a handful of vaccines, but since then, more diseases have evolved, increasing immunizations, therefore children in this generation now receive at least 26 vaccinations by the age of 5.
Increasing numbers of parents claim their children have been damaged by vaccines, rather than protected from a range of threatening diseases as is the intention. It is acknowledged even by the most conservative of medics that all vaccines carry at least a small risk of serious adverse reactions. There are others who would put the risk far higher (Alexander, 2003).
Although vaccinations are required in all public schools, there are numerous children who cannot receive many of the immunizations required because of preexisting medical conditions. “Vaccination is not solely an individual prophylactic measure, but additionally, represents a public intervention, and maintaining high vaccination rates is key for the development of herd immunity” (Wiley, 2013). Herd immunity is predominantly important because of people who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons, furthermore, depending on contiguous vaccinated individuals for their protection. Nonmedical exemptions from immunization, such as the ones based on religious preferences or theoretical grounds, increase the risk of infectious diseases in both exempt and nonexempt individuals. “Multiple studies found an overlap between clusters of preventable infectious diseases and groups of children whose families requested religious exemption from vaccination (Wiley, 2013). In conclusion, immunizations will always be a challenging subject when it comes to parents and the public health system; nevertheless, “immunizations to protect children and adults from many infectious diseases are one of the greatest achievements of public health” (Alamario, D. and Stratton, K., 2003). People all over the world have experienced the benefits of immunizations and diseases that once wreaked havoc on the world are now almost completely eradicated. Ultimately, immunizations are the public’s superior way to protect all individuals from life-threatening diseases. “The essential job of public health agencies is to identify what makes people healthy and what makes them sick, and then to take the steps necessary to make sure that the population encounters a maximum of the former and a minimum of the latter” (Gostin, 2008). Therefore, with the help of the public health agencies and the development of new vaccines to help protect individuals from the threat of disease, the public can rest easier knowing that they are safe from pathogens.