Parents being Anti-Vaccines

There has been a lot of talk about vaccinations and whether they have been proven to work or they're just a conspiracy. Although we have statistically proven that vaccinations have made an impact to the health of the past generations to today's generation, people are still skeptical on the idea of vaccines. Ultimately, it is a parents' right to decide whether they want their children to be vaccinated or not. In the video "If Anti-Vaccine Parents Rode The Magic School Bus" by CollegeHumor, they provide real reasons why parents decide not to chose to vaccinate their children in a comical way. Reasons such as vaccines being the parents choice,  unnatural, and a conspiracy are real thoughts that come through parent's heads when deciding to allow their child to be vaccinated. Most of the time, these people are not informed correctly about the vaccination itself, leading them to have doubts.

A critical point brought up in the video is that vaccinations and autism are connected. There have been stories about a connection between autism and vaccination but there is no proof of vaccines actually causing autism. In my opinion, those that believe in such an impractical idea is ignorant to actual facts. Basically the story behind the autism and vaccination connection was created by researchers decades ago which then was coincidently during the time that more vaccines were being put to use and the number of autistic kids were on the rise as well. Nowhere was there an actual connection between the vaccination causing autism in the child. In the video, they also comically refer to the autism and vaccine relationship in a way where Ms. Frizzle responded to the parent in a "you have to be kidding me" tone. In another part of the video, a mom points out that vaccinations include a ton of toxins such as mercury. This may have been true at one point in time they contained a "nontoxic variant of mercury"(If Anti-Vaccine Parents Rode The Magic School Bus), but today, in the 21st century, knowing just how toxic mercury is, that substance is no longer used in vaccines nor thermometers.

The point of vaccines is to inject a weaker form of the disease into your body so that when the illness does try to invade your system, your immune system knows how to identify the disease and immediately fights off the virus. Vaccines are important to receive when recommended, because if not, the vaccination is ineffective if the majority around are not vaccinated. That is why it is one responsibility of a parent to have their children get vaccinated because they are at more of a risk of catching and spreading diseases. Because we have weaker immune systems when we are younger, it is easier for children to be infected with a virus, and since children are very handsy, they easily spread germs extremely quickly.

By: Felicia Roa (Student)