Advantages And Disadvantages Of Vaccination - Case Study Example

The development of anti-rabies vaccine kindled hope for prevention of other infectious diseases, leading to immense research and development of several other vaccines (Shah, Nitin, and Kukrej, 2007).The term vaccination was coined by Edward Jenner. Vaccination is the method of causing immunity to a disease by administration of an antigenic material into the body. The term vaccination is used interchangeably with immunity, which is derived from the Greek word "immune" which means "to be protected.

" Several vaccines have been developed which either prevent or ameliorate several infectious diseases. The first disease for which vaccine was developed is smallpox. In fact, even before Edward Jenner developed a proper vaccine against smallpox, people in India and China inoculated fluids taken from smallpox vesicles of patients suffering from the mild course of the disease.Despite the marked use of vaccination in the prevention of infectious diseases, vaccination is still a much-debated topic and has several medical safety, ethical, political and religious implications.

In this essay, vaccination, types of vaccines, implications of vaccination and novel vaccines will be discussed with reference to recent literature.Vaccines act by developing immunity to the particular disease by inducing the development of antibodies. There are basically 2 types of immunity, innate immunity and acquired immunity. Innate immunity develops after actual exposure to the disease organism. Acquired immunity develops after exposure to vaccination. Acquired immunity may be active or passive immunity.

Active immunity is that immunity that develops following exposure to an antigenic stimulus, while passive immunity develops after direct injection of antibodies in the form of either sera or immunoglobulins, inside the body.