Vaccines have been around for hundreds of years starting in 1796 when Edward Jenner created the first smallpox vaccine. Jenner, an English country doctor noticed cowpox, which were blisters forming on the female cow utters. Jenner then took fluid from the cow blister and scratched it into an eight-year-old boy. A single blister came up were the boy had been scratched but it quickly recovered. After this experiment, Jenner injected the boy with smallpox matter. No disease arose, the vaccine was a success. Doctors all around Europe soon began to proceed in Jenner’s method. Seven different vaccines came from the single experimental smallpox vaccine. Now the questions were on the horizon. Should everyone be getting vaccinations? Where’s the safety limit? How can they be improved? These questions needed answers, and with a couple hundred years later with all the technology, we would have them(ncbi.nlm.nih.gov).
Since the smallpox vaccine was invented, there have been over a hundred other vaccines created. Every vaccine created goes into one of the seven types of vaccines. One type being live or attenuated, which means the vaccine contains a live virus that has been weakened or altered so it doesn’t cause illness. Attenuated vaccines are good “teachers” for the body since they’re the closest thing to a natural infection. An example of an attenuated vaccine would be the vaccination for the measles, mumps, yellow fever or the chicken pox. Attenuated vaccines can be made in several ways. Most common method involves taking the virus and putting it through series of chick embryos. When the virus passes through the embryos it loses the ability to reproduce in human cells. The only downside to the attenuated vaccine is that it doesn’t work o...
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...us or bacterium used as the carrier. Recombinant vector vaccines are still being experimented on today, just like the DNA vaccinations. The only difference between recombinant vector vaccines and DNA vaccines is the fact recombinant vector vaccines use an attenuated virus or bacterium to introduce microbial DNA to the body’s cells. Scientists created this vaccine by observing nature, and how nature passes viruses along. Scientists noticed that viruses in nature latch on to the cells they want to inject, this caused scientists to figure out how to take parts of an attenuated virus and add genetic matter from other microbes into them. I know this sounds confusing, but it’s quite simple. Just think of it as poisoning the virus. Recombinant vector vaccines are very close to mimicking a natural infection, which causes the immune system to energize and start up sooner.
First off I am going to begin with the basics; what is a vaccine? Well a vaccine is a product that produces immunity from a disease it can be administered through needle injections, by mouth, or by aerosol. (Basics, n.d.) Sounds simple right well that leads people to wonder how do they work? They help develop immunity by acting as the infection, it is only acting as the infection so
Vaccines have been used to prevent diseases for centuries, and have saved countless lives of children and adults. The smallpox vaccine was invented as early as 1796, and since then the use of vaccines has continued to protect us from countless life threatening diseases such as polio, measles, and pertussis. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2010) assures that vaccines are extensively tested by scientist to make sure they are effective and safe, and must receive the approval of the Food and Drug Administration before being used. “Perhaps the greatest success story in public health is the reduction of infectious diseases due to the use of vaccines” (CDC, 2010). Routine immunization has eliminated smallpox from the globe and led to the near removal of wild polio virus. Vaccines have reduced some preventable infectious diseases to an all-time low, and now few people experience the devastating effects of measles, pertussis, and other illnesses.
The history of vaccinations does not begin with the first vaccination itself but rather an infectious disease that had greatly affected the human population. In 1796 Edward Jenner created a successful composition using cowpox material that created immunity to the ongoing growth of the small pox disease. Jenner’s method underwent 200 years of medical and technological changes until it had finally resulted in complete elimination of the smallpox disease. Vaccinations have been a controversial medical topic for many years and although it is proven to be an effective means of preventing serious effects, including fatalities from childhood illnesses the controversy remains that the side effects from the immunizations outweigh the risk of contracting the disease. According to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia they state that “innovative techniques now drive vaccine research, with recombinant DNA technology and new delivery techniques leading scientist in new directions. Disease targets have expanded, and some vaccine research is beginning to focus on non-infectious conditions, such as addictions and allergies” (“The History of Vaccines” College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Web. 10 January. 2014). While public health officials insist that vaccines are the best way to protect public health. Over the past thirty years the vaccination schedule has tripled and since then there has been an alarming rise in the infant mortality rate in America. The problem is not the vaccination itself, but the quality of the vaccination.
First, I would like to introduce the different types of vaccines and how they are being manufactured. According to Lynn Cates, who is Medical Doctor, vaccines are made from either weakened, killed, or particles of the bacteria or viruses. There is also another type of vaccine that is made from the toxins or poisons made by the germ (Cates). People who receive the vaccines containing weakened bacteria or viruses will only develop a mild case of the original disease with little or no symptoms. The vaccines made with killed bacteria or viruses will not develop the disease or the symptoms of it. The last category of vaccine is toxoid. “Toxoid vaccines contain toxins (or poisons) produced by the germ that have been made harmless.” (Cates) Example of this type of vaccine is Tetanus. All of these vaccines work by making the body produce immunity towards the b...
Editor Noel Merino of Should Vaccinations Be Mandatory? states that, “Vaccination is the process by which pathogenic cells are injected into a healthy person in an attempt to cause the body to develop antibodies to a particular virus or bacterium” (Merino 7). Once the antibodies
Vaccinations are a particular type of disease preventer with a lot flaws. Vaccines should be non-compulsory. people should have a choice if they want to inject their children with an inactive disease that's up to them. No medicine is perfect most of the time vaccines have had a positive outcome on the majority of the world’s population that have had vaccines. Although the percentage of incidents are low they can still be serious. People say vaccines can lead to autism and other symptoms.
Preventing serious infections by making a person immune to the infection is called immunization. This process is usually performed by the administration of a vaccine to stimulate the person’s immune system to protect them against a subsequent infection or disease. According to the World Health Organization (2016), more than 5 million deaths were prevented annually between 2010 and 2015 due to vaccinations that were used around the world. Vaccines work with the natural ability of the human immune system to develop immunity to fight disease. When a foreign infectious pathogen such as bacteria or a virus enters the body, it multiplies and becomes an infection and in many cases, this infection leads to an illness. To understand how vaccines
Today eighty percent of infants are being vaccinated for diphtheria; pertussis (whooping cough), polio, measles, tetanus and tuberculosis (Landrige 2000). This percentage is up from about five percent in the mid-1970s; however, the death toll from these infections is roughly three million annually. Millions still die from infectious diseases for which immunizations are non-existent, unreliable, or too costly. Vaccines all function with the same idea in mind, priming the immune system to swiftly destroy specific disease-causing agents, or pathogens, before the agents can multiply enough to cause symptoms (Landrige 2000). Classically, this priming has been achieved by presenting the immune system with whole viruses or bacteria that have been killed or made too weak to proliferate much (Landrige 2000).
Vaccines are made to mimic infections. For example, the influenza vaccine mimics the virus, but is a weakened form of it, making it difficult for the virus to reproduce or cause any serious damage. When the vaccine enters the body, T cells and B cells from the immune system begin to attack it and defend the rest of the body from the weakened virus. Not only are the T and B cells able to rid the body of the virus, some of the cells become memory cells. The memory cells then “teach” other cells how to fight of the virus. Because of this, when the body becomes infected with the real virus, the cells will know exactly how to protect the body from the virus (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Vaccines use your body’s ability to learn how to terminate almost all germs or microbes that attack it. The body memorizes how to protect against microbes that it has previously came across. Specifically, the immune system is the part of your body that remembers and attacks diseases. Your immune system is the reason for every illness you’ve ever defeated, and without it you most likely wouldn’t be alive. It takes approximately a week for your body to learn how to fight off a new microbe/germ. However, some microbes are so infectious that that your immune system can’t quite grasp it and defeat it. In this case, a vaccine can make a world’s difference. Vaccines contain weakened or dead pathogens (microbes) that are put into the body so your body can learn how to recognize and terminate them.
DNA vaccines have been researched, and scientists are trying to find ways to put them into use and cure diseases in humans and animals. Vaccines activate the protective immunity that is an effect natural infection, without having to become sick with an infection (Paul Offit, 2014). Vaccines reduced the probability of people today to get diseases like the measles, and other major infectious diseases (Anonymous, 2011). Vaccines are not always safe, and also lots of vaccines are not always as effective as wanted (Anonymous, 2011). Edward Jenner was a scientist and physician who first introduced the smallpox vaccine in 1796(Mary Quirk, N.d). Eric Simon, Jean Dickey, Jane Reece, and Neil Campbell (1967) state that DNA is the genetic material that organisms inherit from their parents and ancestors. The information in DNA is made up of a code containing four letters A, G, C, and T (Anonymous, 2014). The order of these four letters in DNA determines how the organisms maintain its information (Anonymous, 2014). A DNA vaccine is where genetic material is injected into an organism; this can cause some of the cells to produce the gene product (Koprowski, 1998).
Ever since the first vaccine for smallpox was invented over 200 years ago, there has been plenty of controversy over children receiving vaccinations (Smith & Bouck, 2009). It seems to be a delicate balance between personal liberty and public health. Every parent is concerned for their child’s health and todays parents want more information. To vaccinate or not to vaccinate should be an informed choice and not one made from fear (Glanz, Kraus, & Daley, 2014). Edward Jenner invented the first vaccine for smallpox in 1796 which, according to the World Health Organization (2015), eradicated the disease worldwide by 1980. A vaccine is “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease” (CDC, 2014, para.
They then made a vaccine for the artificial virus by changing the genes so they could not cause illness, and put it into another virus. This is called a vector, which can insert genes into cells. For the vector, scientist chose a virus that causes the common cold. The vector has been changed so it can not make humans or animals sick, but it still could insert DNA into cells. Researchers use their vector to deliver their new vaccine into cells. Scientist tested the new vaccine on mice by giving some mice a low dose of the vaccine, others got a high dose, others got a high dose of FluMist, a standard flu vaccine, and a final group got a high dose of FluZone, the usual flu shot. A month later, scientist exposed mice to one of nine different flu strains. Every mouse that took FluMist or FluZone died, but mice that took the new vaccine stayed alive. Matthew Miller, a researcher at McMaster University, noticed that many studies focused on how well only one part of the immune system responds to the flu vaccine. Most studies in this field focused on how well the body makes antibodies, a class of proteins that help tag infected cells. But the ancestral-flu treatment stimulated others parts of the immune
This process creates a response that builds immunity to the infectious agent” (477). A vaccine contains destroyed particles of a virus, which mimics the virus and tricks your body. When a vaccine is administered, it prompts the immune system to make antibodies to the virus. Makielski and Rhonda recognize vaccination as “one of the ten greatest public health achievements of the 20th century” as noted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (1867; 477).
A vaccination protects you from particular diseases that can make you sick, disabled or even kill you, the vaccine increases your body’s own defense system, the immune system (Phac-aspc.gc.ca, 2014). A vaccine contains a little bit of the disease germ that is either weak or dead (Phac-aspc.gc.ca, 2014). When a person receives a vaccine, the body reacts by making protective substances known as “antibodies”. The antibodies help defend the body by helping to kill off the germs which have entered the body (Health.ny.org, 2014). The illustration on the right shows how this happens. When a germ enters the body it multiplies to cause an infection, vaccines help create immunity by imitating the infection without causing illness (Cdc.gov, 2014).