cassidyjo100

[cassidyjo100]

The Truth about Vaccines

Do you think vaccines are effective? Your answer might be no, but mine is definitely a yes. Sometimes, I wonder why people are against vaccinations, but then I remember why. It is because a study came out called The Wakefield study which claimed, "...that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine caused a series of events that include intestinal inflammation, entrance into the bloodstream of proteins harmful to the brain, and consequent development of autism." This caused many parents to stop vaccinating their babies and made them believe in herd immunity. But, why did The Wakefield study believe this?

It all started because according to the Children Hospital at Philadelphia, 90% of children were given the MMR vaccination in England during the 1990s. Because of autism being caught only in the 1990s scientist tried to put a link of them together. Children were being vaccinated and then being diagnosed with autism. What people did not think back then is that the study did not show that even children who were not being vaccinated were still getting diagnosed with autism. This logical rebuttal proves that this study was a flaw and could not technically prove that the vaccination was linked to autism.

As you can see, people can believe in two things. It is either vaccinating your children or believing in herd immunity. I personally believe that vaccination do work and help you prevent many life-threatening diseases. Herd immunity can be a good or bad thing. From experience, I got the chicken pox vaccination and was still diagnosed with them. If someone was around me who was not vaccinated, they could have easily gotten the chicken pox and then can suffer from the shingles later on in their life. The vaccination kept my symptoms to a minimum but an unvaccinated person could have had life-threatening problems. Honestly you can believe in what you want, it's up to you! It is always good to look at the pros and cons of everything before making a decision.

[cassidyjo100]

Disabilities vs. Diseases

You might be asking yourself if you know the difference between these two. If you don't, that's okay. The difference between these two is very simple. According to University Counseling Services, "A chronic illness is a long-lasting health concern that may be present for an individual's lifetime, such as asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, or fibromyalgia. A disability is a physical or mental condition that limits a person’s movements, senses, or activities." As you can see from that statement, there is a clear difference between the two of them but sometimes, that is not always the case. In the next sentence the author states, "Disabilities can be congenital (such as cystic fibrosis) or acquired (such as lupus). A chronic health condition can be a disability, but not all disabilities are chronic health concerns." This being said, diseases affect your body which is why you have to be treated with the right medicine and can sometimes affect your mobility (causing it to be a disability). Disabilities affect your movements and sometimes your physical appearance.

An example of a disease giving you a disability is a Traumatic Brain Injury. A Traumatic Brain Injury, "usually results from a violent blow or jolt to the head or body." When something damaging like this happens to a vital organ in our body, it causes this disease. If you get a TBI, it can often lead to disabilities. For example, it can lead you to having persistent headaches, a slurred speech, and agitation constantly. My father, Andrew Barrow, was diagnosed with TBI from an explosion in Afghanistan. This happened in 2007 when I was only four years old. Now that I am eighteen, he is still suffering problems from this disease. He currently is 100% disabled and can not get a job. My dad retired from the military three years ago, but is still getting treated for the TBI by military clinics in Lebanon.

As you can see from my experience, diseases and disabilities affected my life. I can see that sometimes my dad is not having a good day because of a headache or because he is confused about something that should be simple for him. There are other diseases out there that can cause disabilities. In my own opinion, I feel that getting treatment for these is very vital for your health. Sometimes getting vaccinations can help avoid diseases that can make you disabled. Does everybody believe this?

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The Interview

As you can see, I have done extensive research on the disease called Polio. That is not the only disease that they have a vaccination for in today's medicine. There is a disease known as Chicken Pox that can affect you throughout your life. The disease doesn't necessarily stay with you for life, but it can cause other disease's like the shingles. From experience, Chicken Pox is not fun to have, especially on a family vacation. I am not the only person in my life that has had a disease. My grandmother has diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. In this blog, I will talk about my personal experience and my grandmother's diseases.

From experience, my Chicken Pox ruined my family vacation. I woke up one morning in Nashville, Tennessee with red dots all over my body. They were very itchy throughout the day and got worse when I was in the sun. I couldn't put anything on them except anti-itch cream because I didn't have a doctor. This disease was very problematic and came at the worst time because I was supposed to meet the Tennessee Titans NFL team. At one point, I wore gloves, longsleeves, and pants in 80 degree weather so I could meet them without giving them the Chicken Pox.

Now my grandmother on the other hand, has a lot of medical diseases. For starters, Barbra Sterner, has Non-hodgkins lymphoma. This is a very rare cancer that affects your blood cells. She also has type 2 diabetes. During this past year my grandmother was diagnosed with Covid-19. When I asked her if covid affected any of her diseases, she said, "The only one it affected was my diabetes because I couldn't keep anything down." This would make sense to me because as I learned from my grandmother, "You can go into a diabetic coma if you eat too much sugar or eat too little." Since she was vomiting when she had covid, her insulin levels were very low. For her diabetes, she takes "500 mg of Trajenta and 500 mg of Metformin in the morning and at night." Later on in the interview we were talking about if any of the diseases are inherited. My grandmother said to me that, "The cancer, diabetes, and heart disease can all be inherited."

That exact statement made me learn something from this interview. It made me realize that I should take better care of my health considering all the diseases that run in my family. The chances of me being diagnosed with these disease are at a very high chance due to the fact that all of my grandparents had diabetes and cancer. I also learned in this interview how diabetes work and what some of the medicines are to help it. This interview and my experience are just some examples of disease that can happen to you.

[cassidyjo100]

Book and Documentary

As stated before, I found many sources from the Kutztown Library about Polio. This includes two books that I have found and two documentaries. I only read one of the books and I only watched one of the documentaries. Both of these sources helped me greatly in my research of Polio and Dr. Salk.

Let's talk about the book first. The book is called Jonas Salk Beyond the Microscope. This is a ten chapter book that explains Dr. Salk's research and how he came to be in the lab. The author, Victoria Sherrow, uses statistical facts in the book to prove the credibility of the information. While she explained what Dr. Salk was saying in his research, she used pictures to help the audience understand it more. She uses pictures and diagrams for the bacteria cells and the Lytic Life Cycle. This can help an audience who does not know anything about biology come to a better understanding.

In the first few chapters, Victoria explained what the Poliomyetis disease was and how it affected children and babies. She then goes on to explain Dr. Salk's life during the pandemic of Polio. At the end of the book, Sherrow talked about Jonas Salk's last days in the lab. Near the end of his science career, Dr. Salk tried to come up with an AIDS vaccine. As you can see Jonas Salk Beyond the Microscope can provide me with a ton of information I can use for future use. The book is an easy read especially for people who do not know a lot of things about biology. It has a lot of visual supports for a clear comprehension of Polio. For example, on one of the pages she has a picture of a child recovering from the paralysis of this crippling disease. The pictures really opened my mind and were a good idea to add into the chapters. This allowed the audience to understand the severity of this disease and also showed them what it was like living with the aftermath of the Polio.

The documentary also had a lot of facts that appealed to the audience. During the documentary, they showed pictures and videos of the children living with polio. The directors presented you with pictures of the iron lungs, children in the braces, and pictures of scientist hurrying to find a cure. The documentary also showed videos of children trying to walk in the braces. Throughout the documentary, the producers interviewed survivors of polio. They asked them what it was like living with it and how they were treated as a child. This showed ethos to the audience because the survivors are trusted sources without bias. As an audience, we were able to gain information from someone who experienced the disease. I feel as if the interviews with them specifically really grabbed my attention.

Throughout the documentary, they had clips of a former science editor named, Victor Cohn, pop up. It showed us glimpses of an interview he had. Cohn talked about what life was like when he was writing the article about the vaccine. He talked about the public and how they reacted with joy to the medical discovery. This gave the audience a view of what the public was going through rather than just the scientist point of view. The directors also included additional information about the history of Polio. The documentary had a narrator who talked about where the disease originated and how it spread through society. While the narrator talked, the show played a slow beat song that showed that it was a depressing time for families. The narrator talked about the deaths of children and how many were paralyzed while showing the pictures of them. This caused the audience to have a lot of emotions.

As for me, I felt very sad for the people and I also felt like I was there in the moment. Polio in general is a very sad disease that took many lives. Watching this documentary, made me feel more emotional especially with the pictures/videos and the music. If you want to watch a show that has a lot of credibility/factual information then this documentary from the History channel is worth watching!

[cassidyjo100]

The Research

While I was writing these blogs, I found primary and secondary sources. I mostly found secondary sources here at Kutztown Universities library. I found out a lot of new information from a documentary that I found on a website called Kanopy and a book I checked out.

Some of the things that worked include using the website for the library. I used the online catalogs which helped me a lot more than the physical books. The Rohrbach website had more options to chose from than the selection in the building. The real books had a lot of information about medical discoveries but not a lot about a specific disease. A lot of that information got in my way as I was trying to research.

It was harder for me to research about a specific disease rather than all of them as a whole. I had to use keywords when I looked up books. Some of the keywords were: Polio, Poliovirus, Poliomyetis, Dr. Salk, and lastly Dr. Jonas Salk. Sometimes, I would have to add his first name into the search bar because other doctors were coming up. The website would sometimes give me children's books as well. They had the little short stories about Dr. Salk but the library did not have a books for adults about the doctor. The children books did not help me much with my research, but there was one book in the library that did help.

When I was in the library, I found one book that helped me a lot. This book is called, Breakthrough The Saga of Jonas Salk. In this book, it told me that the vaccine was 100 percent effective for children. The author, Richard Carter, talked about the effectiveness of the vaccine. He also states incidences that proved its safety for people. In the documentary that I watched, it gave a summary of what happened. The movie showed what life was like with Polio and how the public was being affected by it.

The library did have limitations on their videos. I requested to watch two videos but I was only able to watch one of them. In order to keep up with my research, I looked for more online books about the virus. I also did research on the Salk website that he has online. It might be tough to find one specific book or documentary about Polio but there is always a workaround. The library had a lot of books about medical problems and discoveries instead of a book about one specific disease. With that in mind, lets keep looking to see if there is anymore to research!

[cassidyjo100]

Dr. Jonas Salklio

Now, you might be asking who is Dr. Jonas Salk? This man, as stated before, was the inventor of the polio vaccine. But, how did the polio vaccine come to mind? What was it like with the trials? Were there any problems? Let's keep reading to find out.

Dr. Salk's most major accomplishment was the polio vaccine. This medical invention helped saved thousands of lives in the 1900s. In the 1930s, Dr. Jonas Salk conducted research and helped create an influenza vaccine. This later led to him to become the Head of the Research Laboratory. In 1948 Dr. Salk was given a grant to study the polio virus and possibly come up with a vaccine.

After human trials on himself and his family, he was finally ready to announce the vaccine to the public in 1953. Clinical trials were held on 1.3 million children in school. In 1955 the vaccine was deemed as effective and very safe...except apparently in the Midwest. In these states, a vaccine was manufactured at Cutter Laboratories of Berkeley. This vaccine was flawed leaving 200 children paralyzed and 10 deaths (source).

Obviously the public and Dr. Salk had many things to say about this incident. Jonas Salk states, "I cannot escape a terrible feeling of identification with these people who got polio." He felt terrible and devastated after this happened. People often blamed Salk or the Government for this occurring when really, it was not their fault.

The Polio vaccine was then delayed in production because of the Cutter incident. In 1962 an oral Polio vaccine was created by Albert Sabin. To this day, Doctors still give children the Polio vaccine. Some schools in the United States require you to have the vaccine in order to attend the school. Jonas Salk made great achievement's by creating the Polio vaccine. He saved many lives back then and still saves many lives today with his research.

[cassidyjo100]

Presidisease

As an American citizen, have you ever looked at our Presidential history? Some of you might say yes because you know George Washington is our first president. But, have you ever realized that some of them had diseases?

For example, Franklin D. Roosevelt preferably known as FDR, had Polio. This is a life-threatening disease, from the Poliomyelitis, that affects a person's nerve cells that allows us to walk. During the 1950s this deadly disease was at its peak. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was in office, he suffered from an attack of Polio. This caused him to become paralyzed in his legs. He then left politics to go to a rehab in 1921. This rehab helped him gain some of his motor skills back but not all of them came back. He was placed in leg braces and was able to walk by 1922. During this year, he became dedicated to walking. Everyday he would try to walk his driveway by himself, even though he never succeeded, he would always try.

As you can see, polio affected people heavily and their daily activities. There was a vaccine created in 1955 by Dr. Salk. But, it wasn't until 1994 when Polio was eradicated from the United States. It took almost 40 years to finally get rid of this deadly disease. That's insane to me! Dr. Salk made the vaccine for polio, but there's other diseases that do not have vaccines.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower had Crohn's disease during his presidency. This type of disease does not have a vaccine or a cure. Crohn's disease is, "a type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). It causes swelling of the tissues (inflammation) in your digestive tract, which can lead to abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss and malnutrition." This disease can lead to many surgeries down the road and sometimes colon cancer. President Eisenhower had surgeries to help his disease. At first he did not want to tell the public, but then after his heart attack he told everyone.

When reading this blog, you can see that one president suffered through a disease that now has a vaccine while another suffered from an incurable, unvaccinated disease. It is not only the presidents who suffered, it is also their loved ones. They had to take care of them daily. Some presidents had loved ones that suffered from a disease or a handicapped disability. Do you know the difference of a disability and a disease? Is there a difference between the two? Who knows, lets keep researching to find out!

[cassidyjo100]

This blog is about Sex education and the history of it. This is really interesting to me because my blog is about medical problems that people face on a daily. Some of these medical problems include STD's like the ones we learned about in middle school.

STD's are important to know about in the medical field and in the education field. In the medical field we help alleviate their symptoms but in the education field, we teach them about the STD's. Even though we are talking about different things, they still go hand-in-hand with each other. People learn about the STD's and then could possibly get the disease in their future.

Vaccines can help people avoid STD's. For example, Gardasil helps prevent HPV in people. If we teach them about these vaccines in Sex Education, it can decrease the risk of becoming infected. Nobody wants an STD. Working together in the Sex Education and the medical field can help save lives.

Welcome to class

Sex education is the class in middle school where the gym teacher tells you where babies come from. Sex Education is also a Netflix show about a boy in high school who gives his peers sex and relationship therapy. I will be talking about both current sex ed practices as well as how accurate the show is with its information on sex and relationship health. I also want to look at the history of sex ed, what it’s like in other countries, as well as what defines sex, intersex and gender.

A person of interest I plan on doing research on is Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish, homosexual physician. He was a key part in the liberation of homosexual expression in Germany. I’m researching him because his name popped up in preliminary research for my topic, so now I’m personally interested in who this man was.

Photo Credit: Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy

NOTE: I intend on analyzing gender and trying my best to remain unbiased. I want to look at everything from a scientific viewpoint.

[cassidyjo100]

Introduction of Diseases

Do you know what a disease is? You might say that you know what a disease is but you do not know the literal meaning. According to the Oxford Dictionary a disease is, "Sickness (in a person, animal, or plant); disturbance or impairment of the function (and often also the structure) of the body, a part of the body, or the mind." As a reader, you might have a loved one that has a disease. Have you ever done research on their disease? Some of you might say no, which is okay. That is why I am writing these blogs. These writings are to help you come to a better understanding of these medical problems. I am going to talk about three diseases. One of them being Poliomyetis, this is also known as Polio. I will also talk about how Polio affected us in the past and what happened when you were diagnosed with this disease. I will also be talking about the Chicken Pox because of my experience of them.

During this blog, I will also talk about effective ways to avoid disease. For example, doctors sometimes give vaccines to help your body fight the virus. A virus is a disease that can be avoided with a vaccine. If you are sick from a bacteria, you are given antibiotics to help combat it. If you are diagnosed with a disease before you were given the vaccine, sometimes you are stuck with it for life. For example, when a child is born they are given the vaccine to prevent Polio. This is a disease that can affect your mobility if it is severe. A famous United States president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had this disease which caused him to be in a wheelchair. As you can see, disease can affect anyone. That is why I am going to type about how effective vaccines are and the different types of vaccines.

Some disease's do not have a vaccine for them. For example, some people in the population have Crohn's disease. This type of disease is not curable and has forever-lasting symptoms. Doctors can prescribe prescriptions to help control the severity of the pain but not get rid of the disease. According to the Mayo Clinic, Crohn's disease "causes swelling of the tissues (inflammation) in your digestive tract, which can lead to abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss and malnutrition." As you can see here, these symptoms can affect a person's daily life. During this blog, you can figure out how to help alleviate these symptoms as I go more in depth about the common diseases.

As you can tell, there are a lot of disease that many people can get. Sometimes it can be a virus or a bacterial sickness. Sometimes you can be born with a disease and not have a cure given to you. In this blog, I will go more in depth with bacterial and viral infections along with vaccines. I will also mention symptoms of these four diseases and the history of Polio. I hope you enjoy!