Irrational fear of vaccination spreads across U.S.

Around the world, some parents will walk for days to secure vaccines for their children. According to a United Nations Foundation campaign, one in five children lacks access to vaccines, and 1.5 million children in developing countries die each year due to vaccine-preventable diseases. This begs the question — why would any parent with access to immunization refuse to vaccinate their child?

Today, numerous parents — many of them college educated and well off — delay or even forsake vaccines for their children, clinging to the beliefs that vaccines are harmful to their health or are money-making schemes by the government. A 2006 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that from 1991-2004, the portion of children whose parents refused to let them vaccinate increased by 6 percent a year, leading to more than a twofold increase.

Known as the anti-vaccination movement, these parents have accepted the media’s perpetuated misinformation, believing that vaccines are risky or that the targeted diseases are not serious threats. The problem is that vaccine-preventable diseases cannot simply be ignored, as they cost valuable resources and easily avoidable deaths each year.

People who refuse to vaccinate selfishly put others at risk for disease. When enough members of a community are immunized against a disease, most of them are protected because there is little opportunity for an outbreak.

Groups such as newborn infants, pregnant women, cancer patients and AIDS patients are especially susceptible when the rest of society refuses to be vaccinated because they cannot take vaccines. The safety of the entire community is compromised by those who can afford an option yet refuse to be immunized.

Vaccination also requires far less doctors, time and hospital space than disease treatment. People should vaccinate so that resources are reserved for patients who truly need them, rather than wasted on easily preventable cases. The medical journal Pediatrics reports that for children born in the U.S. in 2009 alone, vaccination will prevent 42,000 early deaths and 20 million cases of disease.

Anti-vaccination proponents often say that vaccines carry dangerous side effects, such as damage to the immune system or chronic diseases. In reality, vaccines’ widespread use guarantees that they are held to steep safety standards and regularly checked by the U.S. government. Medical evidence does not support that they lead to side effects listed by the anti-vaccination movement.

It’s also important to note that the risk of serious injury from vaccine-preventable diseases far outweighs the risk from vaccination. According to the World Health Organization, most vaccine reactions are minor and temporary, such as a sore arm or mild fever, and serious side effects are so rare that risk cannot be assessed. On the other hand, vaccine-preventable diseases like polio and measles have caused numerous confirmed cases of paralysis, blindness and even death.

Another common worry stems from the belief that vaccines serve as tools in a money-making conspiracy between physicians and pharmaceutical companies. On the contrary, money generated from illness trumps money made from vaccines, as preventable diseases often bear the baggage of hospitalization and expensive treatment.

A report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that hospitalizations avoided and lives saved through vaccination over the past two decades will have saved $295 billion in direct costs, such as medical expenses, and $1.38 trillion in societal costs.

Perhaps the most widespread belief of the anti-vaccination movement gained infamy in 1998, when British surgeon Andrew J. Wakefield and 12 colleagues of the medical journal Lancet proposed that the measles vaccine could cause autism. In the years since, more than a dozen studies have convincingly shown the findings to be false, the article was retracted by the journal and Wakefield was stripped of his medical license.

Unfortunately, the public’s fear of immunization has only increased as fresh speculative theories multiply around the web. Perhaps children are allergic to vaccines, people claim; perhaps vaccines overload the immune system if several are given at once. Though claims range far and wide, people have to remember that the evidence for these claims just isn’t there.

Vaccines prevent fatal diseases and spare people from suffering. They carry a high standard of safety that is constantly assessed by medical experts who score no financial gain from vaccine consumption. Parents have lost sight of the real killers — at the cost of their children’s safety and the safety of others.

U.S. citizens are gifted with leading medical professionals, institutes and resources that many other countries lack. So why must they insist upon turning down these privileges? Rather than wait for diseases to make a comeback, more people need to consider the lives of themselves and of the people around them.