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Kieren Pike
Professor Collins
ENGL 1301
24 October 2016
Investigating Mandatory Vaccinations
Vaccines are specially engineered substances developed in the early 1900s to prevent
deadly diseases such as polio, measles, and influenza from entering bodies. Before vaccines,
many diseases typically led to death. According to the World Health Organization, a global
leader in health and medicine, vaccines have been responsible for saving roughly two to three
million lives every year. Although vaccines have saved many lives, recently many people are
protesting mandatory vaccinations, especially in infants, because of the possible dangerous side
effects that come with them. Mandatory vaccinations have become a relevant issue because an
increasing amount of people are discovering that they might have serious and permanent side
effects while others depend on them to protect them from diseases.
Many people all around the world depend on vaccines to protect them from lethal
diseases that are abundant in their area. Many countries have completely ridden themselves of
dangerous diseases such as polio and smallpox because many they have made vaccinations
mandatory for infants and children. According to the Article Ebola Scare and Measles
Resurgence, written by doctors Mark C. Aita and Takeem T. Ragland, measles on average had
infected three to four million people a year before 1967 when the Edmonston-Enders measles
vaccine became readily available. By the 1990s the measles vaccine had become mandatory for
all fifty states for children entering school and in 2000 the U.S. declared that measles had been
eliminated from the country (Aita). Proponents of mandatory vaccinations believed that making

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this vaccination mandatory for children helped eventually completely rid a country of a terrible
disease that, before the vaccine, had caused terror among young people. Supporters also believe
that without mandatory vaccinations, diseases can spread and take over an entire country and that
vaccinations have the power to stop diseases that were once abundant and save millions of lives
that could have been lost to fatal diseases. This supports the argument that mandatory
vaccinations are necessary to protect the world from diseases and that they are powerful enough
to completely eradicate any diseases that threaten a country. Many people depend on vaccines to
help protect them from harmful diseases that could destroy a nation.
Other people are against mandatory vaccination because of ethical beliefs that might
interfere.