Immunization: Advancing or Undermining Evolution

Immunization: Advancing or Undermining Evolution?

Immunization works to prevent future attacks on the immune systems of both animals and humans by bacterial and viral pathogens, and disease causing agents, by means of vaccines. Before people had immunization, life was difficult. Epidemics were common, and there were few cures to disease. Even common illnesses, such as fevers, could claim lives. Plagues would take thousands of lives, and people lived in fear of being next. Before immunization was an option, people were powerless in the prevention of disease. Death rates were high, and there were very few cures to most diseases.
For diseases, such as polio, there was 13,000-20,000 cases reported in the U.S., and thousands of them left people disabled (or dead) for the rest of their life, if they did not die. After the vaccine was discovered, and administered at large, the case report numbers diminished immensely. In 1999, there were only 2,883 documented reports in the entire world. Such a widespread disease was nearly completely eradicated by vaccines, and polio is now extremely rare. All cases in the U.S. are actually caused by the vaccine, which is very rare. There is definitely an advantage to immunization, and with modern medicine and research, there are vaccines for so many viruses. I believe that immunization has, while protecting and expanding our lives, contributed to weakening humans in the course of evolution. More diseases are common, and people are afflicted with them in larger proportions since vaccines were invented. They have been protecting our immune systems, coddling them, weakening them over time. A study in 1996 revealed that the tetanus vaccine disables the immune system in HIV patients. Tetanus vaccination produced a drop in T cells in every 10 of 13 patients, a sign of immune deficiency. HIV viral replication increased dramatically in response to tetanus vaccine. Finally, white blood cells from 7 of 10 uninfected individuals became...