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Why you should vaccinate

February 22, 2016
Michael Linde La Canada High 11th Grade

By Michael Linde
La Canada High
11th Grade

Smallpox had an average thirty percent mortality rate during that time; nearly one in every three people who contracted it died.

Vaccination began in 1798, with the work of Edward Jenner. Jenner, in discovering this method of immunization, saved countless lives. Ever since, diseases that previously ravaged populations unchecked, such as polio and smallpox, have been eradicated.

While vaccination confers protection to the individual, it also brings protection to the community at large.

Herd immunity is when many members of a community are vaccinated, protecting those who absolutely cannot vaccinate against contagious diseases, such as those with a weakened or nonexistent immune system, too young or too old be vaccinated, or having allergy to an ingredient of the vaccine. The reason herd immunity exists is because these diseases have to spread from person to person—if absolutely no one around them has the disease, the vulnerable simply never come in contact with it. Like an elephant herd circling their young, the community protects the weak by surrounding them with the strong and healthy. But if herd members decide to leave holes in the circle, then the young in the middle are put in danger.

Whether or not we like it getting shots, because we live in communities, we are all members of municipal herds. It is our responsibility as neighbors, family, or coworkers to vaccinate as possible to help protect those around us who actually cannot.

Recently, concerned parents have spoken out against vaccinating their children, for various reasons. Many opponents to mandatory vaccination cite vaccines’ autism-causing properties. However, this is based on a single study that was later proved fraudulent and misleading. In 1998, Andrew Wakefield and twelve of his colleagues published a paper postulating that the MMR vaccine children received caused their autism. The experimental results were undermined by many flaws, such as the lack of control subjects and small sample size. A short retraction was soon published, with ten of the original twelve co-authors admitting that “no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient.” Further investigation showed that they were guilty of deliberate fraud. They picked and chose data that suited their case; they falsified facts. Multiple epidemiological studies were conducted and published almost immediately after the publication of Wakefield’s paper, refuting the posited link between MMR vaccination and autism. Under the crushing weight of all this combined evidence, no one can refuse to vaccinate their children and still have a clear conscience.

We are in the middle of flu season, and while flu may seem benign, like only a stronger cold, 36,000 die and 200,000 are hospitalized each year in the United States alone because of the flu. It is our responsibility to ourselves and to members of our communities to make sure we take the necessary measures to prevent such tragedies. The flu vaccine, for example, is easily accessible; it is offered for free or very cheap at most pharmacies such as CVS, Rite-Aid, and Walgreens. Please take the time with your doctor to make sure all your vaccinations are up to date; to make sure your future, and the future of those around you, is safe.

3 Comments

  1. Redpill1

    February 24, 2016 at 6:09 AM

    Herd immunity doesn’t exist-never has. A.W. Hedrich measles observation, was not a study or a research paper and had nothing to do with VACCINES. His observation was in 1933 and the killed measles vaccine (the first measles vaccine) wasn’t developed until 1963. By 1963, the death rate from measles in the United States had already dropped by approximately 98% ( Vital Statistics of the United States 1937, 1938, 1943, 1944, 1949, 1960, 1967, 1976, 1987, 1992; Historical Statistics of the United States— Colonial Times to 1970 Part 1; Health, United States, 2004, US Department of Health and Human Services; Vital Records & Health Data Development Section, Michigan Department of Community Health; US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2003; Reported Cases and Deaths from Vaccine Preventable Diseases, United States, 1950–2008.)

    Live measles vaccine was distributed in 1966-7. Just on that basis alone antibody production could not be detected. Herd Immunity has no basis in vaccine-induced antibody production, it is not a scientifically validated concept, it is not an immunologic idea, but rather an epidemiological construct and cannot be applied to vaccinated communities because VACCINES were not part of the OBSERVATION.

    Despite outbreaks of Pertussis, Mumps & Measles occurring in highly vaccinated population-some as high as 100%,the CDC and their legion of paid celebrity go to doctors continue to laud the fake theory of herd immunity. Also take this into consideration: Today millions of adults exist without having had no vaccines in decades (Baby Boomers) and millions of teenagers who have not had boosters. That is more than half of the country’s population. There have not been ANY EPIDEMICS in the US as a result of more than half of the population being unvaccinated.

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  2. Redpill1

    February 24, 2016 at 6:19 AM

    Your analysis of the Wakefield saga is completely incorrect-wrong. You do not post the name of the REPORT-which was less than a page. Do you know off the top of your head what it is without googling it?

    The titled “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children”
    Volume 351, Number 9103 28 February 1998 A J Wakefield, S H Murch, A Anthony, J Linnell, D M Casson, M Malik, M Berelowitz, A P Dhillon, M A Thomson, P Harvey, A Valentine, S E Davies, J A Walker-Smith

    As you can see Dr. Wakefield was not the only researcher involved.

    The paper was an ‘early report’ on 12 children, with 13 multidisciplinary authors. The childrens’ medical histories were written by clinical lead, Professor Walker-Smith, NOT Dr Andrew Wakefield who collated the reports. The basis of the three year £8million GMC ‘trial’ which delivered guilty verdicts on Dr Wakefield and his two clinician co-authors Profs Walker-Smith and Murch, was an alleged ‘conspiracy’ to subject children to unnecessary invasive procedures. Journalist Brian Deer, with no scientific or medical qualifications whatsoever, was the sole complainant. Deer always claimed (loudly) the Lancet children did not have bowel disease. Of course they DID, and the clinicians were only doing their jobs diagnosing and treating their bowel disorders. The GMC made no attempt to attack the veracity of the Lancet paper, concentrating instead on ethical permissions etc. It was plain the evidence was manipulated throughout the hearing, to ensure guilty verdicts were delivered on all three doctors.

    Following the guilty verdicts, several articles by Deer appeared in the British Medical Journal. It was an Editorial by BMJ Editor Fiona Godlee, which first alleged fraud against Dr Wakefield, based on Deer’s ridiculous article, alleging Dr Wakefield altered the Lancet childrens’ medical histories. (This would have been impossible).

    Later, Godlee made a determined attempt to smear ALL of Dr Wakefield’s co-authors, accusing them all of research fraud and misconduct. Unfortunately, Godlee was forced to admit, during her evidence to the UK Government’s Science and Technology Committee, the huge pharmaceutical industries’ financial and sponsorship involvement in the BMJ and other medical and scientific journals. The politicians refused to ‘touch’ this poisoned chalice. Neither University College London, nor UKRIO, the research watchdog wanted anything to do with it either.

    Professor Walker-Smith was completely exonerated following his High Court Appeal in 2012. Judge Lord Justice Mitting took less than four days to demolish Deer’s evidence and the panel’s ‘inadequate and superficial’ handling of it. Dr Wakefield, by then effectively banished, from the UK, could not afford the costs involved in an appeal, and Prof Murch, who was permitted to keep his medical license, remains in a guilty but ‘admonished’ limbo. The minimal cost to launch an appeal in the UK court in US dollars is somewhere between 5 & 8 million.

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