Thesis: Too many parents are making the decision not to vaccinate their children without being

properly educated on the topic. The government needs to pass a law that requires expecting
parents to take a class in order to educate them properly on the benefits of vaccines.

Problem: Parents are make uneducated decisions on vaccines

Solution: law passed for expecting parents to take an educational class on vaccines that presents
both sides and statistics as evidence

Counter Argument: bias in the class, people might not go/ not enough time, how will it be
funded?, violation of human rights (we get to choose)/ religious or cultural reasons

Rebuttal: The class would present both sides and rely solely on statistics, a fine will be given if
parents do not attend/ it’s only one class, funded through taxes/ government, you still get to
choose whether or not you want to vaccinate their children in the end, but you become more
educated

Why this is better than other solutions?: Another solution could be more media/ campaigning for
vaccines, but this makes it feel like anti- vax parents are being “attacked” and many people
would refuse to listen. Since the class would be unbiased and required by law, every parent
would become more educated on vaccines. It is not a violation of rights because parents will still
get to choose whether or not to vaccinate their child; it just gives them information to make a
more educated decision. Due to the very limited amount of statistics against vaccines, this could
only persuade parents to vaccinate their child.

Intro:

BT1: The biggest issues with parents who are anti-vax are that they are not educated enough on
vaccines, they rely on media to make their decisions, and this causes them to believe that
immunity through illness is more effective.

CD1: ​“An Experimental Investigation into the Transmission of Antivax Attitudes Using a
Fictional Health Controversy,” discusses an experiment done in order to understand which
aspects of vaccination-related information are well transmitted and how it affects the decisions
on vaccinations. The result was that the experience-based view held by the parent was better
transmitted than the medical-based view held by the doctor (Jiménez, Á V., Stubbersfield, J. M.,
& Tehrani, J. J., 2018).
CD2: “​Parent Perspectives on Childhood Vaccination: How to Deal With Vaccine Hesitancy and
Refusal?” discusses a study done on why parents choose not to vaccinate their children. ​Only
37.1% of the parents reported to seek information about vaccination from the pediatrician, and
12% of them stated that their decision was based on the media (​Bianco, A., Mascaro, V., Zucco,
R., & Pavia, M., 2019).

CD3:​ ​“Parental Attitudes and Perceptions Associated with Childhood Vaccine Exemptions in
High-exemption Schools,” a study was done to determine how many people received highschool
exemptions for vaccines. Respondents who indicated that they sought care from a Naturopath or
a Doctor of Osteopathy were statistically significantly more likely to be exemptors (23.6%) than
non-exemptors (7.8%). It states that these anti-vax parents believed it was better for their child to
develop immunity through illness rather than vaccination (Pottinger, Jacobs, Haenchen, Ernst,
2018).

BT2: To solve these problems, by law, a class needs to be required for all expecting parents to
educate them further on vaccines.

CD1: “Nearly all the residents (96.0%) felt that they would benefit from receiving more
information regarding vaccine-preventable diseases”
(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0009922817727465?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_i
d=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed)

CD2: Among unvaccinated women, the most common reason reported for non-vaccination was
lack of a recommendation for Tdap by the woman’s physician. Education interventions that
provide targeted information for pregnant women in an interactive manner may be useful to
improve Tdap vaccination during the perinatal period
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X17300865?via%3Dihub)

CD3: The project produced appreciable knowledge increase and HPV vaccine uptake intent.
Aggregate HPV vaccine uptake numbers for the clinic increased considerably compared to HPV
vaccine administration prior to educational intervention.
(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07370016.2016.1120595?scroll=top&needAcces
s=true)

BT3:
CD1: in 2006, particularly the opposition to efforts in many states to require the vaccine for
school attendance (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2936995/)
CD2: ​90% receive public insurance (e.g., Medicaid).
(https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/jwh.2011.3364​)

CD3: “Demonstration of Background Rates of Three Conditions of Interest for Vaccine Safety
Surveillance,” discusses health outcomes related to vaccines. It states that the average annualized
vaccine incidences of adolescents aged 11–17 years old was 0.8 per 100,000 (​Wormsbecker AE,
Johnson C, Bourns L, Harris T, Crowcroft NS, Deeks SL, 2019​).
CM: What’s keeping people from going to the classes, especially the parents of the 0.8 that were
affected by vaccines.

BT4:
CD1:​ Informed consent is the general rule for any medical intervention and choice
(http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0041-90602015000200002​)

CD2:“States and the federal government share in the cost of providing Medicaid coverage, while
the benefits under SNAP are entirely federally funded”
(https://www.clasp.org/publications/journal-article/improving-access-cutting-red-tape)

CD3: ​In the 1960s, the federal government started pushing new achievement tests designed to
evaluate instructional methods and schools
(https://daily.jstor.org/short-history-standardized-tests/)

BT5:
CD1: “Receipt, during pregnancy, of information against immunization was associated with
delayed infant immunization regardless of receipt of information supporting immunization”
(https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/early/2017/08/16/peds.2016-3727.full.p
df)
CM: giving a list of good and bad side effects will only make the parent skeptical of the vaccine
CD2: campaign have issues to be resolves. According to the author, included in the problems of
papillomavirus vaccine campaign is the condition of health care systems. He also mentions that it
may also create problems with conservative groups who wanted to oppose the campaign.
(https://science.sciencemag.org/content/320/5878/860/tab-article-info​)
CM: media isnt portraying statistics on vaccines so why would we use it to fight against them
CD3:“Interim Estimates of 2018–19 Seasonal Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness — United States,
February 2019.” The results showed that there was a decrease of 40%–60% in influenza cases
across all ages and that approximately 80% of reported pediatric influenza-associated deaths
have occurred in children who were not vaccinated (Doyle JD, Chung JR, Kim SS, et al., 2019).
CM: you can’t argue statistics, so rather than campaigns which can be opinionated, this presents
the statistical side
Sources:

https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/early/2017/08/16/peds.2016-3727.full.pd
f

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X17300865?via%3Dihub

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07370016.2016.1120595?scroll=top&needAccess=
true

http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0041-90602015000200002

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2936995/

https://www.clasp.org/publications/journal-article/improving-access-cutting-red-tape

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/jwh.2011.3364

https://daily.jstor.org/short-history-standardized-tests/

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/320/5878/860/tab-article-info