Pros And Cons Of Vaccine Refusal

Petts and Niemeyer explore the controversy debate on what affects people from not getting their children vaccinated. They did a poll on who gets their children vaccinated and who does not get their children vaccinated. One factor Petts and Niemeyer discuss is why people are second guessing getting vaccinations for their children. The media has presented information, which led to false reports, although parents are acting upon these messages in which change their beliefs in vaccinations. Media has since affected the idea of vaccinations, parents are beginning to look into the vaccinations and predict if they will be mandatory or not for their children.

In his book, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All, Paul A. Offit, M.D. presents us with a thoroughly in-depth look behind the veil of the vaccine controversy. Specifically here in the United States. Offit starts us off with the history of vaccinations giving insights into not just their creation but the controversy that has surrounded them since the beginning. We learn how these questions around safety and personal rights started and who have been the major decision makers in history. We hear about the groups and people that support vaccinations and those that do not.

Requiring vaccinations is a highly debatable topic in the United States today. An article by Ronald Bayer, “The continuing tensions between individual rights and public health,” is one of the most reliable sources in the case study. The author has a PhD from the University of Chicago and focuses his research on issues of social justice and ethical matters. Bayer has also previously been a consultant to the World Health Organization on ethical issues related to public health. This makes him very knowledgeable about the topic and a highly credible source.

The survey examines perceptions of vaccine importance, safety, effectiveness, and religious compatibility among 65,819 individuals across countries. The authors study relationships between individual- and country-level socio-economic factors and vaccine attitudes. Using logistic hierarchical modelling, the researchers mark countries trends in vaccine safety perceptions and analyze socio-economic determinants of vaccine sentiments. In the article it is emphasized that public trust in vaccination is an important global health problem that affects not only low- and middle-income countries, but high-income countries. The authors convince that the lack trust in vaccines and immunization programs can lead to vaccine refusal, risking disease outbreaks and challenging immunization goals in high- and low-income

Also, it is stated that unvaccinated people should have a harder time to opt out of being vaccinated by having a higher health care cost, higher insurance, and separate activities. All of those are over-exaggerated for this issue because, they all call for the government to intrude into people’s personal lives and not giving people the freedom of their rights. In addition, some people do not get vaccinated because of religious views, but it is stated that they can opt out if their religion is documented. So, what happens to the people that become sick and are not vaccinated and cannot afford health care? They could possibly spread a new disease that vaccinations do not cover and puts vaccinated and people who are not vaccinated at risk.

Unwillingness of health care workers to take vaccination forces Governments and institutions to enact the mandatory vaccination process. Multiple strategies to enhance vaccination rate for healthcare workers in a large Midwestern health care organization with 26,000 employees remained low until vaccination was made mandatory for employment and the rate increased from less than 50% to 95% (Babcock, Gemeinhart, Jones, Dunagan, & Woeltje, 2010) . This shows that mandatory vaccination is effective in increasing the vaccination rate. Healthcare workers were willing to be vaccinated given the choice of vaccination or loss of employment. Their previous refusal to be vaccinated may not be deep rooted.

It is believed that an individual’s medical choices should not be governed. This is also a valid point. However, the decision to not vaccinate ones child not only affects the child’s health but the health of others. This point alone validates why it necessary to mandate vaccinations for all

As parents, the natural instinct to protect your children will overbear any medical recommendation. However, the choice of not vaccinating your children is selfish to the child as well as others in society. With the proper precautions and research, scheduled vaccinations will have a higher success rate than failure rate. Every parent is entitled to their parental rights in the US, but every person in society is also entitled to their health as well. “The best way to reduce vaccine-preventable diseases is to have highly immune population” (Centers for Disease

News Flash! Recent outbreaks of what the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) call vaccine-preventable diseases demonstrate the effects of the anti-vaccination movement. “Antivaxxers” as they’ve come to be called, as noticed on this author's Facebook page, are a population of parents who make a conscious decision not to vaccinate their children. The goal of this paper is to shed some light on the Antivaxxers, their arguments for choosing not to vaccinate their children, and research that proves the Antivaxxers’ theories are wrong. After all, vaccines aren’t something to be concerned about, they are proven to be effective.

Vaccination is a key factor in keeping communities safe from harmful diseases, especially those that can spread easily. However, pediatric immunization policy can be debated from an ethical perspective because it concerns the role of the government and families in maintaining the health of children. I will argue that the immunization requirements with exemptions for school entrance in Washington state are ethically required because they balance the role of the government in public health and personal autonomy in the most minimally intrusive way possible. Hendrix points out that pediatric vaccination, or the policies surrounding vaccination requirements for children, can “span several public health domains, including those of policymakers,

Not only are states allowing medical exemptions, some are offering religious, personal, and philosophical exemptions. With these exemptions, children are at greater risk of contracting a vaccine-preventable disease and transmitting these diseases to children too young to be vaccinated, people with medical contraindications to immunization, and those who do not develop protective responses to vaccines or have vaccine failure. In a study performed by Dr. Daniel A. Salmon and his colleagues, children in the United States with nonmedical exemptions between 1985 and 1992 were 35 times more likely to contract measles than vaccinated children. On a state-wide level, children in Colorado with nonmedical exemptions between 1987 and 1998 were 22 times more likely to contract measles and 5.9 times more likely to contract pertussis than vaccinated children.

For example, some parents are reluctant to vaccinate their children against diseases like Hemophilic Influenza if they won’t be attending daycare. While daycares require this vaccine, this deadly disease is a threat to all children, even if they do not attend daycare (Bronfin 3). People who oppose mandatory vaccinations for public school children point out parents concerned with their children being around unvaccinated children could move their child to a private institution requiring immunization (Murphy 2). This reasoning would only add extra stress for families trying to find schools for their children and could cost parents more money than just being able to send their child to a free public school without fear. The next most controversial concern parents have regards the ingredients in some vaccinations.

Many people may think that vaccination is a bad thing, that instead of preventing it causes illness, that is not natural. Natural or not, there are many reasons as to why we should vaccinate us and the younger generation. Most of the time children don’t like vaccination because it hurt, but is the responsibility of a parent to seek the wellbeing of his or her child. Vaccination it’s a preventive measure of various diseases. Unfortunately, things like the anti-vaccination movement, the misinformation on the Internet, and the believe that vaccination causes more damage than is worth, have led our society to think that it’s right not to vaccinate.

Modern medicine provides people with the ability to protect themselves from the world’s most fatal diseases. Merely a century ago, it was not uncommon for a child to die as a result of diseases such as polio, pertussis, and tuberculosis. Today, it is highly unlikely for a person to contract these diseases, let alone die from them. However, refusal of vaccinations has been increasing throughout the years due to the anti-vaccination movement. This movement declares mandatory vaccines unconstitutional and vaccinations overall as the cause of autism.

Disease can overthrow a culture and spread like wildfire when not taken precaution against. However, there exists a fierce opposition against the mandate of vaccination by some groups of interest with the existence of adverse effects by vaccination to the human body as a reason. Although vaccination carries some health risks,