Infant and child vaccination refusal and treatment barriers

Infant and Child Vaccinations

The Ethics of Infant and Child Vaccinations and Refusal of Treatment

There have been stories in the news in recent years about parents who do not deem it necessary to vaccinate their children. However, most school districts throughout the U.S. require vaccination as a condition of children attending their schools. There are some ways around this for some children, but others must be homeschooled if their parents decide that they will not have them vaccinated. There are various reasons why parents do not vaccinate their children. Sometimes it is for religious reasons, or for the desire to keep control and not allow the government to force something on their children. Others are worried about studies that have suggested a possible link between vaccines and autism, as well as other problems that can come about from vaccinating children. Of course, one of the main issues to consider with the vaccination of children is one of ethics. Do parents who avoid vaccinating their children harm them, and is there an ethical consideration on which parents should focus when it comes to whether to vaccinate their children?

Ethics are difficult to address in some cases, because they can be very subjective. What is ethical to one person may not be ethical to another. "Situational ethics" may also apply, in that a person may think something is perfectly ethical for a particular situation, but it may not seem right in another type of situation. Parenting often has a different set of ethics than business, because parents feel much differently about their children than they do about their colleagues at work. With that being the case, it is vital that parents do what is best for their children. But how do they determine what is "best" in a particular situation? There are parents who firmly believe that it is much better not to vaccinate their children because of the risks involved, while there are others who feel that the risks of not vaccinating a child completely outweigh the risks of doing so. Whether either one of these parents is more or less ethical than the other parent is generally up to opinion - and that is the main reason for the dilemma when it comes to ethics and vaccination.

Because there are various reasons behind why a parent would choose to avoid vaccination or would choose to refuse specific kinds of treatment for a child, determining whether it is really ethical is difficult. Medical ethics (in the sense of what doctors and nurses agree to uphold when they join their chosen professions) are different than parental or personal ethics. Doctors and nurses must be sure that they do no harm first and foremost. If there are risks to doing something and risks with not doing that something, those risks have to be weighed. The choice that is less risky and that has been consistently shown to have the best outcome is the choice by which they will abide, all other things being equal. However, they also have more knowledge of issues such as vaccination, where parents who are not part of the medical field may not have that kind of knowledge. They may also not agree with or trust the medical professionals, because they may feel those people have an agenda that involves kickbacks from medication companies and other issues.

Without that level of trust between parents and the doctors and nurses who treat their children, it is virtually impossible for those parents to simply take the advice of medical professionals when it comes to vaccinating their children. The internet has changed ethics in some ways, too, because people who were not sure how they felt about vaccinations or people who are easily impressionable may read things online that may sway them one way or the other. In other words, they may come to realize that vaccinations for their children are highly important, or they may read something that will lead them to believe that vaccinating their children could give those children autism or cause them to have serious issues such as mental retardation. There have been studies that have shown a link between vaccinations and these kinds of problems, and there have been studies that have shown there is no link at all. It can be difficult to know what to believe.

Doing things ethically as a parent means doing what is in the best interest of the child. Unfortunately, the child's best interest can vary depending on who is asked about it. That leaves parents very confused about the issue, because they often do not know how to decide what is right. They are provided with so much conflicting information online, on television, from the medical community, and from friends and family that they often feel as though they are completely overwhelmed when it comes to what is right for their child. In the end, they have to weigh the information they have been given and consider the credibility of the sources from which they have received that information. some people and places have much more credibility than others, and parents that want to do what is right for their children should always consider the source when it comes to information they receive about the value and the potential dangers of vaccines.