EDITORIAL: VACCINES (KEEP IT CONTAINED)

Vaccines are one of the greatest inventions in history. They’ve saved countless lives and they protect everybody. They don’t just help the people that are vaccinated. A vaccinated person can’t spread a disease they’re vaccinated for, so vaccines also act like a roadblock for epidemics. The contamination is usually contained to one person. More than 15,000 Americans died from diphtheria in 1921, before the vaccine was invented. Only one case has been reported to the C.D.C. since 2004, after the vaccine was invented. I think vaccinations should be advocated, not attacked on false basis. You’ve probably heard that vaccines cause autism. That’s false; the ONE study that said that they do involved only twelve children and had falsified data. Another study that wasn’t biased included one thousand children and concluded that there wasn’t a link between the antigens in vaccines and autism. I totally get that parents are worried about their children, but just because a scientist said something doesn’t mean it’s true. Especially if the only experiment conducted was invalid. Scientists thought that the sun revolved around the Earth for hundreds of years, so their word isn’t exactly one hundred percent true all the time. If we didn’t vaccinate our children, then there wouldn’t be any children to have autism in the first place. They’d all be dead from measles, or whooping cough. Some people choose not to vaccinate their child for religious reasons, and if that’s what you believe, then do it. Just don’t tell everyone it’s because of the threat of autism. If you’re going to make a major health decision for your child, don’t do it because of a study unless you’ve read thoroughly on it and you’ve made sure it’s not biased. There was a huge measles outbreak in Wales because a bunch of people blindly trusted an invalid study written by a stranger. If we didn’t have them, we would probably have the same health problems as we did in the nineteenth century. Vaccines have saved so many people’s lives, and they could save a lot more lives if people didn’t distrust them.