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The Official Student Paper of Riverside Poly High School

Bubble Children

Mar 12, 2015

VACCINATIONS: Children should be vaccinated for potential diseases to protect their health as well as the general public’s.

By Brendan Brown, Staff Writer

Throughout human history, disease has consistently been the greatest cause of death. A vaccination is a medical method used to strengthen one’s immune system in order to protect it against potential diseases. Assuming parents don’t secretly want their children to needlessly suffer and potentially die from disease, vaccination should eventually make their to-do list. Surprisingly, some parents are opposed to vaccination and claim it is their right to keep their children from being vaccinated, often fearing that it puts their child at the risk of developing autism. However, the infamous 1998 study published in The Lancet that released findings linking vaccines to autism has since been retracted. So not only is this belief unfounded and a great danger to children, but it also poses a threat to the general public.

We often take for granted living in a time where most individuals have been vaccinated and common diseases that used to threaten our ancestors no longer exist. Have you ever lost a friend to diphtheria? Are any of your family members permanently crippled due to polio? Probably not, since both of those diseases have essentially been eradicated in the United States since the creation of their vaccines. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) describes the introduction of mass vaccinations as among the “10 great public health achievements” of the 20th century, one that has prevented tens of thousands of deaths in the United States alone.

To put the issue into perspective, CDC’s statistics on these now-vaccinated diseases reveal that “in 1900, 21,064 smallpox cases were reported, and 894 patients died. In 1920, 469,924 measles cases were reported, and 7,575 patients died; 147,991 diphtheria cases were reported, and 13,170 patients died. In 1922, 107,473 pertussis cases were reported, and 5,099 patients died.” The nation we live in today no longer has to fear any of those diseases due to the effort we have put into vaccination. When literally thousands of lives could be at stake, parents have no right to deny their children vaccinations.

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