Paper Example on Vaccines: Success & Resistance in the 21st Century

The past two decades have seen a mixed success for the vaccination campaigns throughout the world. While scientific research has proved that vaccines have been an effective and safe way of eradicating vaccine-preventable diseases, there is still fear and doubt among the people, and the use of vaccine have been resisted. Some of these fears are as a result of personal beliefs and attitudes, in addition to the ease with which people can have access to vaccine critical messages over social media. Their most significant concern is the safety of vaccines, a fact that has contributed majorly by the lack of awareness on the benefits of vaccination. Based on the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the data from the US Department for Health and Human Services shows that vaccines are safe, and the most effective way to prevent the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases. This paper analyses the rhetorical arguments against vaccines the myths propagated by the vaccine-hesitant movement.

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Vaccines are safe and effective in fighting vaccine-preventable diseases (VDPs). One of the main arguments presented by the vaccine-hesitant groups is that vaccines are unsafe and may cause other conditions such as autism. While pro-vaccine websites concentrated on the analysis and dissemination of accurate and research-based evidence on vaccine and vaccination practices endorsed by the government, the vaccine-hesitant websites have focused on forming communities of people who have been affected by vaccination and vaccination-related practices. They then use people's personal experiences to challenge the facts about vaccines as presented by government documents and scientific research (McKinnon & Orthia, 2017). With this information, many parents have been persuaded against vaccinating their children. This has led to low levels of vaccination rates among children.

To counter this influence, vaccination awareness campaigns among parents and members of the public is necessary. Parents must be convinced that decisions on vaccination should only be based on the risk's children are exposed to if they are not vaccinated as opposed to focusing on the risks associated with vaccination (Horne et al., 2015). Messages warning parents against the dangers of failing to vaccinate children can influence attitudes towards accepting vaccination.

Parents should also be made to understand that it is the responsibility of the government to ensure the safety of every child. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the CDC put effective policies to ensure the safety of vaccines. Before vaccines are approved for use on humans in the US, they are subjected to a series of tests to ascertain their safety. The results of the tests are evaluated by the doctors and scientists at the FDA. FDA also carries out inspections on the production of the vaccines to ensure it follows standard guidelines in the production of medicines, license and monitor vaccines for safety concerns. As it is familiar with drugs, vaccines may result in mild side effects such as soreness that quickly disappear in a few days. There have rarely been reports of long-lasting and severe side effects from vaccinations.

Vaccination is a parental and individual responsibility to ensure the safety of their children. It is a common argument among vaccine-hesitant groups that vaccines are one of the government's calculated schemes to intrude into parental autonomy. Earlier vaccination campaigns urged parents to vaccinate their children as a way of ensuring the safety of the general public while ignoring the impacts of parents failing to vaccinate children. Instead, the vaccination campaign messages should be directed at parents, to ensure the safety of their children by vaccinating them, and the argument for vaccination for the public good should be kept secondary (McKinnon & Orthia, 2017). This would instil parental guilt that would make parents take responsibilities for the consequences of failing to vaccinate their children against vaccine-preventable diseases. With this approach, it is easier to convince parents that there are high chances of their children contracting diseases if they are not immunized and that it may lead to severe consequences (Horne et al., 2015). The approach influences parents to ensure their children are vaccinated, not by refuting the wrong elements of their attitudes and beliefs but by providing new information.

No alternative natural lifestyle can offer protection against infectious diseases better than vaccination. According to the vaccine-hesitant group, people can be protected from contagious diseases by other natural means apart from vaccines that they consider unnatural. Research done on vaccine-hesitant parents reveals that these they think themselves as experts on their children's affairs, weighing their perceived risks of vaccines against the dangers of infection with vaccine-preventable diseases and dismiss the necessity of vaccines in protecting their children.

These parents believe that their own motherly practices, including natural living and nutritious feeding, is the best way to boost their children's immunity and is enough protection from infectious diseases. As an extra safety measure, some parents claim to be closely monitoring the social networks of their children, claiming that such infections may not be out of their social networks. Such ideas and beliefs present vaccination as a responsibility and choice. To counter such arguments, vaccinations message campaigns should target parents with vaccination as individual responsibility, to ensure their children are safe from infectious diseases. Any attempt to persuade vaccine sceptical mothers to vaccinate their children must focus on nurturing good relationships between health care providers and parents in addition to providing facts about vaccines.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the re-emergence of vaccine-preventable diseases has been partly contributed by the increasing pattern of parents failing to vaccinate children. Even though there have been profitable campaigns to sensitize people on the importance of vaccines in stopping the spread of infectious diseases, many vaccines hesitant parents have resisted the pressure. This has been attributed mainly to the anti-vaccination campaigns spearheaded by the vaccine sceptics. Some of their arguments against vaccines include: vaccines are unsafe and ineffective; vaccination is a deliberate attempt by the government to intrude into parental autonomy and that children can be protected from infectious diseases by other natural means apart from vaccines. To address these challenges, vaccinations campaigns should focus on convincing parents to make vaccination decisions based on the risk's children are exposed to if they are not vaccinated as opposed to focusing on the risks associated with vaccination.

Works Cited

Horne, Zachary, et al. "Countering antivaccination attitudes." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.33 (2015): 10321-10324.

Rossen, Isabel, et al. "Accepters, fence sitters, or rejecters: Moral profiles of vaccination attitudes." Social Science & Medicine 224 (2019): 23-27.

McKinnon, Merryn, and Lindy A. Orthia. "Vaccination communication strategies: What have we learned, and lost, in 200 years." Journal of Science Communication 16.3 (2017): A08.

"Vaccines Protect You And Your Family". Centers For Disease Control And Prevention, 2018, https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/vaxwithme.html. Accessed 1 May 2020.