Case Study #1- Vaccines

1. In the documentary, Paul Offit, M.D. explains that he grew up in the 1960s and he himself had
measles and mumps and saw the effects they had. Having a firsthand experience of these
viruses, he calls vaccines “an easy sell” because of what they can prevent.
2. Correlation is simply a relationship between two variables, while causation is a relationship
between two variables in which one causes the other. Many of the concerned parents in the
documentary were stating that the vaccines their child received was the direct cause of health
and developmental issues that arose after being vaccinated, such as regression in speech and
motor skills.
3. Herd immunity is when a population is mostly immune to a disease. It protects those who
cannot receive a vaccine due to underlying health conditions or other reasons. Vaccines should
be required for healthy people interacting in public spaces because although they are healthy, if
unvaccinated they are susceptible to illnesses vaccines could prevent, and they are protecting
the unvaccinated portion of the population from contracting these illnesses.
4. The meme I chose is a picture of Morpheus from The Matrix with the text, “What if I told you
combined vaccines have not been tested, nor are vaccines tested for carcinogenicity, toxicity, or
genotoxicity; not for mutagenicity, or for long term adverse reactions”. The creator of this
meme is trying to halt vaccines by trying to scare their target audience. They make a list of all
the things they claim vaccines are not tested for to make the reader question the overall safety
of vaccines.