To vaccinate or not; It’s not all about you.
Vaccinations are a hot button issue for a lot of parents and there are many reasons for that. In the case study titled Incident 10: To Vaccinate, or Not? parents Jenna and Chis Smith are adamant they are not going to vaccinate their new baby girl, Ana. The Smith’s pediatrician, Dr. Angela Kerr is presented with the reality that a lot of physicians face on daily basis; encouraging vaccination or leave well enough alone.
When quarantine was the only way to try and stop the spread of a deadly disease outbreak, no one argued. They loaded up rooms and buildings with the sick and there they stayed, usually until they succumb to the disease. Hiding the ill away from the healthy was the only way to protect them. The first documented quarantine in the U.S. was 1648 in Boston Massachusetts for all the ships that were porting from the West Indies where yellow fever was running rampant at the time.
Support for inoculation is documented as early as 1661. In 1694, Queen Mary II died of a lethal strain of small pox at the age of 32. Proof of the positive outcome (reduced mortality rate) of variolated (or inoculated) individuals was seen in 1738 during a smallpox outbreak in Charleston, South Carolina. Only 4% of the 441 deaths were variolated individuals, whereas 18% of those deaths were infected naturally.
There is a reason why thousands of people were dying of diseases before the introduction of inoculation in 1661 in China, then there were after Massachusetts passed the first law mandating vaccination for school children in 1855.
Vaccines do far more good than bad in our society, even today, through the advancements of science and medicine, we are living longer and more healthy lives because we can prevent deadly diseases from spreading and we have even rid the country of several diseases all together; like smallpox. Smallpox had been considered eradicated from the United States in 1980 (1).
Since the late 1980’s, when over 100 were killed by a measles outbreak, it was found that 90% of the deaths were among those not previously vaccinated against the disease. It was also discovered that there was a huge racial disparity among the unv…………….
