Early Childhood Vaccines

A vaccine, by definition, “is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular disease” (Sachdev). Simply put, it is a man-made substance that contains a dead pathogen (such as the flu virus, chickenpox, etc.) that, while dead, can stimulate your immune system into a response. Once your immune system acts upon the particular pathogen, the body develops an immunity to the disease that will not be forgotten. In today’s society, all 50 States and the District of Columbia have some sort of legislation that mandates certain vaccines for young children in certain age groups. Some of these vaccines include (but are not limited to)the mumps, measles, rubella, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and varicella. The only
way that parents can escape these vaccines are to show that they have a certain religious belief or “philosophical objection” (Welch). These loopholes need to be closed, regardless of religious beliefs, to benefit the greater good and the human races as a whole. Tom Frieden said it best: “It needs to be harder to not get a vaccine than to get one. If parents do opt out, they should do so only after understanding the full implications of putting their children and others at risk--perhaps by requiring that they meet with a doctor and their local health department, and that they renew that decision and process every year”.
Studies have shown that even though about 90% of children have more than half of the vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), almost half of children get it too late. It is strongly recommended that children receive seven vital vaccines (poliovirus, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, and rubella) that protect against 14 different diseases before they reach two years old. This makes most of today’s youth “severely under-vaccinated”. These standards are set because during the first 24 months of a child's life, the vaccines are most effective. Delving deeper into this, studies completed by the CDC have shown that western states have the lowest vaccination rates, with Alaska being the worst at having only 55% of children fully vaccinated at age two. Children need to get the recommended vaccines before they reach the age of two, or parents pose the risk of “[leaving] children vulnerable” to deadly diseases (Scudellari). One of the most contagious diseases children are susceptible to is measles. There are nearly 20 million cases worldwide each year, all of which could be prevented with preemptive vaccinations. Anyone not vaccinated against this deadly illness can contract it almost immediately after exposure. And it can be passed on even faster do to the fact that the virus can linger in the air for up to two hours after leaving a host’s body. This was proven during the summer of 2014 when the measles virus spread like wildfire through Disney World in Florida, infecting both children and adults, all of which were not vaccinated. It is easier than ever for parents to get these vaccines for their children, with the passing of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 most of the vaccines are offered to children at absolutely no cost to the parents. Even with all of this in mind, 1 in 12 children in the US are “still not receiving the first dose of the MMR vaccine on time. This means many children remain susceptible longer than they should--and, when many such children live in the same community, outbreaks can and do occur”. In USA Today the need for vaccines is spelled out clearly in blunt terms: “It's not just about you and your family… There are people with weakened immune systems who can't be immunized. Like young infants, they are vulnerable to infection--and likely to suffer severe, life-threatening measles if they are exposed. It's more than about protecting your family. It's the right thing to do” (Frieden). Vaccines are necessary for the health of communities, towns, cities, and all populated areas. Without them, the spread of diseases like measles is imminent. Vaccinations help prevent a multitude of diseases, and have done so for years. Death and hospitalization rates have seen significant drops due to early vaccinations for children. Vaccines have been proven to be one of “the most effective healthcare innovations ever devised”. Matt Welch says it best:
Being intentionally unvaccinated against highly contagious airborne diseases is, to extend the metaphor, like walking down a street randomly swinging your fists without warning. You may not hit an innocent bystander, but you've substantially increased the chances. Those harmed by the irresponsibility of the unvaccinated are not being accorded the inherent equal dignity and rights every individual possesses. (Welch)
As Welch points out, there are some people that physically cannot get vaccinated.
They could be too young, have an underlying condition, or have a poor immune system. Those people should not have to worry about other unvaccinated individuals, who are perfectly capable of being vaccinated, getting them sick with the diseases that are meant to be eradicated. Some may argue that it does not matter if one or two people in a given community are not vaccinated because they develop a “herd immunity”. This is when they have an immunity to the virus because the people around them are vaccinated against it and thus cannot spread it to them or anyone else (Healy). This situation would never work for long. Those who are not vaccinated will soon number more and more in a given community and once they number a certain amount, the unvaccinated are likely to get sick and spread the pathogens around. Matt Welch makes a great analogy on the subject of herd immunity: “Vaccines are like fences. Fences keep your neighbor's livestock out of your pastures and yours out of his. Similarly, vaccines separate people's microbes. Anti-vaccination folks are taking advantage of the fact that most people around them have chosen differently, thus acting as a firewall protecting them from disease. But if enough people refuse, that firewall comes down, and innocent people get hurt.” A person can not “piggyback” off of those that are vaccinated, hoping that they will never get sick. It is irresponsible for
parents not to get themselves or their children vaccinated, and when they do refuse to do so they are putting more innocent people at risk. One of the biggest reasons parents choose to opt out of vaccines for their children is because they are under the impression that vaccines can cause mental developmental disorders, such as autism. This is due to a 1998 discredited British study on the effects of vaccines on children. Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the author of the study, gathered only 12 children and observed them during the years following their regularly scheduled vaccines. This study was flawed in many ways, some being that, out of the 12 children, five had previously shown developmental issues before being vaccinated, and three of the remaining seven never showed any signs of autism before or after. Wakefield also “misrepresented or altered” all of the medical histories of the 12 children. Also, interestingly enough, the study was funded by a law firm that planned on suing the vaccine manufacturers, a major conflict of interest that was not disclosed until 2004. Currently, Wakefield has been unable to replicate the supposed results from his flawed original experiment, and other researchers fin no evidence from their own projects that his original findings have any validity to them whatsoever. In 2010 Wakefield was stripped of his license to practice medicine in the UK and has been failing at attempting to put the blame on other people, such as the parents of the kids in his experiment. As for why he did it, it was most likely because of the money he received from the lawsuit against the vaccine companies. Whether that was the case or not, fraud is fraud, and because of it millions of people believe that vaccines, notably the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine, causes autism and they are happy to opt out their children from many, if not all, vaccines. Most often these people are not willing to open their minds to the truth and will not break from what they originally learned back when the study was actually considered valid. Collectively, his study coupled with the lawsuit following it made so many people opt out of vaccines that measles cases within the US and even around the world spike dramatically and they are just beginning to plateau now (Cohen). This British study was the root cause to the fear of vaccines, causing parents to skip vaccinations for both themselves and their children.
There have been many studies conducted to try and convince people that Wakefield’s study was fraudulent and that vaccines were safe. Nine studies have been completed by the CDC alone in the past few years that show, quite clearly, that vaccines do not cause autism. One of the most promising and recent study involved 79 male infant rhesus macaques, which are monkeys whose physiology and neural development closely parallels that of humans. The Los Angeles Times details the study:
While one group of macaques got saline injections, others were administered a battery of vaccines following the course and timing recommended for American children in the early 1990s... Another group of macaques got the vaccine regimen recommended in 2008. That schedule had the greatest number of vaccines, and it closely resembles the recommended vaccination schedule in place today. With other groups of macaques, the researchers accelerated the schedule of childhood vaccination to account for macaque babies' speedier development... Researchers zeroed in on the macaques' behavior between the ages of 12 months and 18 months. At a year old, a little macaque reaches a developmental stage typical of a 4-year-old human child--an age at which autism symptoms are typically very pronounced. All of the macaques in the study developed a normal range of behaviors after vaccination and six months of social living, the researchers found. And virtually none exhibited autism-like behaviors such as rocking, self-clasping and repetitive actions. Neither did the brains of vaccinated macaques exhibit some key hallmarks of autism, researchers found… The researchers found none of the typical differences in size or in the density and structure of [the brain] cells when they compared the post-mortem brains of 20 macaques...(Healy).
Aside from all of this, many national science foundations have even declared that there is no link between autism and vaccines and collectively, all of the accredited foundations push for children to be vaccinated (Scudellari).
This reinforces the notion that children should be vaccinated, the earlier the better. If nothing has shown up in over a decade’s worth of studies and data, then nothing will show up in the future. Vaccines do nothing but prevent disease and protect your family. Just because of one deluded researcher claimed that vaccines cause autism does not mean that people should ignore all of the fresh new data being put forth by legitimate and respected researchers and
organizations.
While the public faces problems posed by unvaccinated people, the medical field does too, In current times it is safe to say that nearly all physicians have encountered parents that have unvaccinated children. It can be hard on the patient-physician relationship to constantly be pushing for vaccinations, leaving the relationship strained and broken. This can cause parents to lose faith in their child’s physician on other topics other than vaccinations. Some care centers, such as Wheaton Pediatrics and Centegra Physician Care, have enacted new policies that requires parents to have their children vaccinated if they wish to receive care. This is a painful decision for physicians to make. They are sworn to help and care for anyone that requires it, but here doctors are looking out for the greater good, Physicians say that it is “more important to protect the health of the kids in our practice who are too young to be vaccinated than it was to let people make individual choices about vaccines” and that is an ultimatum for parents. This method actually worked for Wheaton Pediatrics, over 90 families decided to get their children vaccinated, and did so without a lot of resisting (Sachdev). Choices like this will benefit all kids in all communities everywhere. If more physicians stood up for what they believed in and told their actual opinions to the parents, perhaps more kids would be getting vaccinated. While it may not always be the most preferred way to go, this is a case where the ends do justify the means.
There are some that believe parents do hold the right to opt out of required vaccines for their children. They may say that “Freedom doesn't get much more personal than the right of individuals to choose what is put into their bodies…” (Welch). In some situations, a person’s free would outweigh the interests of a community, but this is not the case for vaccinations. For instance, what happens when one individual choice leads to the otherwise preventable infection of another person who chooses differently? While there are still people out there that are unvaccinated, it gives diseases the ability to mutate an nullify the effect of vaccinations. This put everyone, even those that received vaccinations, at risk. If everyone was vaccinated, then the viruses and bacteria have no host bodies to live off of, thus stopping the spread and mutations of them. Everyone is safer if they are vaccinated. It is comparable to how the government works. Americans give up some of their freedom of privacy so that the government can monitor those individuals that may hurt society, and for the most part, no one resists this. There are no loopholes for it. The same should hold true for vaccines. Vaccinations are mandated by states and the government, and yet there are religious and philosophical loopholes for them that allow people to opt out of them. When the greater good of the community is at stake, Americans, and people everywhere, need to give up the tiniest bit of their freedom and get vaccinated, whether they want to or not. If it is going to save the innocent people in an area, then why not do it.