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Sara Harbin

Professor Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1103

November 7, 2019

Not Vaccinating: The Deadly New Trend

Many of us We all know someone who refuses to get the flu shot every year, either.

Either because they’re afraid they’ll get sick, or they’re just afraid of needles, or any other numer

of reasons. ThisThis phenomenon isn’t something out of the ordinary but what about the people

who aren’t vaccinated for diseases such as measles or mumps or rubella? . Although it may seem

like only children in third world countries are not getting the medical care they need, there are

children in the United States who have parents that are refusing to get them vaccinated. This new

“trend” that parents are partaking in is called the Anti-Vaccination movement, according to the

Measles and Rubella Initiative..

These parents who are choosing to not vaccinate their kids believe that they are doing

what is best for them, basing their thoughts on their religion or an unreliable source., even

though countless medical articles prove them wrong. Not vaccinating your children does more

harm than good and the research goes to show that. And yet the trend of toddlers not getting

vaccinated is going up. We are bringing back to life diseases that we have already fought off like

smallpox and measles, for reasons not based in scientific fact. for no apparent reason. There are

some people who choose not to vaccinate for religious reasons, which is understandable, but

what is hard to understand are the people who choose not vaccinateto vaccinate because they are
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afraid for the child’s safety. This issue needs to be put to rest once and for all: Vaccines are

100% necessary.

Do Vaccines Cause Autism?

No, they do not. And yet many people including college-educated individuals still believe

that vaccines will give your child Autism. Why is this? Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 study that

claimed that the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR), caused autism.

Wakefield conducted a study of 12 children who received the MMR vaccine, 10 of which were

later diagnosed with Autism. This statistic put together by Wakefield shocked parents

worldwide, who now thought that the reason that their kid has a neurological disease is because

of a vaccine. And even though Wakefield’s study never claims a relationship between Autism

and the MMR vaccine, as soon as he put those two in the same chart, there was no going back.

Parents started to try to find ways to avoid the MMR vaccine: taking the measles,

mumps, and rubella vaccines separately, avoiding any combined vaccinations or just stopping

vaccinations altogether. Around 1998 This is when the recent form of the Anti-Vaccination

movement came to be something. If you know anything about conducting research or creating an

experiment, you can already tell there are some major issues with Wakefield’s study. With only

12 kids and no control group, there is no way to tell if the results he gotis getting are accurate.

Once this “study” was analyzed by other medicalmedical professionals, it was quickly

disprovendisproven, and Wakefield eventually lost all credibility and his medical license. But the

effects of this study are still going on today, with parents still choosing not to vaccinate based on

this evidence.

The Real Health Effects Onon Your Children

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You can’t get autism from getting vaccinated, but you can die from not getting

vaccinated. Since diseases like Measles have been so far removed from the present society, we

have all forgotten how brutal of a disease it can be. Measles can lead to pneumonia, encephalitis,

neurological problems, and more, especially when it occurs in young children. A parent should

be doing anything to protect their child and keep them from getting sick, not avoiding what they

think is harmful to their child, with their zero medicalzero-medical experience. This thought that

risking getting measles or mumpsmumps, or rubella is better than autism is also a dangerous

thought process. Thinking that you would rather risk your child being hospitalized than having a

mental disorder is a thing that shouldn’t be happening in a parent’s mind. And yet parents are

having these thoughts, but the question is why exactly?

Why Are Parents Doing This?

It may seem like common sense to just vaccinate your kids, the people telling you to get

vaccinated are doctors. You would think that everyone would just automatically give their baby

all the shots they need, but there is an actual thought process behind those parents who aren’t

vaccinating. As Jennifer Reich says in her interview with David Green, a a highly respected

journalist that has won awards and is a New York Times bestselling author, “What I find is that

parents see each and every vaccine as a different kind of choice … they want to be able to tailor

what they see as what's most important to their own child,” which basically means that parents

aren’t completely avoiding vaccines, just the ones they perceive as not necessary. Parents

obviously want to feel in control of their kid’s life, especially their young kids, and not

vaccinating might be a way of expressing that power.

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The information from Andrew Wakefield’s study is still running through society today

and parents still chose to believe it. This especially rings true for parents who know someone

with autism or who already have a child with autism. Parents are afraid to face the reality that

autism is a challenge to live withwith, but it is not a preventable disease. And as a parent, you

want to be able to do anything to prevent your child from being harmed so even though you may

be causing more harm for your child by not vaccinating, the intentions behind it are pure. It

should be common knowledge that there will be no harm from getting your child vaccinated in

order to redirect these feelings of wanting to protect your child.

Why Should I Care What Other People Do Withwith Their Kids?

You might be thinking right now, “So what, who cares if their kids aren’t vaccinated, it’s

none of my business,” but I’m here to tell you everyone should care about this issue. Even if you

are vaccinated, there is still a risk that you may get something like measles, if others around you

are not vaccinated and are spreading the disease. According to the Center for Disease Control

(CDC), in 2016 less than 90% of kids were being vaccinated, a statistic that should concern you.

The more children who are not being vaccinated, the higher the likelihood of a disease break-out,

even if the majority of people are vaccinated. You as an individual should be pushing for

everyone to be vaccinated, from children and adults in third-world countries to the children who

may live across the street from you. Everyone deserves the best medical care and by allowing

this Anti-Vaccination movement to continue, we are causing harm for future generations. In this

day and age, the least of our worries should be vaccines that have been proven time and again to

have worked.

The Bottom Line

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Vaccines are the biggest accomplishment of 20th-century medicine. Preventing children

from getting the disease before they even come into contact with the disease is amazing when

you think about it, so you could see why vaccinations could seem too good to be true. But the

truth is that the benefits of vaccines far outweigh the drawbacks. Even if you still believe that

getting vaccinated causes autism, which is better a dead child or an autistic child? Not to be

harsh but that is the reality you are choosing if you do not vaccinate your kid. Not vaccinating

can either lead to serious illness and a long stay in the hospital or death. There is no perceived

benefit of not vaccinating your kid, other than maybe making you feel more in control of your

child’s medical care. You should go and vaccinate your child, today, because it does not only

matter to your child’s future but to the future of our society.

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Works Cited

Bhandari, Smitha. “Are Vaccinations Linked To Autism? The Latest Science Explained.”

WebMD, WebMD, 20 May 2018,

https://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/do-vaccines-cause-autism#1, Accessed 7 Nov.

2019.

Godlee, Fiona, et al. “Wakefield's Article Linking MMR Vaccine and Autism Was Fraudulent.”

The BMJ, British Medical Journal Publishing Group, 6 Jan. 2011,

https://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452, Accessed 7 Nov. 2019.

Green, David. “Why Aren't Parents Getting Their Children Vaccinated?” Weekend Edition.

National Public Radio, 29 Apr. 2019. Transcript,

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29/718165015/why-arent-parents-getting-their-kids-

vaccinated, Accessed 15 Oct. 2019.

Hussain, Azhar, Syed Ali, Madiha Ahmed, and Sheharyar Hussain. “The Anti-vaccination

Movement: A Regression in Modern Medicine.” Cureus. The National Center for

Biotechnology Information, 3 July 2018. Academic Study,

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122668/, Accessed 16 Oct. 2019

Jenco, Melissa. “CDC: Rate of Unvaccinated Toddlers Increasing.” American Academy of

Pediatrics, 1 Nov. 2019,

https://www.aappublications.org/news/2018/10/11/vaccinationrates101118, Accessed 7

Nov. 2019.
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“Measles Complications.” Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention, 13 June 2019.

https://www.cdc.gov/measles/symptoms/complications.html, Accessed 7 Nov. 2019.

Measles and Rubella Initiative. American Red Cross, 2012, https://measlesrubellainitiative.org/.

Accessed 16 Oct. 2019.

Rao, T S Sathyanarayana, and Chittaranjan Andrade. “The MMR Vaccine and Autism:

Sensation, Refutation, Retraction, and Fraud.” Indian Journal of Psychiatry, Medknow

Publications, Apr. 2011. Academic Study,

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/, Accessed 7 Nov. 2019.

“Vaccination Coverage Among Children Aged 19–35 Months - United States, 2016.” Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2 Nov.

2017, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6643a3.htm, Accesses 7 Nov. 2019