HCP Final Reflection

            I think the best part of my HCP final draft is when I give the parents that are against SB277 a voice in my paper. It’s easy to make things black and white, to say that the Anti-Vaxxers are blatantly wrong and that everyone should vaccinate their kids because its science and it’s the law. That’s great, but it’s not realistic. The problem is that this new law takes away freedom of speech, and limits the control that parents may have over their child’s healthcare. There are legitimate concerns with regards to vaccinations, and parents that are questioning the safety of these immunizations is completely understandable. But enforcing a law that forces all children to be vaccinated “or else…” seems a little extreme. Why don’t we put some of these parents’ minds at ease and try and educate or spread awareness about what the consequences are if we allow so many kids to slide by without getting vaccinated. That being said, I still feel like I come off as pretty sarcastic throughout the parts with “experts” denouncing vaccines. My peer reviewer was laughing as she was reading my paper, “I can hear the sarcasm dripping from the words on the paper!” It’s difficult for me to not sound sarcastic towards some of the things that these Anti-Vaxxers believe. It’s ridiculously hard to stay neutral during some of these readings.

            My best source is actually two sources, which I found through the references of one of the CDC pages I was citing. They were the sources written by Ellenberg and Freed. They were both from medical journals that were published during the height of the vaccine/autism hysteria. They both went into the monitoring of vaccine safety, however, the one by Ellenberg was way more critical, and siding with a lot of the skeptical parents. It argued that there was a lot about the science that is outside of our control, and therefore the task of monitoring the effectiveness and safety of vaccines is a lot more complicated than people realize. Freed was helpful in the sense that it went into a lot of detail about the safety precautions that are in place to make sure terrible things don’t happen to our children after being vaccinated. On the other hand, I feel like my weakest source was the one coming from the interview with Jenny McCarthy. While it was relevant to my topic, I just didn’t end up looking at it all that much, and if I didn’t quote from it, I probably would have just discarded it completely. It’s not that it was unhelpful, just not as helpful as I was hoping, mostly she just sounds like an idiot.

            After doing all this research, it’s hard to see a solution when I can see the complaints of both sides so clearly. However, one thing I do know, is the solution is NOT SB277. This bill is unnecessary, and it’s frightening to think that the state government will have so much control over so many people. I get that it’s for the best, but there has to be another solution that isn’t as strict as this bill, but not as lenient as the current laws we have. I know that’s vague, but I haven’t quite started thinking about what we are going to actually solve this issue. It would definitely be the easiest thing to argue for the strict requirements for vaccines, as I would have the vast majority of the lawmakers, public health policy advocates, and science on my side. However, this doesn’t sit right with me, and that would be too easy. I think the main solution is to continue to educate parents about what they’re exposing their children to, and why it’s a necessary thing for all of us to do, for the greater good of our society. But as I mentioned earlier, I am still torn. I will have to start taking steps towards researching possible solutions surrounding this debate, and see what exactly the “Anti-Vax” parents are proposing the solution is. We cannot just leave the law as it is, especially after Disneyland, but we also cannot force so many people to undergo procedures they are really against having done.