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Making vaccinations mandatory
Should children vaccination be mandatory
Should children vaccination be mandatory
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Requiring vaccinations is a highly debatable topic in the United States today. An article by Ronald Bayer, “The continuing tensions between individual rights and public health,” is one of the most reliable sources in the case study. The author has a PhD from the University of Chicago and focuses his research on issues of social justice and ethical matters. Bayer has also previously been a consultant to the World Health Organization on ethical issues related to public health. This makes him very knowledgeable about the topic and a highly credible source.
Also, it is stated that unvaccinated people should have a harder time to opt out of being vaccinated by having a higher health care cost, higher insurance, and separate activities. All of those are over-exaggerated for this issue because, they all call for the government to intrude into people’s personal lives and not giving people the freedom of their rights. In addition, some people do not get vaccinated because of religious views, but it is stated that they can opt out if their religion is documented. So, what happens to the people that become sick and are not vaccinated and cannot afford health care? They could possibly spread a new disease that vaccinations do not cover and puts vaccinated and people who are not vaccinated at risk.
Salmon and Siegal (2001) suggested in order to balance individual autonomy and public beneficence regarding vaccinations, is to possibly allow for non-medical exemptions such as religious reasons with the agreement of counseling on the consequences of vaccination refusal (as cited in Omer et al., 2009). Mandatory childhood vaccinations promote the strengthening of community actions to eradicate vaccine-preventable diseases by working collaboratively in order to break the vicious cycles. It also relates to the Ottawa Charter principles of building a healthy public policy in order to sustain the decrease of vaccine-preventable diseases and collective health and vaccine-preventable
Mandatory school vaccination is one of the most intensely debated issues in society. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have vaccination requirements for children to attend public school. Each state, including the District of Columbia, requires vaccinations for students in public elementary and secondary schools. However, there is no federal mandate for the vaccination of public education students. Proponents of mandatory school vaccinations would like to see that changed.
The author develops how the anti-vaccination movement is continuing to gain support, but still despite their growth the rate of vaccinated children remains high. The article points out that scientific evidence on that vaccines safeness, but in fact are useful to helped contain, and control the wide spread of diseases. One key point that would important to incorporate in the my essay is the court case of Jacobson V. Massachusetts which essentially ruled that the government for the safety of the public can make mandatory
Why would someone exempt themselves and their children from something that promotes their wellbeing? – Different exemption laws, ignorance of how diseases spread, and fear. According to the CDC, in the United States, 95% of children in kindergarten have been immunized for preventable diseases. But when it comes to individual states, those percentages fluctuate tremendously. In Colorado only 82% of children have had vaccines that doctors say are necessary, but in Mississippi practically all kindergarten children have been vaccinated (99.7%).The federal
As parents, the natural instinct to protect your children will overbear any medical recommendation. However, the choice of not vaccinating your children is selfish to the child as well as others in society. With the proper precautions and research, scheduled vaccinations will have a higher success rate than failure rate. Every parent is entitled to their parental rights in the US, but every person in society is also entitled to their health as well. “The best way to reduce vaccine-preventable diseases is to have highly immune population” (Centers for Disease
The Department of Health website contains many resources to answer questions that parents may have on whether to vaccinate their children, including information about the benefits of vaccination, how one can get vaccinated, and access to webinars and lectures. By giving people in Washington state the opportunity to be informed, the government demonstrates that they are not blindly leading people or forcing them to take actions they are not familiar with. Hendrix points out that communication, especially with those that do not want to vaccinate, is extremely important in highlighting the goals of the immunization requirements. The government website clearly highlights the goals and reasoning behind these requirements, which satisfies the issue of
There has always been resistance against vaccination, even when it was first developed by Edward Jenner. Despite the millions of deaths that been avoided through the use of vaccines, people have always found ways to criticize this medical breakthrough. However, it was not until recently that the fear of vaccinations began to re-emerge and confuse the minds of the general population. With the growing concerns about vaccinations, parents are becoming more reluctant in vaccinating themselves and their children. Consequently, infectious diseases that were once contained (such as measles) are now resurfacing as outbreaks.
Not only are states allowing medical exemptions, some are offering religious, personal, and philosophical exemptions. With these exemptions, children are at greater risk of contracting a vaccine-preventable disease and transmitting these diseases to children too young to be vaccinated, people with medical contraindications to immunization, and those who do not develop protective responses to vaccines or have vaccine failure. In a study performed by Dr. Daniel A. Salmon and his colleagues, children in the United States with nonmedical exemptions between 1985 and 1992 were 35 times more likely to contract measles than vaccinated children. On a state-wide level, children in Colorado with nonmedical exemptions between 1987 and 1998 were 22 times more likely to contract measles and 5.9 times more likely to contract pertussis than vaccinated children.
The article “Five Important Reasons to Vaccinate Your Child” reasons that “Some diseases that once injured or killed thousands of children, have been eliminated completely and others are close to extinction– primarily due to safe and effective vaccines”. Because of vaccines the world today as we know it is slowly becoming safer as more and more diseases are being eradicated. The U.S. has helped in their own way to get rid of diseases. The article “Should Any Vaccines Be Required for Children?” states that “In 1855 Massachusetts passed the first U.S. state law mandating vaccinations for schoolchildren [5], followed by New York (1862), Connecticut (1872), Indiana (1881), and Arkansas (1882).” So as the years went on the U.S. has continually integrated vaccinations for the youth, in this case, it is needed in order to attend
Required Immunity Mandatory vaccinations for children in public schools have been the center of much debate since laws were first developed to regulate immunization. Fears from parents about side effects and adverse reactions have steered many away from wanting to vaccinate their children despite the numerous infectious diseases they prevent. These debates have gotten in the way of progression in schools for preventing the spread of disease. To me, the risks of not vaccinating children are far greater than the risks of adverse reactions.
Many people may think that vaccination is a bad thing, that instead of preventing it causes illness, that is not natural. Natural or not, there are many reasons as to why we should vaccinate us and the younger generation. Most of the time children don’t like vaccination because it hurt, but is the responsibility of a parent to seek the wellbeing of his or her child. Vaccination it’s a preventive measure of various diseases. Unfortunately, things like the anti-vaccination movement, the misinformation on the Internet, and the believe that vaccination causes more damage than is worth, have led our society to think that it’s right not to vaccinate.
First, I am going to talk about the reasons that vaccinations in America should be required. The vaccinations are not just for the individual themselves. They are for the entire community because it prevents a mass disease to spread throughout the house, community, country, or even world. If you get a vaccination, there is less of a chance to spreading it onto other people.
Vaccinations When it comes to vaccinations, there are many different opinions on immunizing a child, especially when that child’s parent has a strong like or dislike towards vaccinating. Immunizations have existed for at least a thousand years and as technology advances more, there are new vaccines being designed to help protect our children from contracting contagious and sometimes deadly diseases, such as Bordetella pertussis, polio, and even influenza. For decades, all 50 states have required that parents vaccinate their children against various diseases, including polio and measles, as a prerequisite to enrolling them in public schools (Ciolli, 2008). Enrollment in public school requires up to date vaccinations in order to protect the children and even the adults from contracting and spreading a disease, possibly causing an epidemic.
