Vaccinating Children Persuasive Essay

In 2015, there have been a large number of cases of the measles that have surfaced. There have been over 100 cases in the U.S. already this year, which is more than we see usually within the whole year. A large number of cases have been linked to an outbreak to Disneyland in California, but it has also been reported elsewhere across the country. The major factor of why the number of cases of measles is increasing is due to the fact that some parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children. There are also a large number of concerned parents who think that vaccinating children before letting them go to school should be mandatory. Parents usually should have a say in how they raise their child, but in this case the consequences of not vaccinating are too vast to overlook. Parents should reconsider vaccinating their children in order to protect them and …show more content…
This is largely in part due to a study that came out that claimed that vaccines could cause autism. Andrew Wakefield and a dozen co-authors published a now-retracted paper in The Lancet in February 1998 that claimed that autism and the MMR vaccine were related. It provided case studies for 12 children looking into their immunization with the MMR vaccine. “The authors wrote, ‘In eight children, the onset of behavioral problems had been linked, either by the parents or by the child’s physician, with MMR vaccination,’” (Ziv). Along with false reports claiming that vaccines cause autism, celebrities have started endorsing these claims as well, celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, and Donald Trump. People look up to these celebrities endorsing anti-vaxxing initiatives and they think that they should go along with their beliefs, because they are important in society. They have no regard for the multiple reports that have been proven again and again that there is no correlation between the MMR vaccine and acquiring