Most people are familiar with Edward Jenner and his discovery of the smallpox vaccination (by using cowpox) but the really interesting story is the aftermath of the discovery and how it was used to eradicate smallpox throughout the world. Through the wide spread efforts of WHO, enough people, world wide were vaccinated to eradicate smallpox, however, many of the people who were vaccinated were not given the choice to opt out.(1)
"There were scenes of policemen holding down men in their night robes
while vaccinators began their work on their arms," Willrich tells Fresh Air's
Terry Gross. "Inspectors were going room to room looking for children
with smallpox. And when they found them, they were literally tearing
babes from their mothers' arms to take them to the city pesthouse [which
housed smallpox victims.]"-(2)
Although this process denied people the right to make choices about their own bodies, it eliminated a disease that killed millions of people every year. It has also been shown with other vaccines, such as with Polio, that world wide attempts at eradication without force, although they may limit the number of individuals affected, can not completely eradicate disease. This leaves many questions, the first of course being the with the morals behind forced vaccinations, but also the importance of vaccinating everyone. Is is vital that everyone gets vaccinated? Is genetic evolution of the disease altered by vaccinated a large percent of the population? What biological consequences are there for large scale vaccination (exposure risks, contamination risks)? What contagions are worth the financial burden of large scale vaccination (common cold versus HIV)? What are the consequences of future outbreaks of a contagion on a naive population (keep in mind that people are no longer vaccinated for smallpox, however, vials of smallpox still exist and outbreaks have occurred)?
1.NJ, Willis. "Edward Jenner and the eradication of smallpox.." Scott Med. Journal. 42.4 (1997): 118-21. Print.
2. "How The 'Pox' Epidemic Changed Vaccination Rules." NPR. (2011): n. page. Print. <http://www.npr.org/2011/04/05/135121451/how-the-pox-epidemic-changed-vaccination-rules>.
I think that you make a really good point about the effectiveness of making a vaccine voluntary versus having it be a mandatory thing. I think that as humans we have a mentality of "that will never happen to me" and we sometimes forgo certain vaccines and shots because we feel we don't need them. The one benefit of having it be a mandatory thing is that you are positive that everyone is vaccinated, but again as you mentioned there lies the moral issue of forcing someone to do something against their will. Another thing we would have to consider when thinking of mass vaccination like that would be the risks versus the benefit within the population you are inoculating. How do we gauge which diseases or ailments are more important/dangerous than others. Do we consider how likely we are to be exposed to it or whether or not if exposed, it would be lethal or highly detrimental to your health. You mentioned the common cold, which is an inevitable thing that you are going to be exposed to in everyday life, so is that worth more then say something like Polio or smallpox that you have a lesser chance of being exposed to?
ReplyDeleteThis is something really interesting, but i get mix feeling about it, to me i seems like getting vaccinated against my will is horrible and should not be applied, but on the other hand, it was for the benefit because it immunized people against this deadly disease that kill so many people.
ReplyDeleteAlso this is not new because everybody is been vaccinated against it's decision when they were young, or at least that happen to me and all the people that i know.
This is a great point and brings me to the discussion we had yesterday in class about immunizing our youth. As JJ stated, there have been studies that prove that vaccinating the young will improve the old as far as getting the disease. If the old are not exposed, then their immune systems will not have to react.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you can just make it manditory to vaccinate all youth against the diseases that are known.. because ALL youth are not vaccinated in today's society and many parents are against it. Maybe the cost of healthcare and insurence also plays a roll in this. It also seems that not all vaccinations are as readily available to the general public as they are to government employee's. An example of that is Hep B. When my generation was younger we were not vaccinated for this but my child was at birth.
It seems as medical advances through the years take place we will be able to give our children more and vaccinations, but who knows if that is right to do. Can you imagine going to your kids 6 month appointment and instead of 5 vaccinations they get 20.. EEK!!
I think this idea of forced vaccination is very complex and very controversial. There has been a debate about getting the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine partly due to an article that proposed a connection between autism and the MMR vaccine. The article has been withdrawn from the journal due to false representation. Since this article was published there have been many outbreaks of measles in the United States and Canada because children were not vaccinated. In this case should parents be forced to give their child a vaccine? In my opinion, I do think it is essential for people to do research before making a decision to not get there child vaccinated. This brings me to the state laws concerning vaccinating children. Some states have laws that are very lenient, where parents only have to check a box to get exempted from vaccines for their children. In other states, vaccination is mandatory with no exceptions. I wonder what the statistics are on outbreaks of measles in relation to state regulation of vaccinations.
ReplyDeleteSource:
http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=658034
http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=668808