Informative Essay On Vaccines

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What is a vaccine? A vaccine is a preparation of your immune system to receive and fight against an infectious disease. It “teaches the immune system” to fight off the disease. When you get the vaccine, there is actually some of the infection in it. The infection is always weakened or dead by the time you receive the vaccine. “Scientists produce inactive vaccines by killing the disease-causing microbe with chemicals, heat, or radiation.” Often times, a bacteria from a different infection can be used to make a vaccine for a disease similar but not the exact same thing (“Types of Vaccinations”). I want to inform people about what a vaccine is and its purpose.
Bringing Vaccines to the U.S. In about 1800, vaccines were brought to the U.S. by …show more content…

When Dr. Waterhouse gave the patients the vaccinations and all of them lived and were healthy, other doctors wanted to get the supplies to make the vaccines. Waterhouse refused. He didn’t want other doctors to be taking his success from him. When he wouldn’t give them the supplies, they took the materials from doctors in England. Or, they would take some infection from patients who would’ve had the infection or the vaccine. They would take pus from the vaccination pustels, where the shot was given, and use it to make a …show more content…

Typhoid fever is “an infection that spreads through contaminated food and water or through close contact with someone who's infected” (“Typhoid Fever”). Among the 15,000 soldiers that got the vaccine, there were only “11 cases of Typhoid fever per 1,000 men.” Of the soldiers who didn’t get that vaccine, there were “31 cases of Typhoid fever per 1,000 men.” Later on, in 1911 a group of 15,000 men in the U.S. Army made it a rule that you had to be immunized for Typhoid fever. Shortly after that, it was mandatory for all soldiers to get the vaccine. During the American-Spanish War, before vaccines became mandatory, there were 1,590 deaths that had to do with Typhoid fever and only 280 battlefield deaths. Fifteen years later when the vaccine was being used in WWI, there were only “227 deaths dealing with Typhoid fever from four million American soldiers” (“History of

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