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Abby Linder

Professor Loudermilk

English 1201

19 January 2019

The Importance of Childhood Vaccinations

Understanding the importance of childhood vaccinations is a very touching subject to me

and my family. In June of 2012, my youngest son was diagnosed with leukemia. Leukemia is a

form of blood cancer for those you that do not know. Once we were educated on the steps that

were about to take place for the next four years, we discovered many things we were unaware of.

First, a lot of children with cancer do not die because of the cancer itself. They end up getting

sick from infection or diseases. My son had to live in a bubble while going though treatment. His

immune system was depleted because of the chemotherapy and other drugs he had to have to

save his life. A simple common cold landed us in the hospital. We were also informed that it

wasn’t safe for him to be around unvaccinated children. Children with well working immune

systems can fight off simple or even advanced infections, to where my son had higher risks of

dying.

The topic of childhood vaccinations is important to me because I want people to

understand the impact of them. I want people to know that I didn’t choose for my son to have

cancer and have half of his childhood taken from him by living in a hospital for almost four

years. Before doing the research, my biggest hope is to find good reliable information to help

people understand the importance of childhood vaccinations. I know this is a highly debatable

topic, and a touchy one at that. I believe that people are uneducated about vaccines. I also believe
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that they do more good than harm. As I have already did some research on this topic, I know that

in the last decade, eradicated diseases have been popping back up on the charts higher than ever

before. Through many case studies, I also know this has affected unvaccinated children at a

higher rate. I also know that many uneducated parents believe in false information that they have

read on a social media sites.

I still have many questions that I hope to find the answers to as I continue my research.

Where do parents or guardians find their information that makes them make the decisions of not

vaccinating. Do they think it is fair to put other people at risk because they have no evidence that

vaccinations do harm? I am more concentrated on the vaccines that help with eradicated diseases

rather than the flu shots. I am hoping to learn more about medical case studies that show credible

information and not something you just saw your friend’s sister post on social media. I hope to

find information that I can use to help educate parents and guardians that my child’s life matters

too. I plan to start looking up scholar article’s and research papers though the Sinclair database.

As I have researched certain areas of this topic in the past, I am excited to get to know more

about this topic and dig deeper, so I can help spread reliable credible information that I believe

people around the world lack in this area.