It’s back-to-school time, and that means, in addition to buying new shoes and school supplies, families are making appointments with their doctors for kids’ physicals and immunizations. Yet a growing number of people are growing wary of vaccinations, and some are refusing to have their children vaccinated altogether.
Mistrust of vaccinations exploded in 1998 when Dr. Andrew Wakefield published a study of 12 children linking autism to the Measles, Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine in the British medical journal The Lancet. However, in subsequent years, seven major medical studies have found no association between autism and vaccinations. And in 2010, The Lancet retracted Wakefield’s paper after Great Britain’s General Medical Council found that the children Wakefield studied were carefully selected and some of his research was funded by lawyers hired by parents who were involved in lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers. Wakefield’s medical license was subsequently revoked.
Despite the retraction of Wakefield’s paper, many people still suspect a link between vaccines and autism. Dr. Donald Graham, a specialist in infectious diseases at Springfield Clinic, empathizes with parents’ fear of putting their kids at risk for autism but notes that there is “no credible supporting evidence to support the hypothesis” that autism and vaccines are related. Although stories persist about children developing autism after immunizations, experts believe that the association is coincidental. Children are given the MMR vaccine at age 12-15 months – the same age when the first symptoms of autism start to present themselves.
Fear of autism is just one reason many parents are wary of vaccines. Yet, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control, the following frequently-cited arguments against immunization are based on misconceptions:
Vaccines do not work. Although no vaccine is 100 percent effective, most childhood vaccines are effective for 85-95 percent of recipients. The flu vaccine has the lowest efficacy rate, at around 60 percent, while the tetanus vaccine is more than 99 percent effective.
Disease rates were falling before the introduction of vaccines due to better hygiene and sanitation. It is true that, in the 20th century, better socioeconomic conditions, clean water, better nutrition, understanding of germ theory, and the development of antibiotics have all increased survival rates among the sick. Yet vaccines have had a direct and dramatic effect on lowering the incidence of disease.
In Japan, for example, fears about the whooping cough vaccine led to a drop in vaccination rates from 70 percent to 20-40 percent in the 1970s. That country saw a jump in whooping cough from 393 cases and no deaths in 1974 to 13,000 cases and 41 deaths in 1979.
Too many vaccines given together can overwhelm the immune system. Children are exposed to foreign antigens every day as they eat, breathe and stick things in their mouths. In reality, scientific study shows that simultaneous immunization with multiple vaccines places no additional burden on a child’s immune system.
Vaccines make people sick or cause adverse reactions, and the risks associated with immunizations outweigh the benefits. Vaccines are actually very safe. Most side effects from vaccines are mild, such as a sore arm or slight fever. Serious effects happen only on the order of one per thousand to one per million of doses. The incidence of deaths plausibly attributed to vaccines are so low that the risk is hard to assess statistically.
Diseases, on the other hand, carry a much higher risk of death or disability. For example, the risk of a child dying of diphtheria is 1 in 20; dying of tetanus is 1 in 5; and dying of whooping cough is 1 in 1,500. By contrast, there have been no proven deaths associated with the DTap vaccine that prevents these illnesses.
Ironically, one of the reasons people fear immunization more than the diseases they prevent is because the vaccines are so effective that few people have seen cases of vaccine-preventable diseases firsthand. Many older people alive today remember being afraid of polio as children and being grateful when a polio vaccine was finally made available. Mary Lincoln, who watched two children die of tuberculosis and one of typhoid (two vaccine-preventable diseases), would probably have been first in line for vaccinations for these illnesses had they been available in her time.
Dr. Graham points out that these diseases have not been eliminated, however: polio is coming back in Africa, and outbreaks of measles and whooping cough are on the rise as more people are refusing immunization.
“These are bad diseases that we don’t want to have,” he said. “If you haven’t seen them, you don’t appreciate how bad they are. But many of these diseases are terrible to encounter. They can be fatal, or lead to long-term disabilities.”
Stephanie Standish, director of Personal Health Services at the Sangamon County Department of Public Health, agrees. “It’s always better to prevent something than to treat it after it happens,” she said, noting the increasing resistance of many diseases to antibiotics. She also encourages people to remember that vaccines benefit more than just the inoculated individual. Some people are unable to get vaccines because they are immunocompromised or allergic. These people are vulnerable, and their only hope of not becoming infected is if the people around them are immune and thus unable to spread the diseases.
The bottom line is that medical professionals overwhelmingly agree that vaccines are safe, effective and beneficial, not only to individuals, but to the community at large.
“It’s a matter of personal health, and a matter of public health,” said Dr. Graham. “You don’t want to get sick. You don’t want your family to get sick, or your neighbor, or even your opposing sports team. If you get immunized, the disease can’t take hold in you, and it can’t spread to others.”
Erika Holst is Curator of Collections at the Springfield Art Association and mom to a healthy little boy.
This article appears in Capital City Parent July 2014.
