Why you should vaccine your child

The issue of vaccination has been debated nationally with more people coming out against the idea of vaccination. This essay will look at vaccination, its benefits, and its potential harmful side-effects if there are any. The paper will objectively look at both sides and come up with a conclusion to try and address the controversy surrounding the entire discussion. Vaccination is an essential process in a child's life as it helps prevent a child from suffering from certain preventable diseases. Vaccination aims to provide both individual immunity and herd immunity. All states can provide exemptions based on religious and personal beliefs except Mississippi, West Virginia and California. It is therefore essential to vaccinate children as they are the most vulnerable age group (Lemon, 183).

Firstly, vaccines reduce chances of disease outbreaks. An example was in 2014, the United States had an outbreak of measles, and this was associated with cases brought from the Philippines which had experienced a significant outbreak. From 1st January to 20th May 2017, hundreds of people from ten states were reported to have measles, and the majority of this was unvaccinated. They also prevent approximately 33000 deaths in the United States alone and about two million in the entire world (Lemons, 170). This reduction is due to vaccination and not sanitation and hygiene as some claim; if it were so, all diseases should have started declining at the same rate and around the same time. Moreover, vaccines are cost-effective as it is easier to prevent a disease than to cure it.

It saves the costs that will burden parents by taking the children to a hospital. There are both direct and indirect costs, direct costs being the fees one pay for treatment and indirect costs coming up as a result of missing work or rescheduling meetings with valuable clients. Moreover, individuals tend to underestimate the risks of illness and diseases. In essence, vaccines are a victim of their success. Vaccines are so effective that they reduce people being affected by diseases like measles that people tend to forget that measles are in fact dangerous and even fatal. It is this mentality that makes people believe that vaccination is not a priority and they can survive without it. Also, rational individuals will only seek vaccination if the threat of infection is high and the risk of vaccination is low.

Andrew together with his colleagues publishes the findings in the "Lancet" in 1995. Wakefield publishes a case series in 1998 claiming he discovers evidence linking the MMR vaccine with measles virus found in the digestive tracks of twelve children who exhibited autism symptoms after being vaccinated (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, 2014). The second theory that claims that vaccination causes autism is the Thimerosal Theory. Thimerosal is a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines. It is an antibacterial compound used in multidose vaccination for over 50 years. Thirdly they argue that the United States of America infant mortality rate is abnormally high. In 2009 more than 26000 babies died before their first birthday giving the United States an infant mortality rate of six percent per 1000 live births (Moritz, 2017).

In the United States of America, more premature babies are born, and full-term babies die before their first birthday compared to European nations. Furthermore, they argue that the United States of America give children more doses of vaccination, twenty-six, which is more than most countries (Moritz, 2017). Advocates against vaccination state that there is a correlation between the increased dosages of vaccines with an increase in infant mortality rates. In the MMR theory, Dr. Wakefield failed to conduct control experiments to determine if the connection between receiving MMR vaccination and symptoms of autism to appear are either casual or coincidental. Secondly, the data collected from the neuropsychological tests were neither systematic nor complete. Furthermore, in the trials, autism predates gastrointestinal symptoms as claimed by Wakefield (Lemons, 172).

This occurrence is not consistent with the theory that inflammation in the intestines caused peptides to invade the bloodstream. Furthermore, the NVICP operate on a "no-fault" system where it is not required to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the vaccine caused the injury. In fact, many conditions are compensated despite science not showing the vaccine are responsible. Additionally, the notion that compulsory vaccination is against the principles and values of free will is both a selfish and dangerous thought. The greater good of a community is more vital than a single person's perspective. It is with this in mind that public schools where there may be a high concentration of vulnerable children that have made it compulsory to be vaccinated for admittance, and this helps preserve the herd immunity and thus reduces chances of infection.