VaccineChildren are one of God’s best gifts to people, as watching their children growis one of the best pleasures people enjoy during their life course. For thisreason, parents must take good care of their children during their early years,as they are vulnerable to many diseases due to their weak immunity.
There aremany diseases, infecting children, that may lead to death such as the poliodisease. Scientists found a solution to this problem, by injecting a tiny sampleof the virus into the child’s blood, in order to stimulate the immune system tofight the disease if the child catches it, which is known as vaccination. However, McTaggart contradicts this by pointing out that vaccination problemsfar outweigh those of going unvaccinated (1). Therefore, there are manyquestions concerning the safety and effectiveness of vaccines as opposed tothose of going unvaccinated.
Vaccines can cause complications that are more harmful than those of goingunvaccinated or even the disease itself. Professor of epidemiology at theuniversity of Washington, Dr Russell Alexander, points out that the panel setup to determine the risks of vaccination did not compare it to those of beingunvaccinated (qtd in Miller 9). This means that the research done by the panel,which proved vaccination risks to be ‘too small to count’, contains manyweaknesses. McTaggart links the appearance of learning disabilities, autism, andhyperactivity to the beginning of the mass vaccination programs (1). Thus,vaccination is directly related to many diseases, in which some are stillunknown. McTaggart adds that the mumps vaccine has proved to be a direct causeof seizures, meningitis, deafness, and encephalitis.
(6). These are extremelydangerous and unrecoverable diseases. Dr J Anthony Morris, an immunizationspecialist formerly of America’s ‘National Institutes of Health’ and ‘Food andDrug Administration’ says that “In several of the studies, the measles vaccinestrain has been recovered from the spines of the victims, showing conclusivelythat the vaccine caused the encephalitis” (qtd in McTaggart. 5).
Thus, thisdoctor as a medical authority relates the measles vaccine to a deadly diseasesuch as the encephalitis. On the other hand, the risks of catching the diseasefor unvaccinated children are similar, if not less, to the risks of developingharmful complications due to the vaccine. Therefore, vaccination is more riskyto your child than going unvaccinated. In addition to the safety problems, vaccines have also proven to be ineffectiveamong many children.
McTaggart reasons the current debate about vaccination tothe fact that measles portion of the triple shot is not working (2). This meansthat children who receive the triple shot, called MMR, which is a short hand formeasles, mumps, and rubella, are not completely immune against these diseases. McTaggart adds that the cases of measles are increasing exponentially during thelast decade (2). Similar to measles, McTaggart states that rubella’s portion ofthe vaccine showed failure in preventing this fatal disease (3).
Therefore, thefact that vaccination is not effective is common in many diseases. According tothe ‘Centers for Disease Control Morbidity and Mortality’ in 1985, about 80percent of measles cases occurring to children in America were in vaccinatedones who were vaccinated in an appropriate age (McTaggart 3). Therefore,generally vaccination is ineffective against most diseases. Vaccine supporters defend vaccines claiming that it caused a reduction in thenumber of disease cases among children upon its invention. However, this claimis wrong, as it lacks an important side, which is was the number of diseaseamong children increasing or decreasing before the vaccine invention.
Byreviewing the child disease history before vaccine’s invention, we see that thenumber of child-disease cases was already decreasing before the invention ofvaccines. Nowadays, the number of child-disease cases are beginning to growagain due to the increasing use of vaccines. Vaccines are not the reason for thedecreasing number of child-disease cases, as it is steadily increasing nowadays. Therefore, vaccinated children face more problems than the unvaccinated ones. Vaccination is hazardous to the child’s health and could cause even greatercomplications than those of the disease itself. In addition to safety problems,vaccination has proved to be ineffective against many diseases such as measlesand rubella to name some of them.
Besides, Castro infers in “House and Home”magazine, that childhood illness gives the child’s immunity a chance to developstronger and more resistant to diseases (24). Thus, it is a kind of training forthe immune system of the child against diseases. Therefore, vaccination shouldbe abolished, for it is not safe nor it is effective against many diseases. BibliographyCastro, Miranda. “Measles, Mumps, Chickenpox, The natural way to nurse them.
“. House and Home Apr. 1994: 24-25. McTaggart, Lynne. The WDDTY vaccination handbook.
Miller, Susan Katz. “Vaccination risks are ‘too small to count’. “. NewScientist25 Sept. 1993: 9.
