Fear Immunity
Modern day medicine has afforded us many benefits. One of these is the ability to live life without the fear of many communicable diseases putting susceptible populations at risk. These are diseases that in the not so distant past had wide spread morbidity but today are nearly unknown due to vaccinations. When we start wondering what the purpose of vaccines are, it’s paramount to recall what they’re protecting us against and buying into the fearmongering surrounding them. In the United States, we have the luxury of vaccines that are readily available to the public, yet increasingly and with more frequency, people are turning them down. There has been a resurgence in childhood communicable diseases that were close to being snuffed out. As parents decide to delay or opt out of the recommended vaccine schedules due to misguided ideas, we risk losing herd immunity that has been afforded to us by public health programs.
We wound up in this fearless era through major medical discoveries in the last few hundred years. In the late 18th century, Edward Jenner created the first vaccine which was used to prevent smallpox. Since then, we’ve gotten the polio vaccine, the vaccine …show more content…
Andrew Wakefield. He was the first to theorize the link between the MMR vaccination and autism. A case study was published by Wakefield, claiming that the measles virus was found in the children who had first shown signs of autism after receiving the vaccination. The study stated that it could not demonstrate a relationship between the MMR vaccination and autism, but Wakefield later suggested that a relationship did exist. Despite the lack of evidence, the story was sensationalized and spread fear. The possibility of a link between the vaccination and autism was studied by many but none proved Wakefield’s theory. Though there was no proof of the relationship, many people correlate all vaccines with an increase in
Modern day medicine has afforded us many benefits. One of these is the ability to live life without the fear of many communicable diseases putting susceptible populations at risk. These are diseases that in the not so distant past had wide spread morbidity but today are nearly unknown due to vaccinations. When we start wondering what the purpose of vaccines are, it’s paramount to recall what they’re protecting us against and buying into the fearmongering surrounding them. In the United States, we have the luxury of vaccines that are readily available to the public, yet increasingly and with more frequency, people are turning them down. There has been a resurgence in childhood communicable diseases that were close to being snuffed out. As parents decide to delay or opt out of the recommended vaccine schedules due to misguided ideas, we risk losing herd immunity that has been afforded to us by public health programs.
We wound up in this fearless era through major medical discoveries in the last few hundred years. In the late 18th century, Edward Jenner created the first vaccine which was used to prevent smallpox. Since then, we’ve gotten the polio vaccine, the vaccine …show more content…
Andrew Wakefield. He was the first to theorize the link between the MMR vaccination and autism. A case study was published by Wakefield, claiming that the measles virus was found in the children who had first shown signs of autism after receiving the vaccination. The study stated that it could not demonstrate a relationship between the MMR vaccination and autism, but Wakefield later suggested that a relationship did exist. Despite the lack of evidence, the story was sensationalized and spread fear. The possibility of a link between the vaccination and autism was studied by many but none proved Wakefield’s theory. Though there was no proof of the relationship, many people correlate all vaccines with an increase in