In this day and age, it is particularly important to keep up with current information about vaccines. Like most forms of medicine, they can be either beneficial or detrimental. This double-edged sword is why parents are starting to think twice about not only vaccinating themselves, but their children as well.

In theory, a vaccine is supposed to “help develop immunity by imitating an infection, but this imitation infection does not cause illness. It does, however, cause the immune system to develop the same response as it does to a real infection so the body can recognize and fight the vaccine-preventable disease in the future” (1). When you are given a vaccine, your body is essentially being tricked into thinking that you are going to be sick, and the immune system learns how to combat the specific illness. Before vaccines, you had to fight off an infection the old fashioned way: you had to contract the disease. The term for this is called natural acquired immunity. “With natural acquired immunity, you suffer the symptoms of the disease and also risk the complications, which can be quite serious or even deadly” (2).

Being given a vaccine can be advantageous, though. For one, it is less expensive to prevent an illness than to cure it. “In a 2005 study on the economic impact of routine childhood immunization in the United States, researchers estimated that for every dollar spent, the vaccination program saved more than $5 in direct costs and approximately $11 in additional costs to society” (2). Another advantage to being vaccinated is giving other and yourself the ability to travel safely. You could be putting millions of people at risk just by negligence alone. “The most common vaccine-preventable among travelers are influenza and hepatitis A” (3). When my father went to Canada five years ago, he contracted hepatitis B from a salad bar right above the border