Vaccination Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This Vaccination Essay example is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic, please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

Vaccinations are used to prevent infectious diseases. A weakened form of the infectious pathogen is used to stimulate the body’s immune system to manufacture antibodies enabling the body to defend itself against the infectious pathogen. Vaccinations work because the immune system in the bodies of animals, birds, or humans is able to utilize the immunogen that is introduced to make antibodies. The antibodies destroy or neutralize the infectious agent whether it is a virus, bacteria, fungi, or some other pathogen. There are four types of vaccines. Those that contain bacteria or viruses that have been altered are called live attenuated vaccines. Vaccines that contain only parts of the infectious bacteria or virus are component vaccines. Killed vaccines use bacteria or viruses that have been killed. Toxid vaccines use toxins that the pathogen makes to neutralize it.

Vaccinations may be given orally or with a hypodermic needle. Oral vaccines may be used because they are cheaper, and do not have the risk of an injury or infection from injection. The polio, rotavirus, brucellosis, and cholera vaccines have been successfully administered orally. Many vaccines given to children, especially those under two years of age, have been given orally.

Vaccination with hypodermic needles is also widespread. Alexander Wood and Charles Gabriel Pravaz invented this form in 1853; prior to that time a cut was made in the skin for inoculation. The vaccine shots may be administered in the muscles that surround the stomach. Rabies vaccination is administered in this manner. Other vaccinations are administered in the shoulder muscles of the arms, or in the hips. Whether a vaccination is administered orally or with a hypodermic needle generally depends upon where the vaccination can be most productive in triggering the immune system to work. Many vaccines are not absorbed well if given in the stomach. Others are more effective if given orally rather than hypodermically.

The development of vaccines began in the late 1700s after it was noticed that milkmaids who developed cowpox were immune to smallpox. The practice of inoculating people with infectious material from a mild, but active, case of smallpox was developed before the advent of vaccinations. Edward Jenner, who coined the term vaccine from the Latin word for cow-vacca-introduced the safer method of inoculation with cowpox, which eventually led to banning smallpox vaccinations by the middle of the 19th century.

Opposition to vaccinations has occurred in many times and places. The mandating of compulsory vaccinations by governments has added to the controversies. During the Colonial era, the Boston printer James Franklin used his newspaper to attack inoculations by distorting the number of deaths in the Inoculation Controversy. More recent controversies have arisen in response to a number of vaccines. The manufacture of vaccines seems to inevitably involve the use of materials to which a few individuals are extremely sensitive. Deaths or medical injuries have occurred, but while tragic for those individuals who die or are injured, the vast majority of people benefit because they do not die from the disease or suffer harm from its effects. In recent decades, the use of mercury in vaccinations may have contributed to the rise of autism. Other materials used to manufacture vaccines have had negative effects.

Vaccinations may be given to immunize against a disease, but others are given to minimize a disease already contracted. Louis Pasteur’s first vaccination was administered to a child who had been injured by a rabid dog. The weakened form of the rabies virus he administered triggered the immune response to work more rapidly than the original infection. Therapeutic vaccines against the HIV/AIDS virus, non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and other diseases have had some success.

Bibliography:

James Keith and Keith Colgrove, State of Immunity: The Politics of Vaccination in Twentieth-Century America (University of California Press, 2006);
David Kirby, Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic-A Medical Controversy (St. Martin’s Press, 2006);
Richard Neustaedter, The Vaccine Guide: Risks and Benefits for Children and Adults (North Atlantic Books, 2002);
Peter Parham, The Immune System (Taylor & Francis, Inc., 2004);
Stanley Plotkin and Walter A. Orenstein, Vaccines (Elsevier Health Sciences, 2003).