Mandatory Vaccines: Should It Be Mandatory In Modern Healthcare

Throughout history, vaccines have saved millions of people from easily-preventable, yet deadly, diseases. “In 1952 alone, 60,000 children were infected with polio and over 3,000 died” (Beaubien). Luckily, a vaccine was created that miraculously eradicated this disease in most countries. Now we are in the year 2019, and parents all over the US are doubting the efficacy of this life-saving vaccine, as well as many others. However, without widespread vaccination, we will be living in a world similar to the 1950’s era of polio. Society and medicine have come a long way since then, but if vaccination rates fall, the progress we have made will come crashing down before our eyes. Many parents believe it is their right to decide whether to vaccinate their child or not; in many states, only a signature on a “personal belief exemption” form is required to exempt a child from vaccines, which further enforces the belief that vaccines are optional and not necessary. Overall, vaccinations prevent many life-threatening diseases, have few risks, and are crucial to maintaining a disease barrier known as herd immunity. For these reasons, vaccines should be mandatory for all children in order to prevent the suffering of society.

One major benefit of vaccines is the track record they have of wiping out many diseases that used to run rampant across the US; these include measles, mumps, smallpox, polio, and more. According to a Healthline article, many vaccine advocates state that “vaccination was one of the greatest public health success stories of the 20th century.” Decades of smallpox and polio vaccinations have completely wiped out these diseases that once killed millions. Because these severe diseases have been wiped out for decades, many parents “have been lulled into a state of false complacency” (Leifer). They have not seen the alternative to a world full of people who are vaccinated; often they don’t understand the effects of a nationwide epidemic and do not take the threat to their children seriously. This settlement in our immunity to deadly diseases does not only affect parents but healthcare workers and the government as well. As stated in Vaccine impact: benefits for human health, “Once a well-known and much-feared disease appears to have disappeared, individuals, including healthcare professionals, no longer view ongoing prevention with the same sense of urgency” (Prado-Cohrs). Often we forget about the privilege we have to be living in a world where measles and polio aren’t a daily, or even yearly, occurrence; the benefits of immunization slowly become less obvious when we forget the alternative. For this reason, it is not only important that vaccines be made mandatory, but also that we educate people on the history of these diseases and how vaccinations have changed the world.

Arguably the most imperative goal of mandatory immunization is the immunological border known as herd immunity. Overall, herd immunity is the point at which immunization rates reach “a level of coverage sufficient to interrupt transmission of the pathogen” (Prado-Cohrs). We will never reach 100% vaccine coverage because there are people who, for medical reasons, should not be vaccinated; these include people who are immunosuppressed, have cancer, or are too young to be vaccinated (Leifer). The good news is that this small percentage of unvaccinated people are usually protected by the rest of society. However, when more than only these people decide not to vaccinate their kids, the vaccine coverage goes down and disease occurrence rapidly rises. A good example of this is Mississippi where “the vaccination rate exceeds 99% and they have not had a case of measles since 1992” (Leifer). Contrary to Mississippi’s high rates, Washington has a vaccination rate of around 78%, as low as 40% in some schools, and had a major outbreak just this year that threatened the “eliminated” status of measles. It is obvious that there is a correlation between the decline of vaccine rates and the increase in disease incidence (Leifer). The easiest way to enforce this herd immunity is mandatory vaccination. As Cynthia Leifer said in The Pharmaceutical Journal, “parents need to wake up and realize that, if they continue to refuse vaccines, childhood diseases will come back with a vengeance.” The decision to immunize a child affects more than just that child; it is not just a personal choice, it is a public one.

Like many parents, Dawn Richardson says that “Parents should be free to make their own informed, voluntary vaccination decisions without being subjected to government sanctions” (Vaccine Controversies, 91). In some ways, this is true. In our society, parents are, by default, the ones who make decisions for their child; however, we have also set many guidelines as to what parents can and can’t do. For example, car seats have to meet certain requirements, food and living conditions must be sufficient, and most relevantly, medical care must be provided. There are laws and organizations in place to protect children when parents do not make safe or adequate choices; therefore, there is plenty of reason to remove the ability of parents to make decisions that are against their child’s best interest. Yet when vaccination is in question, parents are allowed to refuse because of their personal opinion. This is one of the only times parents are allowed to deny their child basic healthcare. For example, consider “the 2009 case of a child with leukemia who was successfully treated with chemotherapy on court order against her parents’ wishes, because they believed in “natural” treatment for cancer” (Danziger and Diamond). Vaccination should not be a matter of the parent’s opinion, but of the human rights that all children have to medical care. In the end, mandatory vaccination is a necessary action to solve these problems.

As shown above, mandatory vaccination should be implemented throughout the US. We live in a democracy, and democracies are built on the principle of freedom. Therefore, we often have the freedom to make choices about our healthcare; however, we cannot make choices that endanger the lives of others (Leifer). To keep our society safe, we must ensure the continuation of high vaccination rates. The easiest way to keep our herd immunity to tighten our vaccine mandates. It is the job of individuals, healthcare professionals, and the government to make sure severe disease epidemics do not become an accepted part of everyday life. We have come a long way and made many medical advancements, but without vaccines, all of that progress with disappear.