Have you ever seen someone with smallpox? Chances are you haven 't. Smallpox has been completely eradicated since 1977, all thanks to the modern miracle known as vaccination. The story of smallpox is the first great success story for modern medicine. What used to kill 400 000 Europeans yearly with ease, has now been wiped from the natural earth. Vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the past twenty years alone. Thanks to them we no longer see children trapped in iron lungs, their small bodies devastated by polio. Whooping cough rates in the UK have decreased more than 120% in under a century. All the statistics show that vaccines are working, so why are so many people fighting them? For one thing, widespread vaccination efforts
…show more content…
The conscious choice to vaccinate a child makes a parent feel much more responsible for potential negative results than the passive choice of leaving the child 's immune system to fend for itself. However, the results of not vaccinating can cause serious health problems. To quote Dr Erica Beard-Irvine, "I 'm starting to see more and more people questioning vaccines, which is part of an overall trend of questioning medicine. People want to be green and alternative which is fine. I support a less is more practice of medicine. I tried to avoid giving medication, but I strongly recommend vaccination." "In my practice, I have seen kids with tetanus, mumps, chicken pox, rotavirus, and invasive pneumococcus. We had a bad pertussis (whooping cough) outbreak in Okinawa a few years ago in the schools. As a medical student, I took care of a 23 year old woman who delivered her second baby and then had a radical hysterectomy, because cervical cancer was detected on the Pap smear at her new OB visit (cause by the HPV virus that is vaccine preventable). These diseases are real, and they are still out there." The diseases we vaccinate for can permanently disable or kill children. Measles, whooping cough, Hib, Rotavirus, and diphtheria can all be fatal, especially to young, unvaccinated children. A child getting one of these potentially fatal illnesses is much more likely that the slim chance than a child could experience a serious negative side effect of a
The conscious choice to vaccinate a child makes a parent feel much more responsible for potential negative results than the passive choice of leaving the child 's immune system to fend for itself. However, the results of not vaccinating can cause serious health problems. To quote Dr Erica Beard-Irvine, "I 'm starting to see more and more people questioning vaccines, which is part of an overall trend of questioning medicine. People want to be green and alternative which is fine. I support a less is more practice of medicine. I tried to avoid giving medication, but I strongly recommend vaccination." "In my practice, I have seen kids with tetanus, mumps, chicken pox, rotavirus, and invasive pneumococcus. We had a bad pertussis (whooping cough) outbreak in Okinawa a few years ago in the schools. As a medical student, I took care of a 23 year old woman who delivered her second baby and then had a radical hysterectomy, because cervical cancer was detected on the Pap smear at her new OB visit (cause by the HPV virus that is vaccine preventable). These diseases are real, and they are still out there." The diseases we vaccinate for can permanently disable or kill children. Measles, whooping cough, Hib, Rotavirus, and diphtheria can all be fatal, especially to young, unvaccinated children. A child getting one of these potentially fatal illnesses is much more likely that the slim chance than a child could experience a serious negative side effect of a