DEATHROW INMATE: Dylan, Age: 5 EXECUTIONER(s): Dylan’s Parents by Gerald Brenner (Blog #2)

Before you ask, Dylan is neither an actual death-row inmate nor a real person and his parent’s are not his executioners…or could they be? For example, lets say Dylan is a real boy and he contracts a deadly virus or disease that is preventable, though his parent didn’t want to vaccinate him and he dies. Should Dylan’s parents be convicted of manslaughter? According to the Cornell University Law School, “ (a) Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice.” (Cornell University Law School, 2015) Obviously a parent should never maliciously kill their child, unless they’re insane but that’s another topic for a different time, but a parent’s actions and/or beliefs could put their children at risk by not vaccinating!

Now this blog is not to discuss murder and/or law, but to shed a light on the seriousness of a crucial problem that our public health/ society currently faces which is the anti-vaccination movement. It’s a public health issue because it affects everyone. But before the facts, here is my opinion; America is a land of freedom of speech, it’s great. There are many different beliefs, customs, and general ways of how we live our lives. I feel that this movement is hypocritical due to ignorance. These people don’t smoke because of research linking cancer to smoking, but they won’t vaccination their children because they think they know better than the doctor?

Science is, “knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation.”(Merriam-Webster, 2015). All data observed and presented has to be 100% objective and fact. If it isn’t its thrown out. Medical research is just on a much larger scale and done by scientists dedicated to their work more so than your average college biology student trying to get a lab done before the weekend. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Nearly everyone in the U.S. got measles before there was a vaccine, and hundred died from it each year. Today, most doctors have never seen a case of measles.” Also, “More than 15,000 Americans died from diphtheria in 1921, before there was a vaccine. Only one case of diphtheria has been reported to the CDC since 2004.” (CDC, 2014) The facts are there, but some people still want to disagree.

If you don’t vaccinate your children or yourself, do you consider yourself a valuable member of your community? If you do, you better think twice. Anti-vaccination beliefs not only hurt you and your family, but your community as well. Everyone knows diseases are spread by people, hence why you’re taught to cover your mouth as a young child when you cough or sneeze because it proper manners. How many kids actually follow this? To stop a spreadable disease it is a teamwork effort throughout our society and even the world. These disease(s) just need one warm, nutrient filled body to live and prosper. Don’t let your child be patient zero!

Looking at the other side, here are some opinions/arguments people have and could make; “It’s expensive!” True, it can get costly to receive routine medical care. If you contract a life threating disease and you’re hospitalized for weeks and may not be able to live a normal life again and/or die. The routine medical care costs don’t even come close to costs of just being hospitalized, let alone the costs for nurses, doctors and medications to take care of you. For an example and from personal experience, in the veterinary field vaccinating your pet could cost roughly $50-$100. Vaccinating for the Parvovirus can occur yearly, and sometimes even every 3 years. I have taken care of dogs who have contracted the parvovirus because their owners did not vaccinate and they ended up paying $1500-$2000 when their dog eventually died from the virus because their body wasn’t fit enough to fight off the virus. Looking back, that $50-$100 is a better deal.

“Vaccines can cause reactions and they’re not a 100% guarantee that everything will be fine!” Again, that is correct, nothing is guaranteed in medicine. Though if it’s being promoted and/or recommended by the a doctor or the CDC for US as humans, then they have a pretty darn good idea that it’s going to work, or it wouldn’t be on the market or approved by the FDA. Also, vaccine reactions can occur, but generally aren’t serious emergencies and if they do become serious, the prognosis is generally good.

“Well I don’t vaccinate because I love animals and I know they are tested on animals” Well the only thing I can say is, do you want your family and friends to live and be free from disease? Take your pick, test on you and your family or test on animals? Guarantee if you had to pick, animals would be your choice. Having worked in Laboratory Animal Research for 5 years, and also wanting to work in a profession that takes care of animals, I still find animal research to be a very important aspect to our public health. It’s a sacrifice that we have to make for the greater good. Though working in the field, I know the animals being tested are properly and ethically looked after and the research community has multiple avenues of checks and balances to make sure animals are being treated humanely. Researchers have to get approved by committees to use animals for research, if it is not deemed fit by a panel of doctors and scientists, animals are not used and alternative research models are developed.

To finish up, I know I have gone past the recommended amount of words for our blogs, but I have slimmed down this blog multiple times now and I feel everything is important and needs to be said. I would like to conclude with a couple comments and ideas that you can take or leave, but at least give them a thought, 1. For our public health, we are always learning and discovering new things within the medical world. Not every patient, doctor, disease, and/or treatment is perfect. This is life, and you sometimes have negative outcomes, you just hope you don’t have to experience them personally, but someone will. So trust your doctors, trust information put out by governmental agencies like the CDC. They’re there to help, just cause there are a few bad apples in a tree, doesn’t mean the whole tree is bad. The government and/or doctors are not out to make money off of vaccinations. To be honest, this shouldn’t be a financial discussion. The outcome outweighs the costs and risk by a long shot. Vaccinate your kids, your family, yourself and even your pets, it’s a teamwork effort and we need everyone on board if we all want to live a happy and healthy life.

References:

“18 U.S. Code § 1112 – Manslaughter.” Law.cornell.edu. 2015. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1112 (11 September 2015)

“Science.” Merriam-Webster.com. 2015. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science (11 September 2015)

“What would happen if we stopped Vaccinations?” CDC.gov. 2014. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm (11 September 2015)