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National Immunization Awareness Month
In 2002, I had the opportunity to travel with the American Red Cross to Ghana, a small country in Western Africa, to view a mass measles vaccination campaign. Because I grew up in the United States, where measles was declared eliminated in 2000, I had no experience with the virus except for seeing the name of it written on my immunization card. Africa was very different though, recording over 450,000 deaths from measles in the year 2000 alone. Measles was a huge issue for children in Africa. If they didn’t die from the disease, many of them experienced the consequences of the virus, including blindness, inflammation and injury to the brain, severe diarrhea and life-threatening breathing difficulties. The difference for the great disparity between our two continents was the availability and widespread use of the measles vaccine. During that trip, I saw firsthand how vaccines prevent widespread disease and death and have been an outspoken advocate for the use of vaccines ever since.
August is National Immunization Awareness Month. It’s a time to highlight the importance of routine vaccinations for people of all ages. After a widely dispersed article falsely linked autism to the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine in the late 1990s and the resurgence of false information surrounding the COVID-19 virus and vaccines, there is a lot of fear and misunderstanding about vaccines and their safety and efficacy. I hope that with this short article, I can dispel a few of the most common myths surrounding vaccines and encourage you to reconsider your stance, or at least encourage you to seek factual information from your healthcare provider.
MYTH #1 – Vaccines cause the disease they are meant to prevent.
FACT – Vaccines DO NOT cause disease. Vaccines are made with either an inactive virus or weakened virus that “tricks” your immune system into thinking there is a threat and creating antibodies against the virus. Your body then remembers that virus when in contact with the “real” thing and mounts an immune response to fight it. Your body is usually then able to fight the virus without the dangerous effects of the virus like it might have if seeing the virus for the first time. Some people experience a low fever or soreness at the site of the injection, but this is a result of the immune response and creation of antibodies, NOT the result of contracting the virus and illness.
MYTH #2 – Vaccines contain unsafe toxins.
FACT – Trace amounts of additives, like preservatives or stabilizers, are added to vaccines to make the vaccines safer or increase their potency. Anything, even water, can be toxic if consumed in great amounts. The amount of the additives in vaccines is so small that it is less than what we encounter in the environment of the same substances on a daily basis. Formaldehyde is one ingredient often cited as a dangerous component of vaccines, but it is actually created in our bodies at a higher rate from our own metabolic system! A mercury-based preservative called Thimerosal is often feared as well. It is used in multidose vials of vaccine, but since 1999 has been eliminated from ALL pediatric vaccines. People are exposed to more mercury than found in vaccines through milk, seafood and even contact lens solution!!
MYTH #3 – Natural immunity is superior to vaccine-induced immunity.
FACT – Contracting a virus and fighting it off without the help of a vaccine can produce immunity, but the risks of doing so can be severe complications, hospitalization or death. Vaccines cause your body to develop the very same immune response without these risks. Some parents believe that the antibodies received in utero or through breastfeeding are enough to protect a child from vaccine-prevented diseases, but these antibodies wane. Just as you help your baby learn to walk, eventually a child has to learn to walk by themselves and their bodies must learn to create their own antibodies and immune response. Vaccines help the body do this without the life-threatening risks that come from the disease itself.
MYTH #4 – It is better to delay vaccination or to space out vaccines.
FACT – Many of the diseases vaccines prevent are most deadly in the very young. Delaying vaccination puts infants and toddlers at great risk. The established immunization schedule is based on decades of research on how a child’s immune system responds to vaccines at various ages, how likely they will be exposed to certain diseases and the optimal window when the vaccines will be most effective in preventing illness from the disease. There is no data to support spacing out vaccines or that doing so will offer safe or effective protection. Every dose in the schedule is important to build the necessary immunity for the body to recognize and fight off the virus if contracted. An article by the CDC said that you wouldn’t wait until driving down the road to put your baby in a car seat. A child is buckled in way before the chance of a crash and vaccines are a similar idea. Your child needs the vaccine long before exposed to a disease. If you wait until you think they might be exposed to a virus, there may not be enough time for the vaccine to work to stimulate the production of adequate antibodies.
MYTH #5 – Vaccines cause autism.
FACT – As stated earlier, in 1997 a study was published that incorrectly linked autism to the MMR vaccine. It was later determined that the author had a financial incentive for making his claims and that there were significant flaws in his study. The other authors on the study removed their names and the primary author lost his medical license for his deceit and for his mishandling of the children in his care. Since this publication, there have been MANY studies looking at the safety of the MMR vaccine including millions of children and there has been NO ASSOCIATION found between autism and the MMR vaccine.
Mark Twain once said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” In the age of social media and in an environment where people distrust authorities and are more likely to get their medical advice from Aunt Suzie on Facebook, it’s important to use critical thinking and informed skepticism to determine fact from fiction. When reading information about vaccines, be sure to identify an author or publisher, make sure the article isn’t trying to sell you something, especially the idea of a miracle cure, and look out for one-sided, outdated or biased information. Researchers check each other’s work and repeat the same type of experiments many times to make sure it is correct. Vaccines are a result of many years of study, many layers of safety and the proof of millions of lives saved throughout the last several decades.
Mental Health American Stress Screener
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