Risk Versus Reward The Continuing Vaccination Question

Risk Versus Reward: The Continuing Vaccination Question As young Americans living in the twenty first century, vaccines have always had a place in our lives. It is taught to us at a young age that vaccines are not only beneficial but necessary to the pursuit of healthy and long lives. For decades we have been giving vaccines to ourselves and our children without question because the doctors say we should and they have the education, not us. The number of vaccines children are mandated to receive continues to rise at an alarming rate. Currently, children receive approximately fourteen different vaccinations before the age of two Many of these vaccinations require multiple inoculations, which often have a child receiving four more shots in†¦show more content†¦In retrospective study children under the age of one, who had the DPT shot delayed by four months showed to have reduced the incident of asthma by six percent on average (McDonald et al. 628). Parents and health care pro viders need to ask how much is too much and how young is too young? Conventional thought is that the earlier a child receives vaccination, the earlier they start to build anti-bodies, preventing the child from ever contracting an active form of the disease (Miller 167). This is contradicting to the rational used to promote breast feeding. Health care professionals teach the importance of breast feeding because infants have immature immune systems and need the mother’s anti-bodies from breast milk to keep them healthy. If an infant’s immune system is not strong enough handle the regular Bactria and viruses of the world, how can the same immature immune system build up anti-bodies from a vaccine within hours after birth? Vaccines are considered the number one health achievement of the twentieth century (Achievements in Public Health†). Mass vaccinations and the herd immunity they provide are believed to have saved countless lives since their introduction. On averag e it takes the body a week or longer to detect, identify, and build up antibodies to unknown microbes. For some diseases a week is long enough to inflict lasting