Vaccines have been used for centuries to prevent disease and have saved countless lives of children and adults. The smallpox vaccine was invented as early as 1796 and since then its use has continued to protect us against countless life-threatening diseases such as polio, measles and whooping cough. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2010) assures that vaccines are extensively tested by scientists to ensure they are effective and safe and must receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration before being used. “Perhaps the greatest public health achievement is the reduction of infectious diseases through the use of vaccines” (CDC, 2010). Routine vaccination has eliminated smallpox from the planet and led to the virtual elimination of wild poliovirus. Vaccines have reduced some preventable infectious diseases to unprecedented levels, and now few people experience the devastating effects of measles, whooping cough and other illnesses. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay Despite all the testing and approval processes for vaccines, many people still mistakenly believe that vaccines cause autism, even in light of research that has refuted the notion. This highlights the difficulty of dispelling false claims once someone has accepted the lie, especially if scientific research supports the results. It also highlights the gullibility of the general public to believe everything medical research reports without questioning the results. Unfortunately, media attention to such examples of junk science helps convince many of its veracity. The hype around the belief that vaccines cause autism began in 1998, when Andrew Wakefield in the United Kingdom published a paper in the Lancet linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to ) to cases of autism in children. This claim gained much momentum and quickly spread throughout the world. This has led to various unproven theories about vaccine autism being supported by parents in the UK and US. After discovering intestinal illnesses in autistic children, Wakefield said it would be safer to separate MMR into three different vaccines. Since then, Wakefield's research has been discredited, he has been accused of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council for violating several ethical practices, and he has been investigated for failing to disclose a conflict of interest. interests – a patent pending on a rival measles vaccine (Gross, 2009). Even though this is false, many people still wholeheartedly believe that vaccines are harmful. In the 1998 Lancet article, Wakefield studied 12 children "who, after a period of apparent normality, lost acquired skills, including communication" (Wakefield, Murch, Anthony, Linnell, Casson, Malik, Berelowitz, Dhillon, Thomson, Harvey, Valentine). , Davies and Walker-Smith, 1998). All 12 children reportedly showed behavioral symptoms after receiving the vaccination. After receiving vaccination, characteristics associated with exposure collectively included fever/delirium, rash, self-injury, repetitive behaviors, loss of independence, seizures, eye avoidance, diarrhea , disinterest, lack of play, vomiting and recurrent viral pneumonia. . In 8 of the 12 children, the appearance of behavioral disorders was linked to vaccination against measles, mumps andrubella, either by the parents or by the child's doctor. They performed extensive testing on the 12 children, which included colonoscopies, brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), electroencephalography (EEG), including visual, auditory and sensory brainstem evoked potentials, and punctures. lumbar. Urine and stool samples were also evaluated as part of the laboratory investigation. MRI, EEG, cerebrospinal fluid profiles were normal, and clinical examination showed that none had neurological abnormalities. However, the results of colonoscopy showedpathological intestinal changes in children. Based on these results, they state: “Intestinal and behavioral pathologies may have occurred together by chance, reflecting selection bias in a self-referred group; However, the consistency of intestinal pathological changes and the fact that previous studies have found intestinal dysfunction in children with autism spectrum disorders suggest that the link is real and reflects a unique disease process” (Wakefield, et al., 1998). Although all 12 children showed behavioral changes and some symptoms similar to those of autism, the study says they did not prove an association between measles, mumps and rubella vaccination and autism. They also claim that if there is a causal link between measles, mumps and rubella vaccination and autism, one would expect a higher rate of autism since the introduction of the vaccine in the Kingdom -United in 1988. However, they claim that there is no causal link between measles, mumps and rubella vaccination and autism. enough data to prove that there was an increasing incidence of autism. The article concludes by stating that further investigation is needed to examine the syndrome and its possible relationship to the vaccine. Knowing that fears about the vaccine's autism claim would spread throughout the United States, the CDC acted quickly and directed the Institute of Medicine to convene a safety review committee in 2000. The committee could not find a causal relationship between measles, mumps and rubella. vaccine and autism. They also conducted further research into the safety of thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative, used in the vaccine. Likewise, the Institute of Medicine could not find enough evidence to accept or reject a relationship between thimerosal and autism (Gross, 2009). In 2003, the CDC also released its findings on vaccine safety, based on a study of 140,000 children, which concluded that there was no relationship between thimerosal and autism. In 2004, after reviewing hundreds of studies examining a link between vaccines and autism, the Institute of Medicine unanimously announced in its final report that there was no causal relationship between vaccines. against measles, mumps and rubella and thimerosal or autism. Surprisingly, this evidence did not calm the wave of disbelief, but only gave rise to anti-vaccine activists who claimed that the Institute of Medicine was riddled with conflicts of interest that were excluding an entire generation of children. . Despite all the evidence, one in four Americans still believe vaccines cause autism (Gross, 2009). Due to this lack of confidence in vaccination, the United States experienced the largest outbreak of measles in 2008, a disease that was declared eliminated in 2000, due to declining vaccination rates (Ratzan, 2010) . Mumps and whooping cough have alsotheir return. By 2007, more than 5,000 parents of autistic children filed a lawsuit seeking compensation. A particular case in November 2007 reinforced the belief that vaccines cause autism. The Department of Health and Human Services acknowledged that vaccines aggravated a pre-existing disorder in a little girl, causing “regressive encephalopathy with features of autism spectrum disorder” (Gross, 2009, p. 4). Activists later said this was a major breakthrough in demonstrating that vaccines cause autism and that several media outlets gave unnecessary attention to the story. The impact of vaccination's incidence on autism has fueled anti-vaccine theories, and even today, parents are afraid to vaccinate their children. In a letter to parents, Raff (2014) calls out anti-vaccine activists: “They say that vaccines are not very effective at preventing disease. But 3 million children's lives are saved each year through vaccination, and 2 million die each year from vaccine-preventable diseases” (Raff, 2014). Raff also addresses the fact that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism, and thimerosal does not cause autism either. In fact, it hasn't been used in most vaccines since 2001. Raff encourages parents to educate themselves on this issue and read the scientific studies that have proven that vaccines do not cause autism. The letter also highlights the fact that Wakefield's article which claimed a link between vaccines and autism has been retracted and his medical licenses revoked. It is clear that public health education campaigns have failed to allay parents' concerns that vaccines cause autism. The study linking the MMR vaccine to autism received widespread media coverage. Because of such media coverage, the public concluded that there must be some truth to the claims that the vaccine caused autism. Parents no longer knew whether vaccines were safe and confusion over who to believe was high. When the media attempts to provide balanced coverage of the debate reported by both sides of the issue, it lends credibility to both positions. We quickly learn that once public opinion is established, it is difficult to change it. Clements and Ratzan (2002) suggest that the fault does not necessarily lie with the press itself, but rather with the process by which it acts by providing enormous incentives to create scandals or whistleblowers. They also suggest that media can be an extremely useful tool if used correctly for health education and promotion (Clements and Ratzan, 2002). The World Health Organization (2008) lists several benefits of vaccination. First, eradication is a primary goal of all vaccination programs; however, only smallpox has been eradicated to date. Eradication requires high levels of population immunity throughout the world for a prolonged period. The World Health Organization reports that the next disease to be eradicated is polio (Andre, Booy, Bock, Clemens, Datta, John, Lee, & Lolekha, 2008). Second, eliminating a disease locally is possible without eradicating a disease globally. For elimination to occur, vaccination of 95% of the population must occur through a two-dose vaccination program. The World Health Organization claims that mumps and measles can be eliminated with the MMR vaccine (Andre et al., 2008). National programs contribute to the elimination and.