Myths and Misconceptions of Vaccines

Technology is another factor in the myths and misconceptions of vaccines. Obtaining medical intelligence online has drastically altered the progress of the preventative medicine industry as well as patient to physician interactions. Pharmaceutical information that used to be exclusive to class lectures, books, journals, and experiments and given only to medical professional, has now been easily accessible to the public and has retracted the power from professional doctors as primary caretakers to the people who believe they are doctors because they did a Google search. This resulted in the current inception of what people are calling shared decision making that allows healthcare physicians and patients to have shared decisions.

Though this may be helpful in a variety of ways, the diffusion of flawed and deceptive information established on the web hold its own adverse repercussions. For instance, parents who refuse to give doctors consent to have their kids vaccinated. A study of Youtube videos was done, and in the study researchers found that anti-vaccination videos had 32% higher ratings than the pro-vaccine videos. Online anti-vaccination authors utilize a variety of strategies to push along their agenda. Some common tactics are skewing science, changing people's hypothesis, redacting opposition research, and battering critics. Though these strategies are deceptive, they still prove to be successful in influencing parents. A study had been conducted to evaluate how well individuals assessed the accuracy of medical information about vaccines online, and the study gathered that 18 internet sites out of the 40 given were accurate leaving the rest of the sites to be decieving.

The controversy over whether or not parents should vaccinate their kids leads an ethical dilemma and morals. Medicals ethics requires anyone in the medical field to uphold the bioethics code while also respecting people's autonomy and producing the best outcome without harming anyone. Patients of doctors obtain the right to refuse vaccinations solely based on the foundation of  our children, our choice and their autonomy to choose for their children, but health care providers are still morally obligated to treat every patient with non-maleficence while also refraining any harm to society. Religion happens to be the most common basis for the objection to vaccines. In particular, the MMR vaccine stems the initiates the discussion within the Orthodox, Jewish, Hindu, and Jehovah's Witness faction. Though the oppositions are not completely based upon all vaccines but the components in the MMR vaccine. The rubella vaccine integrated with the MMR had been obtained from the cells of aborted fetal tissue.

Generally, these religious communities are against abortions based on religious teachings and these groups cite these religious objections in order to file for a vaccine exemption. Porcine gelatin is found in the MMR vaccine and it acts as a stabilizer that essentially allows for effective storage in the body. Porcine ingredients are not like the gelatins that are used for oral dissipation and are actually purified to small peptides, which is popularly utilized in medicine capsules. In addition, religious individuals view vaccines as escaping death or meddling in the life that God chooses for a person, they believe that people should not alter the destined fate of someone who becomes ill. The fault in this argument is that God should want to heal all persons even when their fate was to become ill. A person's rights are only valid until they begin to infringe on others. A parent choosing not to vaccinate their kid may be their right but it does not only affect their kid. Children who are in school are already at a high risk for contracting a sickness and just by being near a non-vaccinated child puts them at risk for contracting a deadly illness such as measles or smallpox.

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