An Argumentative Essay By Melanie Payton
English 213x F61
June 1, 2011
English 213x F61
June 1, 2011
As a student of Medical Assisting, I am taught how to administer injections, including vaccinations. The needle is always kept sterile; if it touches anything besides the patient’s it must be tossed in the bio hazard container and I have to start my draw up over again. An alcohol solution is used to sanitize the skin surrounding the injection site, as well as the lid of the bottle containing the pharmaceuticals. Care is given in washing my hands and applying clean gloves. But even before this process commences, a thorough examination of the patient’s medical history is performed to ensure they are eligible to receive the vaccine. What seems like a simple procedure is very complex, with many safety mechanisms to prevent errors and to ensure patient safety and comfort. Despite this care, there are the stories of the few. The few whose routine immunization visit to the doctor left them irreparably debilitated. But what of those who never received the vaccines? Theirs are the stories of pain, handicap, and even death. Those numbers are not the minority, but the majority. Vaccination has changed the way we get sick. Since immunization was introduced as a mainstream medical practice, incidences of common, crippling illnesses have decreased. Vaccination has lowered risk of complications and death, and even eradicated some epidemic diseases completely. The argument that vaccination causes more harm than good is false. Rather, the facts are that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the potential risks.
A year ago, I noticed one of my friends limping. I asked her if everything was alright, she responded that she was fine and asked why I inquired. After I mentioned her limp, which she was apparently was unaware of, she mentioned she’d had polio as a child. This surprised me, even though I knew she had spent the first eight years of her life in a Chinese orphanage. Polio is one of those diseases we don’t think much about today. After talking to my friend, I consider that both a blessing and a luxury. Polio was once a widespread and debilitating illness within the United States. Our own president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was confined to a wheelchair as a result of contracting the virus at an early age. Polio has a history dating back to ancient Egypt and continued through the Great Depression, until President Roosevelt declared war on the virus. The last known naturally occurring case of Polio within the United States was in the late 1970s, after the development of the vaccine in the early 1960s. With the World Health Organization at the head, a massive campaign to eradicate the polio virus worldwide is currently underway. Its success would lead to the second triumph of human efforts to deliberately eradicate a virus (Polio Information Center Online), the first being the deliberate obliteration of the Smallpox virus via vaccination efforts.
Many individuals wonder why they must immunize against diseases such as chicken pox, the flu, or whooping cough, when such illnesses are perceived as nothing more than simple inconveniences or unpleasant experiences to get through. While it is true that everybody’s body is different, and that patients should have an informed consumer driven approach to receiving vaccines, the thought that we vaccinate only because we’re afraid of a mere illness and the discomfort associated with it, is a dangerous misconception. It is important not to let this misconception blind parents to the facts of these illnesses. In conversing with my aunt, who chooses not to immunize her children for various logical arguments, she mentioned how when she lived in Washington there were four cases where chickenpox turned fatal. Furthermore, in those cases, it wasn’t chicken pox that killed the patients, but complications from chicken pox. For this reason, the very argument she uses—that everybody is different—is why vaccines are so important: they prevent the disease, thus preventing the complications. Normally, chicken pox is harmless, resulting in maybe a few scars at worse. In a study by Kaiser Permanente in Denver Colorado, researchers found that unvaccinated children were nine times more likely to contract the varicella (chicken pox) virus. They also reported “that before immunization, chicken pox led to 10,000 hospitalizations and 100 deaths annually, but the vaccine ‘has reduced that by 80%’" (Fiore). Essentially this means that vaccinated children are drastically less likely to contract the virus, which in turn means they are significantly less likely to be hospitalized or die because of it.
It is important to understand how immunization vaccinations work. It doesn’t mean that it will prevent an infection. Instead a vaccine works by introducing a pathogen’s unique identifying proteins, called antigens, into the immune system. The immune system can then recognize the antigens as foreign invaders. Because antigens are small, deactivated replicas of the actual virus or disease-causing bacteria, your body can create the necessary antibodies to recognize and fight it in the future. Then when a strong and vicious strain infects the body, the immune system already knows how to beat it. That does not necessarily mean that you won’t get sick. If you do, you will become less ill than if you were meeting the disease for the first time. And that difference can be life altering.
Those who don’t vaccinate their children often argue that their child is not a threat to the kids who are vaccinated. This contradicts the concept of herd immunity. As explained previously, vaccination does not prevent the spread of infections. If one child, who has not been vaccinated, brings a disease to school, other children who have been vaccinated still have the potential to contract the disease. While their immune system should be more prepared, there is still the potential for illness. Vaccines aren’t a guarantee, but they are the best chance we have, especially for the patients that fall into age or medical groups which disqualify them from specific vaccinations. Some vaccines can only be given at certain ages. Take the scenario of a preschool, where children of multiple age groups interact. A six year old child has not been vaccinated for the MMR vaccine and a 3 year old child has not yet qualified, because of age, for their next-in-series shot. That three year old child is now at risk from the unvaccinated six year old. This illustrates a failure of herd immunity. Only by everyone being vaccinated is everyone safe.
I once heard the argument from a mother that her children are at a higher risk of dying in their car seats than of contracting the ugly diseases we’re immunizing against. To that I say, just because your child is more likely to drown in a tub than by falling off a cliff doesn’t mean you’ll let them walk by cliffs unsupervised. As concerned parents, we try to keep our children from harm. Vaccines do that. Going unvaccinated is like driving around without a car seat, or letting children play by cliffs. Smart parents know that while there are rare instances when car seats have complicated rescue efforts, they still save lives. We are even aware that car seats contain products with known carcinogens and neurotoxins. Yet we continue to use them; those minute risks are outweighed by their proven safety. Likewise, vaccinations save lives. There are risks associated with them, but they are minimal and are more than compensated by the life saving benefits they offer.
Work Cited:
Fiore, Kristina. ”Researchers quantify risk of passing up Varicella Vaccine.” medpagetoday.com, 2011,
Everyday Health Inc., Accessed May 2011. <http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/Vaccines/17790>
Polio Information Center Online, “A Brief History of Polio,” Accessed May 2011.
Works Referred:
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