U.S.
public health officials and physicians have been combating misconceptions about
vaccine safety for over twenty years. They’ve had mixed success. Despite the
fact that numerous studies have found no evidence to support the notion that
vaccines cause autism and other chronic illnesses, a growing number of parents
are refusing to vaccinate their children.
Researchers
now link falling
immunization rates to recent resurgences of vaccine-preventable diseases. In
2010, California saw 9,120 cases of whooping cough, more than any year since
the whooping cough vaccine was introduced in the 1940s. Ten infants too young
to be vaccinated died of whooping cough during the outbreak. The CDC warns that events like these will become
more frequent and harder to control if vaccination rates continue to fall.
Fears
over the safety of vaccines are understandable. The CDC vaccination schedule calls
for children to receive up to 14 inoculations by the age of six – many of them
vaccines developed within the last twenty years. Many parents distrust these
vaccines; worried about the potential for risks and long-term side effects.
Research, however, shows that most of our biggest fears about vaccinations are
unfounded. These eight major vaccine myths that research has shown to be
baseless:
Myth #1: Vaccines cause autism.
The
widespread fear that vaccines increase risk of autism originated with a 1997
study published by Andrew Wakefield, a British surgeon. The article was
published in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal, suggesting that
the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine was increasing autism in British
children.
The paper
has since been completely discredited due to serious procedural errors,
undisclosed financial conflicts of interest, and ethical violations. Andrew
Wakefield lost his medical license and the paper was retracted from The
Lancet.
Nonetheless,
the hypothesis was taken seriously, and several other major studies were conducted.
None of them found a link between any vaccine and the likelihood of developing
autism.
Today,
the true causes of autism remain a mystery, but to the discredit of the
autism-vaccination link theory, several studies have now identified symptoms of
autism in children well before they receive the MMR vaccine. And even more recent research
provides evidence that autism develops in utero, well before a baby is born or
receives vaccinations.
Myth #2: Infant immune systems can’t handle so many
vaccines.
Infant
immune systems are stronger than you might think. Based on the number of
antibodies present in the blood, a baby would theoretically have the ability to
respond to around 10,000 vaccines at one time. Even if all 14 scheduled
vaccines were given at once, it would only use up slightly more than 0.1% of a
baby’s immune capacity. And scientists believe this capacity is purely
theoretical. The immune system could never truly be overwhelmed because the
cells in the system are constantly being replenished. In reality, babies are
exposed to countless bacteria and viruses every day, and immunizations are
negligible in comparison.
Though
there are more vaccinations than ever before, today’s vaccines are far more
efficient. Small children are actually exposed to fewer immunologic components overall
than children in past decades.
Myth #3: Natural immunity is better than
vaccine-acquired immunity.
In some
cases, natural immunity — meaning actually catching a disease and getting sick–
results in a stronger immunity to the disease than a vaccination. However, the
dangers of this approach far outweigh the relative benefits. If you wanted to
gain immunity to measles, for example, by contracting the disease, you would
face a 1 in 500 chance of death
from your symptoms. In contrast, the number of people who have had severe
allergic reactions from an MMR vaccine, is less than one-in-one million.
Myth #4: Vaccines contain unsafe toxins.
People
have concerns over the use of formaldehyde, mercury or aluminum in vaccines.
It’s true that these chemicals are toxic to the human body in certain levels,
but only trace amounts of these chemicals are used in FDA approved vaccines. In
fact, according to the FDA and the CDC, formaldehyde is produced at
higher rates by our own metabolic systems and there is no scientific evidence that
the low levels of this chemical, mercury or aluminum in vaccines can be harmful.
See section III of this guide to review safety
information about these chemicals and how they are used in vaccines.
Myth #5: Better hygiene and sanitation are actually
responsible for decreased infections, not vaccines.
Vaccines
don’t deserve all the credit for reducing or eliminating rates of infectious
disease. Better sanitation, nutrition, and the development of antibiotics
helped a lot too. But when these factors are isolated and rates of infectious
disease are scrutinized, the role of vaccines cannot be denied.
One
example is measles in the United States. When the first
measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, rates of infection had been holding
steady at around 400,000 cases a year. And while hygienic habits and sanitation
didn’t change much over the following decade, the rate of measles infections
dropped precipitously following the introduction of the vaccine, with only
around 25,000 cases by 1970. Another example is Hib disease. According to CDC data, the incidence
rate for this malady plummeted from 20,000 in 1990 to around 1,500 in 1993,
following the introduction of the vaccine.
Myth #6: Vaccines aren’t worth the risk.
Despite
parent concerns, children have been successfully vaccinated for decades. In
fact, there has never been a single credible study linking vaccines to long
term health conditions.
As for
immediate danger from vaccines, in the form of allergic reactions or severe
side effects, the incidence of death are so rare they can’t even truly be
calculated. For example, only one death was reported to the CDC between 1990 and 1992 that
was attributable to a vaccine. The overall incidence rate of severe allergic
reaction to vaccines is usually placed around one case for every one or two
million injections.
Myth #7: Vaccines can infect my child with the
disease it’s trying to prevent.
Vaccines
can cause mild symptoms resembling those of the disease they are protecting
against. A common misconception is that these symptoms signal infection. In
fact, in the small percentage (less than 1 in one million cases) where symptoms do occur,
the vaccine recipients are experiencing a body’s immune response to the
vaccine, not the disease itself. There is only one recorded instance in which a
vaccine was shown to cause disease. This was the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) which is no longer used
in the U.S. Since then, vaccines have been in safe use for decades and follow strict Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) regulations.
Myth #8: We don’t need to vaccinate because
infection rates are already so low in the United States.
Thanks to
“herd immunity,” so long as a large majority of people are immunized in any
population, even the unimmunized minority will be protected. With so many
people resistant, an infectious disease will never get a chance to establish
itself and spread. This is important because there will always be a portion of
the population – infants, pregnant women, elderly, and those with weakened
immune systems – that can’t receive vaccines.
But if
too many people don’t vaccinate themselves or their children, they contribute
to a collective danger, opening up opportunities for viruses and bacteria to
establish themselves and spread.
Not to
mention, as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) warn, international travel
is growing quickly, so even if a disease is not a threat in your country, it
may be common elsewhere. If someone were to carry in a disease from abroad, an
unvaccinated individual will be at far greater risk of getting sick if he or
she is exposed.
Vaccines
are one of the great pillars of modern medicine. Life used to be especially
brutal for children before vaccines, with huge portions being felled by
diseases like measles, smallpox, whooping cough, or rubella, to name just a
few. Today these ailments can be completely prevented with a simple injection.
So as
science continues to advance and tackle new challenges, people should not
forget how many deaths and illnesses vaccines have prevented, and how they
continue to protect us from potentially devastating forms of infectious
disease.
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