Vaccines

My understanding of vaccines are jabs you take to prevent ourselves from diseases. I remember taking quite a few when I was younger – rubella, BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guerin) and chickenpox. I remember the first 2 pretty well because it was compulsory in school. Unless we have a letter from our parents that we will take it at our private clinic, we have to take the jab. Honestly, I had no idea what were the jabs for until I read them online. I’m sure I had lots of other vaccination that I can’t really remember but was probably adviced as necessary by our family doctor.

A recent visit to another doctor’s clinic (company panel clinic) opened my eyes to the many different vaccination available. At the clinic, there were numerous posters promoting the various vaccination.

Just last week, my company offered free flu vaccination to all our staff. It was optional but most people took it because it was free. I was skeptical so I opted not to.

Why? Well, there is no guarantee that one fully immune to flu. I wasn’t going abroad and putting myself at risk to the H1N1 anyway. So, it didn’t seem necessary to get the jab. Like any medicine, I feel that we don't need to take them unless we really really need to.

I remembered watching Oprah with Jenny McCarthy as her guest on the show. It was actually the first time I heard of vaccination issues. She believes that her son’s autism was the cause of vaccination and was raising awareness on this. She also mentioned a lot on how she is bringing up her son with special diet and even wrote a book on how her son is recovering from autism.

Today, if we search online, there are numerous information/debate/findings about this. There is no widely accepted/proven case of major negative side effects of vaccination. I haven’t done a thorough research about this but my current stand is not take vaccination unnecessarily. To be rational about it, our parents and their parents lived many years probably without any vaccination and are healthy and well. I’ve read somewhere that our body develops immunity against the disease that we get. That’s why we don’t get stuff like chickenpox twice in our lives. By preventing the disease, we sometimes prevent our body from generating such immunity.