The Trent Not to Vaccinate your Children - Research Paper Example

As per the required Immunization Schedule for children aged between 0-6 years, they may receive 24 vaccinations to protect them against 14 diseases by age 2. This may look like too many a vaccine for a kid, but some parents are unnecessarily worried. Vaccines get prescribed for particularly young children since their immune system is not mature enough. Their stomachs are also less acidic, making it easy for ingested bacteria and viruses to overgrow and multiply (Offit 22). These reasons make them the most susceptible to the terrible effects of life threatening diseases.

When a child is growing in the mother's womb it is in a sterile environment, the child's immune system is operational at birth, as the child encounters bacteria outside the womb. Human bodies have an immune system that is so active to go to work from the time of birth. Infants immediately begin to develop an effective immune response system to respond to these bacteria. It prevents these bacteria from getting into the bloodstream and causing damage. During the first two years, a child should be exposed to 10 or 13 vaccines, given over time in several doses.

The intensity, to which these vaccines trouble the child’s immune system, is small compared to thousands of environmental conditions that babies successfully overcome daily (Young 37). Public health experts have come up with an optimal vaccination schedule. . Instead, they choose the alternative vaccine schedule that delays shots or spaces them further apart; with the impression that it saves their children from developing some diseases like autism. The alternative schedule advocates 24 shots in the first 14 months of life.

The shots immunize against tetanus, measles, rubella, polio, whooping cough, diphtheria, mumps, rotavirus, polio, hepatitis B and other diseases (Sears 74). The CDC does not approve the alternative vaccination schedule. Alternative vaccine schedule spreads the vaccine shots out to a longer period, up to age 5-6 years. The alternative schedule circumvents most of the critics. The only disadvantages are the extra effort, time, and cost for the added pediatricians’ office visits. For the paranoid parents, alternative vaccination schedule includes the “minimum" immunization against common diseases like rotavirus.

It omits some vaccines like polio. Vaccination of kids is beneficial because it helps to protect the health of the community especially those who are not immunized. Those not vaccinated include those who are too young to be vaccinated. For example, babies less than a year old cannot get vaccinated against measles but can be infected by it; children with leukemia cannot be medically immunized because of the medical condition, and people who cannot respond to vaccination. People who received a vaccine, but who have not developed immunity become protected from diseases that can be transmitted by unvaccinated children (Murphy 71).

Immunization also slows down or stops disease outbreaks. Before immunization, lots of children died from ailments such as measles, polio and. The same bacteria are still present now, but infants are now protected by immunization.