The Importance Of Vaccines In Public Schools

Vaccines have been present in our society since the discovery of the smallpox vaccine in the late 1790s. The first vaccination law in the United States concerning children occurred in Massachusetts in the 1850s (Goodman). This law specifically targeted schoolchildren in order to prevent the spread of smallpox within classrooms. With the introduction of several new vaccines throughout the twentieth century, state laws followed to recommend children receive each new vaccine prior to entering public schools. It was not until the 1970s, in an effort to reduce the spread of measles, the difference in disease rates in states that enforced these recommendations was thoroughly examined. The studies concluded that states that required immunizations for entry in public schools had a forty to fifty-one percent lower rate of measles than states that did not enforce immunization laws (Orenstein). Thanks to the high success of vaccine law enforcement correlating to an extreme reduction in new cases, every state in the United States had immunization laws in effect for new public school applicants by the 1980s, and immunization laws for all school-aged children by the end of the 1990s in all but four states (Goodman).
The first recommend schedule for childhood vaccination was published by the …show more content…
Formaldehyde is used in vaccines in order to remove the harmful aspects of a particular virus or bacteria while still allowing the receive host to form antibodies for the disease. Formaldehyde is also found in human blood as it is a necessary component in the creation of amino acids. The average amount of formaldehyde found in a single vaccine is less than a tenth of a milligram while the average infant has over a milligram of formaldehyde in its blood (Offit). While formaldehyde can change DNA and potentially cause cancer in cells in vitro, it has not been found as a carcinogen in humans