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6 THE WHIT Thursday, February 5, 2015
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The Whit Staff
To vaccinate or not to vaccinate, there shouldn’t even be a question
Erica AveryColumnist
In the year 2000, the turn of the century was marked with an appropriately notable event: the United States declared that measles was eliminated from our country.
Don’t be fooled, mea-sles elimination does not mean there isn’t a single case of measles recorded. It just means that the disease is no longer con-tinuously transmitted for at least 12 months. To Americans at least, mea-sles was no longer con-stantly present, or as the medical professionals say — an endemic.
According to the Cen-ter for Disease Control, every year since 2000 has reported less than 100 cases of the measles within the United States with the exception of 2001, 2008, 2011, and 2013, reporting be-tween about 100 and 200 cases. 2014 reported a record 644 confirmed cases from 27 states, and within the first month of 2015 alone, over 100 cas-es have been reported.
Most of the cases from late 2014 and early 2015 are related to an outbreak originated from an amusement park in Anaheim, California that now stems into 14 states.
This whole catas-
trophe could have been avoided with one simple task: a measles vacci-nation. Not only could that keep you immune in the presence of an in-fected individual, but it also could have stopped the spread. Moreover, all it takes is one person to spread it to numer-ous other unvaccinated individuals. Don’t be that person. You don’t know how many people will be affected down the line because of your selfishness.
This brings me to the most important point: infants can’t get the vac-cine until they are a year old, putting them at risk. If you want to disregard
the need for a vaccine and be kept in danger of get-ting sick, fine that’s your choice, but do not risk of others’ health, especially vulnerable children.
So how does this out-break happen? Well, mea-sles might be eliminated in the United States, but not overseas, so tourists — let’s say in an amuse-ment park in California — can easily bring it with them.
Even politicians are weighing in, making the topic gain attention in the news. Chris Christie had his remarks on the subject analyzed in re-lation to trying to win votes for his possible 2016 presidential run,
and Hillary Clinton tweeted, “The science is clear: The earth is round, the sky is blue, and #vaccineswork. Let’s protect all our kids. #Grandmother-sKnowBest”
The idea that peo-ple would even con-sider not vaccinating themselves and their children against any terrible illness is in-conceivable. The most common argument is that it is linked to au-tism. This claim was published in a journal in 1998 by Andrew Wakefield. Not only did the journal retract the article, but his medical license was revoked, and I cannot say this enough, the information was com-pletely discredited.
Investigators have said it was an elaborate fraud — he manipu-lated, misrepresented, and just plain falsi-fied data. The findings cannot be replicated, and reflect the kind of logic you would find in a 10-year-old’s experi-ment. For example, he used a pool of 12 children at a period in time when almost all children were being vaccinated. Thus, if one chose 12 autistic children, it is a high probability they’d be vaccinated as well.
Large scale, of-
ficial and proper stud-ies among thousands of subjects, by many cred-ible sources have failed to find a link. But the damage has already been done because of one, self-ish doctor, who consum-ers believe over legiti-mate testing. The fear he has instilled has that power over people. Fear can make people do al-most anything. Why did he do this then? Wake-field himself proposed an alternative vaccine, probably trying to get rich quick and get his 15 minutes of fame.
For the people still insisting against vac-cines, I’ll play devil ’s advocate. What’s worse: the 1.56 percent chance the CDC reports a child in the U.S. will have au-tism (not even mention-ing the severity) or the 100 percent chance your child will get sick, and possibly die, if exposed to a virus he or she is not vaccinated against?
For those who do not understand how vaccines work, I’ll explain. A vi-rus is selected in several ways: It is attenuated so it is weakened, only a portion of the patho-gen (that will still cause immunity but will not cause sickness) is used or a toxin is used to inacti-vate or essentially kill the pathogen. Then it is injected into the patient to evoke an immune re-sponse without sicken-ing them. The immune response makes anti-bodies against the virus, should it ever enter one’s system. That’s it. Sounds like a pretty good deal. What it doesn’t do is go into the brain and some-how cause autism or for that matter, anything else. Period.
You’re not protect-ing your children by not vaccinating them, you’re potentially harm-ing them, and others, because of completely false information.
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