YES

As a nation, we are constantly in a state of fear of disease.

The United States has faced many epidemics in the past and present from the flu to chicken pox.

Today, we are seeing a large rise in the number of parents refusing to vaccinate their children and themselves, and I for one do not blame them.

Vaccinating yourself should be an individual choice, like choosing who you want to marry.

When one becomes an adult at the age of 18, one gains dominion over one’s own body. Vaccinations should extend to this right that one who gains at adulthood.

I chose to be vaccinated and have not seen any symptoms of the disease that I have been vaccinated for, but I chose to vaccinate myself.

I do not support the idea of herd vaccinations or forcing everyone to vaccinate for the common good of the collective population.

It is not ethical and it violates our rights as citizens to choose what we want to do with our own bodies.

My main concern is the mercury put in vaccines, which, alone is normally bad for people.

The opposition argues it is good for people to have mercury in  a  vaccine. So it seems that mercury is only bad for people until the government says that it’s not.

And although most Americans seem to be pro-vaccine, mercury supposedly being good to put into the human body doesn’t make any sense to me.

I have no problem with people getting vaccinations.

My main concern is the protection of our individual ability to choose whether we want to get vaccinated in the first place.

Sadly, according to USA Today, Americans have an overall support for mandatory vaccinations for children.

This fact is the most concerning since it seems to me that we are giving up our individual rights for a sense of security.

What is even more interesting is that 41 percent of 18-29 year olds believe it is an individual choice compared to 20 percent of people over 65 years old, according to USA Today. The divide seems to be age-over-partisan politics.

Now, vaccinations do not always mean that people will be immune from the disease.

According to thepeopleschemist, vaccines work by introducing dead or damaged viral agents into the body, that focus on activating the immune system to create antibodies to fight the foreign substance from our bodies.

The website also states that “children under two years of age do not consistently develop immunity following vaccination.”

So, children under the age of two are not guaranteed to develop immunity to the diseases that they are immunized for.  So,what is the purpose of children being immunized?

We need to also take into account the religions which oppose vaccinations on religious grounds.

We as a nation have prided ourselves on respecting the establishment of religion. Our country was founded by people who have escaped religious persecution.

In the United States, in order to be allowed to enroll in public schools, children need to have been vaccinated.

The Amish, Menonites and Christian Scientists are opposed to vaccinations, according to Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.

Throughout the 50 states, exemptions are made to respect the establishment of these religions. If we force herd vaccinations of all Americans, these religious institutions’ rights will be violated.

We cannot allow our government, which was founded on escaping religious pursecution, trample the rights of those minority religions which oppose vaccinating there children.

We need to decide as individuals whether parents should have individual choice in the matter of their own children’s health. The government should not force us to inject possibly toxic chemicals into our bodies and violate the rights of religious minorities.

If we choose not to take the vaccinations, then let us take that risk and possibly get sick. At least we consciously choose this.

In order for we, as a nation, to continue to thrive and prosper, we need to respect our history as a nation which values the tenents of liberty and the pursuit of individual equality.

We need to respect individual choice in getting vaccinated in order to uphold individal liberty.

NO

By instinct, we are always in pursuit of one thing: survival. It’s why we eat food, drink water, build shelters, and have laws that protect us.

Survival also includes a defense against anything that could potentially be detrimental to our health. Advances in medical fields have brought about antibiotics, physiotherapy and vaccines.

Wait, what was that last thing? Vaccines? Apparently, vaccines are public enemy number one to many Americans, who refuse to have their children speared with a needle that injects mercury into their developing bodies.

As painful as it sounds, vaccines are indeed one of the greatest advances in medical history.

Although, as kids, we hated the trip to the doctors when we needed our flu shots, vaccinations are what prevent diseases from infecting people.

They protect us, yet for some reason there’s been a growing trend of rejecting them.

In fact, the growing trend of vaccine phobia has brought new attention to measles. Sorry Ebola, but measles are what’s in now.

The sad part about this fiasco is that measles were supposed to be eradicated back in 2000 by the U.S. government.

It’s ridiculous that this disease is of such a huge concern right now when we should have stopped worrying about it long ago. And this is all because some parents don’t believe in vaccinating their children.

A major reason why parents despise vaccinations is the apparent side effect of autism.

The autism controversy is one example of how a misconception gets out of hand as a direct result of the media, according to Thomas Sowell of the New York Post.

In Sowell’s article that defends vaccinations, Sowell mentions how in 1998, a doctor writing for a British medical magazine affirmed that vaccines did indeed induce autism.

Studies disproved the doctor’s theory, as there was no correlation between vaccinated children and autism.

Luckily, the doctor-crying-autism had his medical license revoked for his false findings.

Unfortunately, as Sowell put it, because research on disproving him took a while, it allowed the media to spread anti-vaccination propaganda. Literally, a sickening anti-vaccination movement was spreading like a disease.

The scariest aspect of believing that the measles vaccination will cause autism is choosing not to get children vaccinated.

Since we do live in the land of the free, it is justified that some parents do not feel the need to vaccinate their offspring.

But there’s one glaring problem to this mindset: children are now a plague-spreader.

What I mean is that with no immunity, children are capable of catching measles, thus spreading the disease to other children, and so on. The disease spreads exponentially.

Believe it or not, unvaccinated children are not the most important thing on the planet. There are other lives that matter too.

If a child catches the disease, others who might be unable to receive vaccinations are now at threat. Because of people’s ignorance, others are now suffering too.

But of course, since several children are consistently receiving vaccinations, why should we even worry about the disease spreading so rapidly?

Unfortunately, some people don’t receive vaccines because they’re just too sick, young, or old to receive them.

Frankly, this is the only truly justified reason for refusing vaccinations.

According to vaxnorthwest.org, children suffering from Leukemia, heart problems, or Asthma are incapable of receiving vaccinations.

Furthermore, babies and elderly are restricted because of their age.

Children that are healthy enough to receive vaccines can protect the sick, young, or elderly from contracting diseases, such as measles.

We need to put our personal bias’ aside and become united as a community. Together, we can fight fatal diseases by protecting others and ourselves.

We need to stop the ignorance and realize that there are lives out there that are just as valuable as our own.

But if people really are arrogant enough to refuse vaccines, just keep the rugrats from the outside world. Let’s keep kids sharing only toys, and not diseases.