Vaccines as a Threat

After the debate in class a couple of weeks ago, and the online journal response, I was intrigued to find out more about how valid the argument was that vaccines can cause health issues such as Autism. In this article, Dr. Salmon mentions that the reason people began to think that vaccines cause Autism was because of the observations of a British doctor, whose observations were not scientifically tested. However, this was enough to cause a controversy and get people talking which is what started the rumors that are flying around now. Dr. Salmon also says that unvaccinated children are about 22-35% more likely to contract a specific disease than a child who is vaccinated. That statistic seems rather insignificant to me while there is such a big fuss about getting children vaccinated. This being said, Dr. Salmon also makes the point that if vaccines weren't safe for the most part, they would not be approved before being given to the public because the FDA has an approval process for these things. This makes a good argument for those who are concerned about vaccines being dangerous, and it seems to me that it is relatively safe to vaccinate your children.

http://www.scholastic.com/resources/article/the-vaccine-debate