Vaccine War In The United States Essay

In 2010 PBS aired a one hour Frontline documentary about the vaccine war in the United States. This documentary pitted scientists and parents against each other, scientist’s back up their claims with scientific evidence while the parent’s arguments are solely based on opinion. The parents introduced throughout the film who were against vaccines made claims that the vaccines given to children in today’s world are the cause of many issues, like the rise in autism, ADHD, and learning disabilities. These parents also feel there is no need to vaccinate because the diseases that their children are being vaccinated for are no longer an issue in the united states. While the scientists stress the importance of vaccines because they have decreased the issues of these diseases that cause so many problems when infected. A lot of these scientists are older and were children when these diseases had outbreaks and may have even gotten the disease themselves. In the films conclusion Arthur Caplan is quoted saying “Do good in the name of children. Do good in the name of public health”. This quote leaves the viewers with the decision on who to side with. I feel like the documentary was in favor of the scientists and were in support of vaccinating children. In the documentary
Ashland was mentioned because it has one of the highest rates of unimmunized children in the country. Per an article I found after the documentary was released Ashland did in fact suffer from an outbreak of chickenpox. Oregon live reported that more than 30 children in the area came down with the measles. Most of the cases involved unvaccinated children passing it to others. Per the article about 75 percent of the kids in Ashland are immunized. That too small of a number to prevent the virus from going through the community. I wonder now if those parents are regretting the decline of these immunizations for their