The Anti-Vaccine movement is an extremely controversial, problematic, and potentially dangerous exercise of actively deciding against providing yourself or your children with readily available vaccines. Anti-Vaxxers put themselves and the public at risk of easily preventable diseases by delaying or refusing vaccines, effectively failing to contribute to society’s mutual responsibility of upholding public health is a slap in the face to medical advancement. Many people who participate in Anti-Vaxxing see this as a personal choice, yet their irresponsibility is potentially endangering the lives of the people around them, making this movement a public health concern.
What these Anti-Vaxxers don’t realize is that access to vaccines are a privilege, one that also establishes the individual responsibility of contributing to society’s collective health. It’s interesting to note that it’s the people who have access to these vaccines are the ones refusing them, an outrageous concept when considering that something as simple as the MMR vaccine could be saving hundreds of lives in developing countries. The irony is not lost regarding the Anti-Vaccine movement. Parents with access to the privilege that are vaccines also have the luxury of opting out because the diseases in question have mostly been eradicated in most first world countries, due in turn to —get this—national participation in vaccination programs.
One of the main Anti-Vaxxer arguments is, “If your child is vaccinated then you have nothing to worry about from my unvaccinated child, right?”, well, no. Herd Immunity is a form of indirect protection from disease when a large percent of the population is immune to infectious disease, providing protection or those who are not immune. This practice only works when everyone who can get vaccinated, gets vaccinated. For example, a newborn can’t begin receiving the whooping cough vaccine until two months after birth, making them highly susceptible to this and many other diseases. Without those who can get vaccinated readily contributing to herd immunity, young children and those can’t get vaccinated are at risk.
More than a decade ago, a publication of a study showing an “association” between autism and the MMR vaccine became a catalyst for the Anti-Vaxx movement. The senior editor of the study has since been discredited and the paper retracted for data manipulation. Other studies have been done on a larger scale and have found no connection between the vaccine and autism. Anti-Vaxxers have no credible scientific sources to back their motives, their movement basically comes down to people feeding off of each other’s hesitancy, creating an echo chamber of people who are using falsities to justify their ignorance.
“Vaccines don’t cause autism. Vaccines, instead, prevent disease. Vaccines have wiped out a score of formerly deadly childhood diseases. Vaccine skepticism has helped to bring some of those diseases back from near extinction.” Alex Pareene
People seem to have forgotten that just decades ago, it wasn’t uncommon for children to die from diseases such as diphtheria, polio, or measles. Many naturalists make up the Anti-Vax movement, claiming that natural immunity is better than achieving immunity through vaccination, despite the fact that studies have shown that risk associated with a natural infection is nowhere near comparable to the risks of any vaccine.
One of the only scientific standings the Anti-Vaxx community has, even though they don’t understand it in correlation with vaccinations, is that the frequency of asthma, allergies, and autoimmune disorders is increasing. This phenomenon is caused not by vaccinations themselves, but rather the hygienic environment that is being created. In today’s society, we come into contact with fewer bacteria and parasites, which alters our gut flora (the complex community of microorganisms that live in our digestive tracts). Diversity is a key attribute in maintaining a healthy immune system, but we can’t blame this hyper-hygienic environment we have created on vaccines alone, a theory called the “hygiene hypothesis” proposes that autoimmune and allergic diseases are making a comeback due to society’s advancement in hygiene.
The failure of today’s society to accept innovations in medicine and science will never fail to disappoint me. We owe our significantly longer lifespans compared to those a century ago to the advancements in science and technology. No matter how many studies are done that disprove Anti-Vaxx arguments, there will still be those who ignorantly choose to make these decisions because they think they will have no immediate or permanent effect on them. Anti-Vaxxers claim that their methods “work” because they or their children have never contracted an illness is just some backward logic. Congratulations, your unvaccinated child has been relying on the herd immunity of the vaccinated children around them.
“Imagine the action of a vaccine not just in terms of how it affects a single body, but also in terms of how it affects the collective body of a community.” Eula Biss
Even if vaccines were to find a correlation between vaccinations and autism, is autism worse than a deadly disease? If you think having an autistic child is worse than them contracting a nearly 100% preventable disease, then you need to take a step back and reanalyze what it means to be a parent. “Polio vs. autism” shouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of vaccines. People have to wake up and see the facts and statistics for themselves, however obvious they may seem, however how loud we scream them.
