By Aidan Reed
EMS Press
Traverse City East MS
1st Place
Division MS, News Writing
Environment, Health or Science
Recently the issue of vaccines — or the lack thereof — has taken root in our very own Traverse City, due to the large portion of students in our region who are unvaccinated. This topic has split into two factions; one saying that vaccines are beneficial, and the other saying that vaccines are harmful and may actually cause disease.
A big fighting point on vaccines is the claim that vaccines cause autism. This is false. A study published in the medical journal Lancet in 1998 linked three of the major vaccines to autism, but the study results were proven fraudulent about a decade later. This means that the study was faked, and that the results were false. However, this point does not completely undermine the vaccines-are-harmful faction, and those who are against vaccines actually make quite a few good points.
Autism isn’t the only worry of parents who don’t vaccinate their children. Some are also concerned about other un-reasonable side effects from the vaccines. They speculate that vaccines might infect their kids with other diseases, even the ones that the vaccine is supposed to prevent. For the most part, this is untrue. Some vaccines, such as the flu vaccine, can result in symptoms that are similar to the disease, but toned down.
A local worry over vaccines is the recently released percentages of children who are not vaccinated. The overall waiver rate has dramatically increased from 6 to 11 percent on average, according the Traverse CIty Ticker. Some schools have seen as much as a 24 percent increase in waivers. Typically those unvaccinated are protected by the “herd effect” or “herd immunity,” referring to the fact that if almost everyone is vaccinated, the disease will not present itself. But with the decline in vaccinated students, that protection may disappear.
Some experts predict that if this trend continues, the likelihood of a whooping cough or measles outbreak will be about “fifty-fifty”. This year Grand Traverse County has al-ready seen cases of both whooping cough and measles. Nationwide, the cases of measles have increased significantly in the past decade, according to the Center for Disease Control. In 2004, there were approximately 50 cases of the disease. In 2014, there were more than 600 cases. More than 200 cases were diagnosed in the last month alone.
The Children’s House, a private Montessori school in Traverse City, recently announced it would no longer accept children who were not vaccinated.
“I’ve always vaccinated my kids,” said Jenika Burden, an EMS parent. “I never got them the ones that weren’t necessary for them at their age, but they’ve always been protected against the major diseases.”
But there are those who don’t trust the government or the medical establishment.
“I think a more important question than ‘Are vaccines good or are they bad?’ is ‘Are they safe?’” said Jena Hullman, a chiropractor at Big Beautiful Life, a downtown business, “If the government wants to force ‘health care’ on us, it should at the very least be safe.”
She says vaccines are not safe.
“The safety studies are not up to par with science’s own standards of methodology and truly unconflicted research in this subject is rare,” she said. “Once we know vaccines absolutely do not harm children, teens, adults and the elderly, we can look into the question of ‘Do vaccines prevent disease?”
But with the very real threat of the recent whooping cough outbreak and the current concern about the measles that apparently originated at Disneyland, the topic of vaccines is a hot one.
“We believe in the importance of protecting our children and those too young to be fully vaccinated.” said Mr. Petty, a former EMS parent, “We also have friends and family who have compromised immune systems. It’s unconscionable to not protect those who can’t protect themselves. Herd immunity is important.”