Vaccine Debate Essay

Vaccine Debate

Edward Jenner invented a method to protect against smallpox in the late 1700s. The method involved taking substances from an open wound of someone with small-pox or cow-pox and injecting it into another person’s skin, also called “arm-to-arm inoculation”. The earliest actual documented examples of vaccination date all the way back to the tenth century in China (Lombard, “A brief history of vaccines and vaccinations”). The mention of early vaccination was taken note of by a French scholar, Henri Husson, written in one of his journals (Dictionaire des sciences médicale). The Ottoman Empire Turks also discovered a method of immunization a few centuries later. Lady Montagu of Great Britain, a famous writer and wife of the English ambassador of Istanbul, between 1716 -1718, came across the Turkish vaccine for small-pox. After surviving as a child with small-pox, she insisted her son be vaccinated (Henricy, “Letters of the Right Honourable Lady Wortley Montagu”). When she returned to England, she continued to publicize the Turkish tradition of immunization and spread their methods to the rest of her country. She also had all family members also vaccinated. Immunization was soon adopted in England, nearly 50 years before Jenner's smallpox vaccine in 1796 (Sharp, “Anti-vaccinationists past and present”). Edward Jenner’s target for smallpox was to eradicate it. And later by the 1940s, knowledge of the science behind vaccines had developed and soon reached the point where across-the-board vaccine production was a goal that was possible and where serious disease control efforts could start. Vaccines for many dangerous diseases, including ones protecting against pertussis, diphtheria, and tetanus were underway into production. ...

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...nes.gov, “Herd Immunity”). Herd immunity means everyone must be vaccinated in every community despite beliefs on vaccines for protection against diseases. With a vaccine movement more communities will be vaccinated and increasing the numbers of those vaccinated will only help against deadly outbreaks.

With vaccines more abundant we can eradicate harmful disease like HPV, influenza, and Hepatitis. All treatable and yet still common among many communities in the United States. The only chance is providing people the necessary information and requiring mandated immunizations with no exempts in every state. Then maybe we can eradicate those diseases and permanently wipe them off worldwide like small-pox. Vaccines are safe and if we continue providing them we could eventually face disease like HIV and even some cancer that have not ever been able to treat in the future.