Required Vaccinations

Required Vaccinations

By: Dylan Zito, YMCA Arlington – Career Center

Vaccines are a controversial topic that is debated all over the United States. Some people are for vaccines, and others are very much against them. The reasoning behind each side of the issue varies and Commonwealth Senate Bill Number 21 tackles the disputable topic of vaccines head on.

A vaccine is defined as "a substance that helps protect against certain diseases. Vaccines contain a dead or weakened version of a microbe. It helps your immune system recognize and destroy the living microbe during a future infection" by the Center for Diseases Control and Prevention (2017).

 Some people claim vaccines can cause a variety of issues, including the developmental disorder known as autism.  There are countless videos of children online before and after vaccines whose parents claim the vaccine caused their child’s diagnosis. Daisana Pittman from Bethel High School is one of the participants at MGA that agrees with that opinion.

Many experts, however, say that autism is caused by factors such as genetics or pesticides, as vaccines have not been a proven cause. Commonwealth Senate Bill number 21 takes on the vexed topic of vaccines and makes it so that children cannot be exempt from vaccines for religious reasons.

The patrons for the bill are Marya Dunning and Josiah Randlett, from Danville Family YMCA, were very passionate about the topic of their bill and believe that the bill will pass. The topic was chosen out of several ranging from marriage laws in the case of polyamorous relationships to getting rid of English as the official language of the Commonwealth.

Dunning feels like people are so against this topic due to two reasons: misinformation and fear of the unknown. Dunning stated “We are all familiar with the notion that vaccines cause Autism and though few believe this notion, there are a multitudinous of other examples of misinformation when it comes to vaccines.” She also believes that parents are hesitant to inject their children with substances they cannot pronounce, and that if they were to research, they would discover these substances are either harmless or are injected in very low doses.

The biggest danger vaccines pose is a disease called intussusception, which can be caused by the Rotavirus vaccine. However, only 1 in every 20,000 infants in the US get this every year and it is much less deadly that the Rotavirus.

Dunning is passionate about this topic because in order to achieve “herd immunity”, which is the occurrence in which those unable to be vaccinated are protected from diseases, at least 90-95% of people have to be vaccinated. In the commonwealth, 95.5% of people are vaccinated which is an acceptable statistic for “herd immunity”. If this number were to fall even slightly, however, “herd immunity” might not be achieved.

The bill was passed in committee and will proceed to the floor. If it passes in both the Senate and then the House, it will go to the Youth Governor, Tommy Dannenfelser for consideration.

References:

Novella, Steven. “The Anti-Vaccination Movement.” CSI, www.csicop.org/si/show/anti-vaccination_movement.

Rettner, Rachael. “Beyond Vaccines: 5 Things That Might Really Cause Autism.” LiveScience, Purch, 7 Jan. 2011, www.livescience.com/9232-vaccines-5-autism.html.

“Vaccines & Immunizations.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 10 Mar. 2017, www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm.