Myths about vaccination

Recently, there has been a significant reduction in the number of children getting vaccinated. While you make think it is no good, vaccination combined with clean water and sanitation, are among the most effective public health measures saving millions of lives. Those who claim they have demerits and serious downsides will often design canards which they use to scare away individuals from letting their children be vaccinated. If you are not familiar with the claims, you could easily fall into their anti-vaccine rhetoric campaign. It is, therefore, vital to discern the information out there and know what is true and what is not. Here are a few of the myths

• Vaccines cause autism

Back in 1998, the publication of the Lancet paper was the first instance of the suggestion that measles mumps rubella vaccine was associated with autism. The piece has since been discredited as a result of procedural errors as well as undisclosed conflicts of interests regarding finances. Andrew Wakefield, the publisher of the article, had his license withdrawn and the piece retracted from the Lancet. Nonetheless, the hypothesis was not taken for granted and a series of studies followed theater. None of the studies found a link between the vaccine and the potential of developing autism.

Today, many studies have been set to try and find the origin of autism with the aim of discrediting the autism-vaccination link theory. Many of the studies have identified the autism symptoms in children properly before receiving the MMR vaccination.

• The immune system of infants can’t stand many vaccines

You may think otherwise, but infant immune systems are considerably active. Considering the number of antibodies available in the blood, an infant theoretically has the ability to respond to more than 10,000 vaccines at a go. It doesn’t matter if the fourteen scheduled vaccines were administered at once. The truth is that it would only use 0.1% of the baby’s immune capacity. The infant’s immune system could just never be overwhelmed since the cells of the body are constantly getting replenished. In essence, the number of bacteria and disease causing organisms the baby is exposed to every day is nothing compared to the vaccines. There may be more vaccines today than some time back, but again, they are more efficient. Infants are exposed to less immunologic components overall compared to children in the past.

• Natural immunity is better than immunity received through vaccination

In some instances, natural immunity, which involves actually contracting a disease and getting ill leads to a stronger immunity to the infection. Nevertheless, the demerits of this approach outweigh the relative benefits by far. If for instance, you want to gain immunity to measles by falling sick first, you’d be facing one in five hundred chances of death from related symptoms. Conversely, those who have had a severe allergic reaction from the MMR vaccine is not more than one in a million.

• Here are unsafe toxins in vaccines

There has been a concern over the use of mercury, formaldehyde, and aluminum in vaccines. These elements, for sure, are harmful when introduced into the human body. However, only trace amounts of these elements are used in vaccines approved by the FDA. Actually, according to CDC and the FDA, our metabolic systems produce higher rates of formaldehyde, and there has been no scientific claim that moderate amounts of mercury, aluminum, and formaldehyde can be detrimental to general health.

The above are some of the misinformation spread by the anti-vaccines campaigners.