Why do people still doubt vaccination?

Maybe no one of vaccination pioneers expected to hear this question asked at all, but in the worried arguing mouths of parents, you can hear it nowadays clearly with an insisting tone: To vaccinate or not vaccinate?

First of all, Vaccination is the administration of specific antigenic material -a vaccine- to stimulate the individual's immune system, this antigen doesn’t generate the infection illness, yet it activates the immune system to develop a specific immunity toward pathogen element (virus, bacteria, parasite and so on). Thus vaccines can prevent infections or ameliorate how the body will respond to them, reducing symptoms and duration.

With simplified words, a vaccine contains a specific part of the virus or the bacteria, once introduced in the body, the immune system considers it as a potential pathogenic agent, develops specific ways to neutralize this potential danger, and keeps this procedure in the immune memory. During late contact with the real pathogen, the immune system –already prepared- reacts intensely in a such way that the virus (or the bacteria ) is destroyed before causing any illness signs.

Before vaccination area, humanity was threatened –to extinction sometimes- by contagious diseases all the time, and a quick review of human history shows that infectious diseases, in form of plagues, killed more than all wars combined.

 

Although vaccination helped humanity against one of the deadliest historical devils, and vaccines have been adopted by public health organizations the world over as the most significant medical innovation of the 20th century, and one of the most lifesaving procedures that humanity has ever come up with, a small minority of people are still convinced that vaccines are “the new devil” and they are harmful for their child’s health. Furthermore, some parents advance the idea of letting their children get infection, and then the immune system will do its work!

Here’s a list of main anti-vaccination arguments that some parents promote and why they are false.

 

Vaccination could cause autism: This argument is used a lot these days even with several meta-analyses have shown the absence of a cause-effect relation between autism and vaccination. The Autism Science Foundation (and other autism related groups), as well as the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics have all released lists of numerous studies that show no correlation between vaccination and autism spectrum disorder.

 

The only “study” that anti-vaccination people often cite is the one that was conducted in 1998 by physician Dr. Andrew Wakefield. Unfortunately for him, his conclusions didn’t have scientific basics, as the research he conducted turned out to be fabricated (by him). Dr. Wakefield was subsequently stripped of his medical license.

 

It concerns my child as a parent and it affects only me and my child’s health if I refuse to vaccinate: Parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids not only put at risk their own children’s lives, but also the whole community’s health. Lives at danger include the ones of those who aren’t vaccinated or medically cannot be, including people with a feeble immune system: newborn babies, the elderly, people with immunodeficiencies and pregnant women.

 

With every non-vaccinated person, the ability of people who cannot get vaccination to be protected indirectly becomes increasingly more compromised. “Herd” or “community immunity” happens when the wide majority of people are immunized in a community; those who aren’t able to be immunized via vaccination are still protected indirectly because the spread of contagious disease is contained.

However, this situation is perturbed when the numbers of non-vaccinated children rise above a certain percent. It’s believed that in order to maintain herd immunity, 83 to 94 percent of the population needs to be vaccinated. With every parent that chooses not to vaccinate, this balance is in danger, threatening the whole community’s health.

Vaccines are overloading the child’s immune system: It is like saying:”eating three meals per day may load a child’s immune system”, some people argue that from the day that babies are born, they’re filled by germs and viruses that serve to reinforce their bodies, thus they’re exposed to thousands of antigens, without counting antigens coming through eating different foods, putting their hands and objects directly in their mouths, and being around people who may be sick or carrying antigens.

This logic is way far from reality, vaccines contain these same antigens, but in fragments or pieces, that cannot cause illness by itself, the antigens in vaccines stimulate and boost a baby’s immune system in the exact way as a real infection, only without the pathogenic effect, like a mock examination given to children, it stimulates yet without effects.

Natural immunity is way better than artificial ones: Unfortunately, natural immunity doesn’t make our bodies protected against specific antigens, till the immune system understands how to neutralize the pathogen, it may be too late. As pathogens generally attacks –while spreading- several organs and tissues, the consequences are fatal before the immune system readiness.

In the case of acquired immunity via vaccination, especially for a child, he does not have to tolerate the actual infection in order to be protected. With natural immunity, a child can become sick, suffer the illnesses at its worst form, and experience side effects including possible death on the way to become immunized, if he survives.

The infection we vaccinate our children for are from the past and no exist: Well, that is not true; as human being shares the world with other animals that may be a suitable reservoir for several pathogens, furthermore, several contagious germs do not induce any symptoms within animal kingdom, making as believe that we -humans- are the only reservoir and targets.

We can say that plague eras are from history so long that most people are immunized and herd immunity is present. When a large majority of the population can stop the pathogens that invade their immune systems, everyone is protected and a disease cannot establish itself and spread madly.

However, if larger percentages of the population avoid vaccination, an important percentage of the populations will be vulnerable, this gives viruses and bacteria the occasion to attack, find new hosts, get stronger, and persist longer. 

 

Vaccines are packed with many unhealthy materials: Vaccines are made of antigens (inactivated or dormant pathogens), adjuvants (to increase the immune system response), antibiotics (to prevent bacteria and other contaminants during the making of the vaccine), stabilizers and preservatives (albumin, phenols, and glycine), and the suspending fluid (sterile water, saline, or fluids with protein).

Many parents are worried about these adjuvants, especially the use of Thimerosal as a preservative, as it contains trace amounts of mercury. Firstly, the type of mercury found in Thimerosal is Ethylmercury. It differs  from methylmercury, the type of mercury found in fish and that is known to be harmful effects to kids in certain amounts. Ethylmercury is broken down in the body and excreted much quicker than methylmercury, and has not been shown to induce autism or any other neurological effects.

As a precaution, manufacturers have already stopped using Thimerosal in the making of vaccinations and thimerosal-free options are widely available.