Autism and the Anti-Vaccine Movement
Vaccines are vital to the health of all people. After all, vaccines are designed to protect people from major, and often deadly, diseases. For example, smallpox was a disease that during the twentieth century alone killed ten times as many people as died in World War II. After a worldwide vaccination campaign starting in 1966, smallpox was completely eradicated by 1980 (World health organization). Today, vaccines can prevent many serious illnesses, such as polio, measles, diphtheria, pertussis, rubella, mumps, tetanus, rotavirus, and certain types of flu. Vaccinations are given to children from an early age, for they are the most vulnerable to the diseases, and by exposing them to the vaccinations from an early on they will have a lifelong immunity to those diseases.
However, there exists a large and growing number of people in America (as well as in the UK and other countries) who believe that vaccines come with a devastating side effect--the onset of …show more content…
In 1998, he and a research team of 11 other members wrote and published a study about the correlation between vaccines and autism. Journalists in London were invited to a press conference on February 26, 1998, at the Royal Free Hospital of Medicine. They were promoting a paper that had been published in The Lancet, one of the most cited medical journals in the world (Mnookin, 2011). At the conference, Wakefield advocated for changes in health policy regarding vaccines (Mnookin, 2011). The study itself went into great length to describe the supposed findings of Wakefield and his cohorts, including but not limited laboratory investigations, tables, and charts to demonstrate their findings. (Wakefield, 1998). The study indicated that the MMR vaccine could cause autism to develop in children who before the vaccines had never shown any
Vaccines are vital to the health of all people. After all, vaccines are designed to protect people from major, and often deadly, diseases. For example, smallpox was a disease that during the twentieth century alone killed ten times as many people as died in World War II. After a worldwide vaccination campaign starting in 1966, smallpox was completely eradicated by 1980 (World health organization). Today, vaccines can prevent many serious illnesses, such as polio, measles, diphtheria, pertussis, rubella, mumps, tetanus, rotavirus, and certain types of flu. Vaccinations are given to children from an early age, for they are the most vulnerable to the diseases, and by exposing them to the vaccinations from an early on they will have a lifelong immunity to those diseases.
However, there exists a large and growing number of people in America (as well as in the UK and other countries) who believe that vaccines come with a devastating side effect--the onset of …show more content…
In 1998, he and a research team of 11 other members wrote and published a study about the correlation between vaccines and autism. Journalists in London were invited to a press conference on February 26, 1998, at the Royal Free Hospital of Medicine. They were promoting a paper that had been published in The Lancet, one of the most cited medical journals in the world (Mnookin, 2011). At the conference, Wakefield advocated for changes in health policy regarding vaccines (Mnookin, 2011). The study itself went into great length to describe the supposed findings of Wakefield and his cohorts, including but not limited laboratory investigations, tables, and charts to demonstrate their findings. (Wakefield, 1998). The study indicated that the MMR vaccine could cause autism to develop in children who before the vaccines had never shown any