Why are parents choosing not to vaccinate their children, therefore adding to the anti-vaccination movement in the United States? Are they unaware of the severe consequences that come along with being un-vaccinated? Do they not know what vaccines are or how safe they are?  Or are they turned away from vaccines based on false pretenses?  Either way, when individuals exercise their personal right to not get vaccinated, they are putting the community around them, and consequently the public health, at risk.  Recently, there has been a spotlight on the controversial issue regarding vaccines.  The news has highlighted certain stories about vaccinations, some good, some bad.  One story that caused possibly the largest uproar declared that vaccinations caused Autism in children, although there is no known scientific evidence that proves this.  In fact, The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimated that 732,000 American children were saved from death and 322 million cases of childhood illnesses were prevented between 1994 and 2014 due to vaccines (Whitney). Still, the Anti-Vaccination movement is a heavily growing movement, and it is projected to gain even more support in 2017 (Hotez).  Boycotting vaccines in unnecessary, and it is doing more harm than good.  Denying children the basic and essential medical care that vaccinations provide can be compared to parental neglect (Danziger).  By not getting vaccinated, you are not only allowing yourself and your children to be susceptible to many infectious diseases, but you are allowing these diseases into your community as well.  If public health is paramount to a functioning society, some concessions to individual rights, such as mandatory vaccinations, must occur. 

 The anti-vaccine movement threatens us all in the United States, and there are multiple reasons why.  The start of the anti-vaccine movement has been tracked back to the documentary DPT: Vaccine Roulette, which was produced by NBC television correspondent Lea Thompson in 1982.  This documentary linked the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DPT) vaccine to brain damage, which initiated the autism scare (Wong).  Millions of Americans watched this documentary, and then parents stopped giving their children the vaccine.  Throughout the next two decades, many studies were done and all of the results were the same: children with the DTP immunization were not at greater risk of brain damage that those without the vaccination.  Despite the results from the studies, the movement kept growing and growing, and now it seems to be taking over.  Out of all human diseases, measles is one of the most contagious and most lethal.  More than a dozen unvaccinated people can get infected by a single person with measles.  When vaccine levels fall below 90 percent in a community that has lot of children is when we can begin to see major outbreaks.  By boycotting vaccines, the people within the anti-vaccination movement are allowing this to happen. 

Vaccines have been around for centuries, since the late 1700s.  It was then when Edward Jenner noticed that smallpox did not affect the milkmaids who worked with the cows in southern England (Offit).  He believed the blisters the maids had on their hands were somehow connected to protection against smallpox (Offit).  To prove it, he took both the fluid from one of the blisters and dried-out pus from a person who had smallpox, and injected them into a local laborer’s son’s arm. The boy did not get sick, and Jenner proved his theory. Since being discovered, vaccines have been a vital piece in holding together and maintaining the public health in the United States.  They allow more people to stay healthy when infectious diseases pop up.  In the book Vaccines and Your Child: Separating Fact from Fiction, Paul Offit defines vaccines as substances that, “provide the immunity that comes from natural infection without the consequences of natural infection” (100).  Vaccines are extremely specific, carefully made substances to help prevent diseases.  After it is licensed, the vaccine is studied, “which can take as long as twenty years, almost always begin in small numbers of healthy adults before progressing to teens, then older and younger children, even if younger children are the intended recipients.” (Offit).  This proves that vaccines are heavily tested before they can be used and given by doctors, which makes them safe. Offit makes a point that vaccines are truly necessary for protection against harsh diseases.  He explains that simply living a healthy life style will not do because “specific immunity to a virus or bacteria can only be acquired by natural infection or immunization” (Offit).  So, immunizations, or vaccines, are the only way to protect yourself from getting these infectious diseases.   The benefits of vaccines outweigh the minimal risks that are associated with taking them. 

Some would say that vaccines are unsuccessful, but there are numerous diseases that have been completely eliminated by vaccines: Diphtheria, Polio, and Smallpox to name a few.  In the past decade alone, 26 million cases of contagious diseases have been prevented (Panhuis).  “Before the measles vaccine became available in 1963, the virus infected about 500,000 Americans a year, causing 500 deaths and 48,000 hospitalizations.  In recent years, the number of diagnoses fell to around 65” (Szabo).  Now, with the vaccine, only 0.012% of the number of people who got measles in 1963 will be diagnosed (Szabo).  The measles vaccine has almost eliminated the disease all together, which shows just how miraculous vaccines are.  Not to say they are miracles, because it has been proven by science and statistics that they work.  Another vaccine that has been in the spotlight for some time now is the chickenpox vaccine, which is still common in the United States.  It was introduced in 1995, when about 4 million cases of the chickenpox occurred annually (Offit).  Within a few years of the vaccine being available, the number of people affected dropped to around 400,000.  This 90 percent drop in the number of cases of chickenpox was all thanks to vaccines.  This prevented millions of people from getting the contagious disease, and saved many lives as well. 

Even with the many positive effects of vaccines, there are still numerous people who chose to not get them. They say they have “their reasons” to do so, from personal beliefs to the fear that vaccines will cause their child harm.  These people say that an injury from a vaccine is for life, but the illnesses that vaccines protect you from are come and go (Tenpenny). Why take the risk of getting one of these horrible diseases that are allegedly caused by vaccines, even if they are extremely rare?  Parents want to protect their children by not vaccinating them, because they believe that they do not need vaccines.  They believe that they can keep their children healthy without the help of vaccines, which is not likely.  Another point made by people against vaccines, or anti-vaxxers as they are called, is that health cannot be administered or promoted through a needle injection of toxic substances into the body (Tenpenny).  Many people believe that living a healthy lifestyle is sufficient to avoid infections and diseases. They think that by eating nutritious foods, exercising regularly, and taking vitamins they can skip over needing vaccinations.  Although living a healthy lifestyle is extremely important, immunity to certain viruses or bacteria can only be achieved by immunization through a vaccine, or natural infection.  All anti-vaxxers have “their reasons” to not support vaccines, and that comes along with their individual rights.  But, while they have the health of their children in mind, anti-vaxxers are not making the right decision when deciding to go vaccine-free.  Their subjective, and truly irresponsible decision causes harm to many young children and babies, who are too young to get vaccinated themselves and can contract an infectious disease.  Is an anti-vaxxer’s reason to not get vaccinated really worth risking the health of babies and the safety of their family, friends, and the community around them?

Part of the problem is that parents do not know enough about vaccines.  Uneducated parents see the word autism and immediately shy away.  They get scared of the possibility of something happening to their child, they forget to look at the other side.  The side that vaccines are needed in society to protect the public health.  The fact that this affects something bigger than just you and your personal fears.  February 28, 1998 was the date when researchers in England unleashed the concept that vaccines caused autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (Offit).  These researchers published a report that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) led to autism by damaging the intestine and allowing brain-damaging proteins to leave the intestines and go into the brain (Offit).  In fact, there is no link between autism and vaccines, and this has been proven repeatedly (Offit). Other scientists and researchers have tried and tried to find these same results as the English researchers but could not (Offit). Many tests have been done and many scientists have studied this issue, and the results come up the same: there is no scientific link between vaccines and autism.  One study, for example, performed by the CDC in 2013, looked at the number of antigens in vaccines.  The study showed that increased exposure to these antibody-stimulating proteins in vaccines during the first two years in a child’s life is not at all related to the risk of developing ASD (DeStefano).   People still fail to believe this, even with the studies, and keep promoting this “Anti- Vaccine” attitude that seems to be taking over the minds of so many Americans in today’s society.  This is a problem that needs to be changed to better the health of the American population.

Some people also do not get vaccines because they believe they cause allergies and asthma.  When babies are born, they have elevated Th2 cells, which can lead to allergic responses (Offit).  This can be overcome by increasing the amount of Th1 cells in the bloodstream, which occurs naturally by infection with bacteria and viruses (Offit).  Most people fear that vaccines will prevent the maturation of these Th1 cells, since vaccines prevent natural infections, therefore leading to allergies and asthma.  In one study, a group of investigators were examining records of over 18,000 children born between 1991 and 1997 in a health maintenance organization (Offit).  Those who received the diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine, the polio vaccine, the MMR vaccine, or the hepatitis B vaccine were not at a higher risk for diseases such as asthma, food allergies, or hives (Offit).  Other studies also found that there was no evidence that vaccines increased the risk for allergic diseases. This is just one example of numerous clinical studies that prove that vaccines do not cause allergies or asthma.  So, another reason why parents do not vaccinate their children has been proven to be false. Why, then, do so many people refuse to get vaccinated because of reasons that are not even factual reasons?

Also, many people are skeptical of vaccines because they are uneducated on the different types and how they are made.  Viral vaccines, which provide protection against viral infections such as measles, mumps, chickenpox, and influenza, are produced in three ways, but the most common is by weakening the virus.  During this process, the virus is weakened “so that it cannot reproduce itself well enough to cause disease, but it can still reproduce itself well enough to induce a protective immune response” (Offit).  So, the vaccine actually contains the virus, but you cannot “catch” the disease from the vaccination.  Once a vaccine is made, it has to be licensed by the Food and Drug Administration to ensure their safety, purity, and effectiveness, and then it has to be recommended by committees such as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the Committee on Infectious Diseases (Offit).  Bacterial vaccines are made differently because bacteria are far more complex than viruses.  To make this kind of vaccine, researchers purify and treat specific bacterial proteins with formaldehyde to inactivate them and therefore stimulate a protective response. Pneumococcal, meningococcal, Haemophilus influenza-b (Hib), and lastly whooping cough are all bacterial infections that can be prevented by vaccines.  Both types of vaccines are extremely important in preventing all of these infectious diseases. 

The question comes down to if the public health of America takes precedent over people’s individual rights to choose to get vaccinated.  The health of the whole country deserves to be paramount over one person’s preference.  If one chooses to not get vaccinated and then catches an infectious disease that can be deadly, they can spread it to everyone around them, whether it be their family, their neighbors, their classmates, or fellow workers at your job.  More importantly, this can cause these infectious diseases to spread to infants who are not yet old enough to receive the vaccinations.  They are the ones who most depend on herd immunity, which relies on a critical mass of people to get vaccinated (Libster).  Herd immunity is needed, yet anti-vaxxers could cause a massive outbreak of this disease, which would cause many hospitalizations and possibly deaths.  So, making vaccinations a requirement for all residents in the United States would greatly help the public health.  This way, with everyone vaccinated, all will be protected from harmful infectious diseases like chickenpox, mumps, whooping cough, and influenza.  Also, this prevents parents from choosing to not vaccinate their children.  Parents do not have the right to refuse vaccinations for their children against diseases (McLeod).  There are some places where vaccines have been made required, and it has led to better health; due to the public health infrastructure and legal framework, Mississippi is the leading state in MMR vaccination rates with recent rates greater than 99% for children entering kindergarten (Cawkwell and Oshinsky).  Parents cannot choose to have their children omit vaccinations for religious or philosophical reasons when they attend a public or private school in Mississippi, along with two other states (California and West Virginia).  Although Mississippi allows for medical exemptions from vaccinations, they are extremely strict. “They must be submitted to the Department of Public Health by a licensed primary care physician in Mississippi—only 121 were approved in 2013–2014” (Cawkwell and Oshinsky).   All states should have legislation like this, only allowing vaccine exemptions for extreme medical reasons. Making vaccines mandatory will lead to better health across the United States. 

As one, the United States needs to unite on this public health issue.  While some people believe that vaccines which prevent infectious diseases should be mandatory for all people and children to prevent outbreaks in these diseases, others believe it should be their option or opinion whether to vaccinate themselves and their children.  Those vaccines should be mandatory so that the general community’s health is not compromised.  Vaccines prevent outbreaks in infectious diseases, and the health and safety of the entire population should be considered more important than one person’s personal beliefs.  Helpless infants contract these infectious diseases.  They are the ones who suffer when people decide to refrain from getting vaccinated, because they are too young to be able to receive the vaccinations themselves.  Serious legislation needs to be put in place to make vaccines mandatory for everyone, with only medical exemptions allowed.  The anti-vaccination movement needs to come to an end for the well-being of the public health of the United States.  Anti-vaxxers need to understand the weight of this issue and need to recognize that their personal opinions on vaccines do not outweigh the fact that they are needed for the prosperity of the public health in our country. 
