Vaccines are common in our world today. They both protect us from disease and prevent future diseases from infecting us. Young children receive many vaccines to protect them from the flu, measles, and other illnesses. Vaccines have been developed for many years to prevent such diseases; however, debate has been circulating as to whether vaccines are beneficial. So, are vaccines beneficial, and are they worth it?

Yes, vaccines are beneficial because they protect all people. Polio and the measles can cause brain damage and paralysis, two experiences no one should experience. Other diseases, like influenza, mutate and have new strains every year. The flu causes millions of deaths and infections a year and vaccines have the power to make change In a society so bent for vaccines, most of the population does not even question their effectiveness.

However, a new movement has recently started with parents refusing to vaccinate their children. They fear injecting diseases into their children could induce side effects and hurt their child. Although their reasons are perceptible, they are not valid enough. Preventing vaccination is not beneficial to children’s health. Many diseases have no cure except through being prevented by vaccines. Further, unvaccinated children pose a health risk to other children and human beings, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated. Most of all, vaccines save lives. I know that some organizations require tetanus vaccines to prevent the spread the disease tetanus, which can be deadly to the human body. The flu vaccine prevents many deaths a year from the influenza disease. The polio vaccine reduced the polio virus from being a widespread disease to being only a minor one with hundreds of less cases.

Vaccines are necessary for the survival of human beings from epidemics that can hurt the human race. Vaccines are only meant to help against a disease from being as widespread as something like the bubonic plague. Although some may debate that vaccines are detrimental to human health or that vaccines contain unknown substances that may eventually hurt us, one cannot deny the benefits to vaccines.