By DR. FRANK WELCH |
LDH Immunization Program Medical Director
Once again, misconceptions about the safety of vaccines are
making headlines. These fallacies, or “fake
news” as Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy referred to them, come during the
worst measles outbreak in the last 25 years — an outbreak mostly spread by
unvaccinated individuals.
As of April 29, more than 700 measles cases have been
confirmed across the United States, with the largest clusters in New York and
Washington/Oregon. Fortunately, Louisiana has remained free of measles.
However, measles cases are also rising globally, prompting the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention to urge Americans traveling abroad
to make sure they are vaccinated.
It’s not just measles on the rise, though. Other
vaccine-preventable diseases, such as whooping cough (pertussis) and mumps,
have experienced a resurgence in recent years because of anti-vaccination myths
that promote falsehoods about vaccines’ safety and their contents.
Vaccination myths
One of the vaccination myths making headlines claims that
vaccines contain tissue from aborted fetuses.
Sen. Cassidy himself debunked
this claim recently while speaking
to news media, saying, “The connection to aborted children, there is tissue
from 1963, the early Sixties in which some fetal material was used to create
vaccines, but that’s, what, 56 years ago. And, the Catholic Church has said
that the benefits of immunization so outweigh this concern that the Catholic
Church strongly recommends immunizing children.”
No current fetal tissue is
used to create vaccines. You can learn more about this topic here.
As for dispelling other myths, PublicHealth.org provides a
wonderful, informative guide
that aims to educate the public about vaccination and debunk the myths that
have arisen. Here are the guide’s top eight myths about vaccination and why
they’re false.
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 Andrew Wakefield lost his medical license and the paper was
retracted from The Lancet.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 discredit
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.
(Note: Mercury, or thimerosal,
was removed from all childhood vaccines in 2001 and was never a component of
the MMR vaccine.)
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 and Prevention (CDC) warns, 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.
Seek reliable
resources
My colleague Dr. Joseph Kanter, the assistant state health
officer for the Louisiana Department of Health, in a recent
interview said he advises parents to seek reliable sources of information
regarding vaccines, such as the CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO),
and in particular their children’s pediatrician.
“There’s just a lot of lies and misinformation out there and
I really hate to see more parents fall victim to it,” Dr. Kanter said. I
couldn’t agree more.
The bottom line is this: Vaccines are safe. Vaccines are effective.
Don’t fall victim to the falsehoods.
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