Nolan sat down with Sara Moore, a Salem State faculty member, mother and vaccination advocate. Moore and Nolan discussed current issues such as false rumors and discussed the importance of vaccinations. Moore was able to educate Nolan on the importance of vaccines.

Before going into the meeting, I thought I knew all there was needed to know about vaccinations and their importance. I thought everyone should be vaccinated and that was that. If you were not to vaccinate your child, I viewed the parent as selfish and ignorant seeing their judgment to not vaccinate was probably based on the Wakefield study in 1998. Little did I know I was the ignorant, uneducated one.

When I sat down with Moore, we jumped right into it. She started it off by claiming she was a completely for vaccinations. She talked about all the benefits. She mentioned the life long protection and the importance of protecting yourself from the diseases these immunizations were created to prevent. She had mentioned briefly something about her daughter. That lead me to ask her if her daughter was vaccinated or not. Moore happily responded “yes.” I then continued by asking if it made her nervous that her child may be exposed to someone at school that may not be vaccinated. Moore’s response opened my eyes.

Moore was not worried that her child may be exposed to children who are not vaccinated. My jaw almost hit the floor. How could she not be nervous? It is because the amount of faith she has in these vaccinations. Majority of adolescent contagious diseases or illnesses are contracted at school. Moore but her full and entire trust to protect her daughter’s life into the immunizations. Moore then went to explain she is worried for those who cannot be vaccinated due to a serious health issue.

Often, children who had severe asthma, diabetes or cancer cannot receive vaccinations due to possible complications. These children may want to be vaccinated but cannot because they would be jeopardizing their lives. Now, these children, who are already severely sick, are exposed to other children who may not be vaccinated due to parental reasons. These children are healthy enough to receive vaccinations but they have not. So, these “healthy” children are not only putting themselves at risk for contracting diseases such as mumps, measles, rubella, pneumonia or whooping cough, but they are not also putting those who cannot get vaccinated due to their health conditions. They are putting themselves and others in a great deal of danger. These children’s parents chose not to vaccinate them, often because of religious reasons of parental concerns. One parental concern is that they believe vaccinations cause Autism.

Moore does not believe in that at all. She believes there is no hard evidence to prove such a claim. She then continues to say that if there was solid evidence “Wakefield would not be in jail.” Not knowing much besides the fact Andrew Wakefield lied about a link he found between Autism and vaccinations, I asked her to explain the Wakefield controversy and what that meant to her. Moore started by mentioning Wakefield’s fraudulent 1998 research that he claimed “found that the MMR shot causes Autism.” That since has been proven to be false because no other researcher has been able to duplicate his findings. He had also been caught compensating associates to agree with his findings. Moore then goes on to mention he has since been put in jail and lost his license to practice medicine in England and in the United States.

There are also people in the social spot light that spread false information. Moore mentioned the name Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy is an actress who told parents not to vaccinate their children. She would go speak publically to auditoriums full of people and stress that vaccinations are unsafe and non-useful. McCarthy was doing this based off of the Wakefield study. McCarthy used to fame and was able to convince hundreds and hundreds of parents not to vaccinate their children. She created a trend that put an insane amount of children’s lives in danger. McCarthy has since stopped her anti-vaccination movement, but the damage has been done. Children, especially in California, are unvaccinated due to McCarthy’s efforts to spread anti-vaccination awareness.

The interview with Sara Moore was eye opening to me. Made me realize that for once, I did not know it all. Now I was even more intrigued to find out more about vaccinations and the controversies that surround them. I found that online there are a lot of statistics that support vaccines. I did not come across any statistics that claimed they were harmful except ones that were claimed from Andrew Wakefield. There were a great amount of pros and a few cons about vaccinations. I believed that I was well educated on the subject, but I was not. Though my opinion stays the same for whether or not children should be vaccinated, my opinion of those who are not vaccinated changes.

Children cannot help the fact that they are severely ill and cannot get immunizations. They are dealing with so much already, getting sick with a serious disease such as mumps or measles is even scarier and they cannot prevent it due to their other, non-preventable disease. Also, parents just want to do the best for their children. If a parent is told that something is dangerous, they tend not to let their child do it. All these parents are doing is looking out for their children. The thing about these parents is that they are uneducated, like I was. They need to know vaccinations are safe and effective and will protect their child rather than harm. The lack of education on vaccinations is what is standing in the way of a healthy society and an infected society.