Research Paper about Vaccine

“The greatest lie ever told is that vaccines are safe and effective.” As educated as Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz might be, his statement significantly misrepresents the careful developmental stages of an effective vaccine. In 1796, noted as a pioneer of the concept of vaccines, Edward Jenner created the world’s first vaccine for smallpox by originally inoculating a 13-year-old boy with the Vaccinia virus (The Immunization Advisory Centre  A brief history of vaccination). Today, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 65 effective vaccines now prevent numerous diseases such as measles, polio, HPV, shingles, yellow fever, and countless others (List of Vaccines Used in United States | CDC, 2018). Clearly vaccines are not brand new to America, but still today, skeptics manage to persuade millions of people that vaccinations serve as some mysterious medical ploy that doctors invent in a lab to take out the human race. By definition, a vaccine skeptic or being vaccine-hesitant means to be defiant and refuse to trust a proven effective vaccine, and sometimes there are many contributing factors like the lack of access or lack of understanding about the developments and methods of it. As you read further on, certain topics will be covered such as: how did some in the African American community, different religious groups, and freedom fighters become vaccine skeptics in the first place, how has race and politics in particular divided Americans throughout this pandemic and why all of this should ultimately be consequential to you as a reader.

 Over the last year and a half, this pandemic has impacted all of us in some form or fashion regardless of race, gender, religion, or ideology, so being able to have the opportunity to write about this subject I believe can enlighten folks who might feel hesitant towards vaccines. As a country and frankly together as a world, we have endured the consequences of Covid-19 and many people question whether those who aren’t vaccinated by now can have their minds changed. There are numerous reasons why vaccine skepticism has become a major controversy  even after the successful production of three vaccines. Some include how government officials and politics have managed to find a happy seat right in the middle of what’s supposed to be considered a public health crisis. Additionally, the role that misinformation has played in our society today throughout this pandemic has not only become harmful to the scientific community, but it is also causing death to thousands of people who do not need to die at all. According to Saundra Young at WebMD, “Black, Hispanic, and Native American people are about 4 times more likely to be hospitalized and nearly 3 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than white people (Young, Black vaccine hesitancy rooted in mistrust, doubts 2021).” Additionally from that same article, “Paul Offit, MD, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the FDA advisory panel that recommended approval, says there’s no evidence the Pfizer vaccine can cause long-term effects, and serious rare side effects typically occur within 6 weeks of getting a vaccine.” Despite the scientific evidence available to the public, many in the African-American community still have their reservations and some of it stems from what happened 89 years ago.

 “Officially named the Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, the U.S. Public Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, recruited hundreds of rural Black men in 1932. The study offered free meals and checkups, but never explained that participants would be human subjects in a study designed to withhold medical treatment (Elliott In Tuskegee, painful history shadows efforts to vaccinate African Americans).” Furthermore, “They recruited 200+ control patients who did not have syphilis (simply switching them to the syphilis-positive group if at any time they developed it). They also began giving all patients ineffective medicines (ointments or capsules with too small doses of neoarsphenamine or mercury) to further their belief that they were being treated (McGill University 40 years of human experimentation in America: The Tuskegee Study).” Decades later, “On July 25, 1972 Jean Heller of the Associated Press broke the story that appeared simultaneously both in New York and Washington, that there had been a 40-year nontherapeutic experiment called "a study" on the effects of untreated syphilis on Black men in the rural south. This set into motion international public outcry and a series of actions initiated by U.S. federal agencies which led to the Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs appointing an Ad Hoc Advisory Panel. The panel concluded the men never knew of the debilitating and life threatening consequences of the treatments they were to receive, the impact on their wives, girlfriends, and children they may have conceived once involved in the research. They also concluded that there were no choices given to the participants to quit the study when penicillin became available as a treatment and cure for syphilis, ruling the study "ethically unjustified." (Tuskegee University  About the USPHS Syphilis Study). With the memory of this unforgettable mistreatment, for some in the African-American community, that experiment is where the line has been drawn on allowing doctors to convince them to take a vaccine. 

Before President Biden used his authorized power to mandate the Covid-19 vaccination for government officials and corporations, those who were nervous about receiving it could either be subject to taking a daily Covid-19 test or state their religious exemption reason. Religious institutions such as the Awaken Church, located in San Diego and Salt Lake City,  argued in a letter to their members on why they should prevent themselves from staying protected from a deadly disease: “The first reason cites a Bible verse that says the human body is “a temple of the Holy Spirit.” The letter states, “We are commanded to take good care of it, not to defile it, and certainly not introduce something into it.” It goes on to say that taking “this vaccine actually makes modifications to the body.… This, in essence, would be trying to improve or alter what God made perfectly ... which is clearly a sinful practice. (Mari Payton Covid-vaccine religious exemptions: What are they, will they hold up?)"