Vaccination is a topic that many people have differing opinions are. It was interesting to sit with a small group of people and talk about the benefits of vaccinations that become obscured when people make arguments that are not backed by science. Being interested in public health, I believe that vaccines are an extremely important tool in keeping the population healthy. Herd immunity is extremely important and is something that is easily jeopardized by people refusing vaccines. This puts the health of others who are unable to be vaccinated at risk.

I think there is a moral obligation for everyone to be vaccinated. Vaccines have been used for a very long time and have been tested thoroughly to ensure minimal side effects. At this talk, we also discussed the different types of vaccines and how technologies have progressed. New vaccines such as the one for HPV are recombinants. As more research is done, more efficient ways to produce vaccines become available. Some old vaccines are still being used, such as the oral polio vaccine as it eliminates the need for hypodermic needles.

Overall I think that vaccines should be mandatory for everyone. I believe that the first step to making this happen is by making it more difficult to be exempt form vaccinating your child. Currently, people are able to refuse vaccines based upon personal or moral reasons that do not connect to religion or health concerns. Overall there is  a lack of education around the topic of vaccination and what the benefits and risks are. Many people take the face value of what they hear and read and do not question who the information was put out by or what the agenda of that company may be. Overall, I believe that vaccinations are necessary and are the key to improving health worldwide. We have the power to eradicate diseases and now we just need to get everyone on board.

Growing up in Sri Lanka it was a given that everyone would be vaccinated. It wasn’t really a choice of the parents since all school students had to be vaccinated to prevent other student from being affected by those who were not vaccinated. I assumed this was the system all around the world.

Yet, when I attended the table talk on Public Health and Vaccines I was proven wrong. I learnt that in the US it’s a personal choice of the parents and the individual if they want to be vaccinated or not. This was due to moral and ethical concerns. Some concerns were that injecting a dead virus or inactive virus could potentially end up causing the disease. Another concern is that vaccines may cause autism in children. Yet, years of scientific research has found that vaccines are in fact safe and that they have prevented many harmful diseases from spreading. This got me thinking is it morally right to let another person get sick simply because you weren’t vaccinated? Is it really right not to do something that causes third party harm?

Personally, I disagree with this policy in the US. I believe that all children if they are going to school they should be vaccinated and it shouldn’t be a choice of the parents. If the parents do not want to vaccinate their children, they should be homeschooled and not sent to public or private schools where they are risking the health of other students that have been vaccinated. Especially if there are any students undergoing chemotherapy they are specially at risk.

The topic of discussion at Table Talk this week was vaccines. In light of the controversy surrounding vaccines and school mandates, I thought this would be an particularly interesting discussion. Although the 1998 paper blaming thimerosal preservatives used in vaccines for causing autism had long been disproved in many subsequent studies, the anti-vaccine camp has grown increasingly vocal since. Understandably, people do not like being told that they must vaccinate their child. Moreover, vaccines are not 100% effective and have a non-zero probability for serious side effects. But the vaccine mandates debate pertains not only to an individual’s health: it concerns the health of everybody who interacts with that individual as well. With 100% vaccination, everybody can benefit from herd immunity. Perhaps it is a right to refuse vaccination, but is it also a right to put other’s health at risk in the name of freedom?

Our discussion then transitioned to the pharmaceutical industry. Patients usually find that vaccines are not very expensive because most insurance plans  cover them: a wise decision as the cost of disease/loss of life can far exceed drug costs. But why do vaccines/drugs have such high wholesale prices? As an economics major who took Pharmaceutical Management and Policy, I was familiar with this question. Vaccines are goods that have very high fixed costs (in research/development), but the marginal cost of production may be very low. If companies were required to only charge for the cost of production, then they would not be able to recoup the enormous R&D costs and lose profit. There would then be no incentives for vaccine innovation and no new vaccines on the market. Patents give drug firms an opportunity to recover these enormous costs and make a profit. The challenge we face in policy is to find a balance between controlling drug prices/saving money now and future innovation.