Myths About Vaccination: Setting the Facts Straight

Anyone that knows me very well is going to be unsurprised that I decided to write this post. Vaccinations are one of the most heated topics in Public Health, and one that I find myself (passionately) defending often.

Because I find myself having these conversation so frequently, I wanted to compile all of the arguments that I keep hearing about vaccinations in once place, and set the facts straight.

So let’s get to it.

Pharmaceutical Companies (“Big Pharma”) are Corrupt

True.

Anyone who has spent ten minutes (literally or otherwise) in the upper echelon of a pharmaceutical company can easily understand that it really is about the money. These businessmen/women understand that drugs make money, and just like any successful business person, they use that to their best advantage. Unfortunately, it seems that among the United States (and other developed countries), there is sparse morality in this industry, and this can be a serious point of contention.

That said, refusing to participate in something simply because it makes a lot of money is weak logic. If this were the case, individuals that refused vaccinations because they make a lot of money for Big Pharma ought also refrain from involvement in real estate, cinema, google, and Apple. All of these businesses make their businessmen/women plenty of money, often in lieu of moral consideration.

It's also important to understand that although vaccinations do bring in quite a bit of revenue to pharmaceutical companies, Big Pharma would not likely be wasting their time with vaccinations if they were simply “ruthlessly profit motivated” (Source).

For example, Lipitor, one of the most profitable drugs in all of pharmaceuticals (and just one drug alone), sold USD$10 billion worldwide in 2011. Vaccines (all of them) bring in a total of about USD$24 billion annually. Clearly, “Big Pharma execs would rather have Lipitor once or twice over than vaccines [at all],” considering the amount of money involved to develop and test vaccinations before they make the pharmaceutical companies much of a profit. (Source)

Additionally, vaccinations are intended to keep people from getting sick. If Big Pharma wanted use illness alone to line their pockets, they would “close down vaccine research and manufacturing, and wait a year for huge epidemics.” But, of course, we know that they instead maximize cleverer tactics at their disposal like rebranding/repackaging the same drug and selling it for twice the original price. (By the way, the source of this information is one of my very favorite articles on this subject. Go ahead, give it a read.) 

Vaccines Cause Autism

False.

I haven’t heard this one as frequently as of late, but it still occasionally rears its head in the Public Health world. And there are definitely still celebrities that propagate this fallacy.

This myth originates from a (single) research paper published by former British doctor and researcher Andrew Wakefield. In 1998, Wakefield published a research study with evidence to support the hypothesis that certain vaccines (rubella/MMR, measles, and mumps) were linked to an appearance of autism and gastrointestinal disorders in children.

Like any science-based, peer-reviewed study, other doctors and researchers began testing the hypothesis themselves. None were able to recreate Wakefield’s results.

In 2004, a reporter named Brian Deer identified an undisclosed financial conflict of interest on Wakefield’s part, and Wakefield's co-authors withdrew their support of the vaccines-cause-autism study.

After further investigation, Wakefield's work was found to be an "elaborate fraud" and the British General Medical Council consequently removed from Wakefield his medical license in 2011 (Source).

Interestingly, the anti-vaccination community still (currently) considers Wakefield to be an expert on the subject. Even though he no longer has a license to practice medicine because of his work in vaccinations and its indisputable fraudulence.  

The Flu Shot Gives You The Flu

False.

It is not physiologically possible to contract Influenza from the vaccination (the shot, at least). To understand why, we first need to understand how vaccinations work.

Vaccinations introduce a pathogen (virus, bacteria, or other microorganism that causes illness) into the body in order to encourage the development of antibodies (blood proteins responsible for counteracting specific pathogens).

English physician and scientist Edward Jenner first recognized this as a method of immunization after observing that milkmaids did not catch smallpox. He hypothesized that it was because they had been exposed to cowpox, and their bodies had developed antibodies that could fight off the smallpox pathogen (the pathogens were apparently similar enough for this to be effective, much like the flu vaccination is effective although researchers develop the vaccination each season based on their best approximation of which strain will be most prevalent that year). 

In 1796, Jenner decided to test his theory by infecting the son of his gardener with cowpox see if it would provide the boy with immunity to smallpox. The experiment worked (thankfully), and smallpox was entirely eradicated 184 years later in 1980. (Source)

The type of vaccination that Jenner discovered is called a “live-attenuated” vaccination, and is one of the two most common types of immunization. Live-attenuated vaccines introduce a weakened form of the pathogen into the body, and allows the body to develop the proper antibodies to fight off a full-blown infection. It is possible to contract the disease against which you are attempting to immunize by using a live-attenuated vaccination (though it is uncommon), but some immunizations are most (or only) effective as live-attenuated vaccinations.

The other most common type of vaccination is called an “inactivated” vaccination. As the name suggests, these vaccines introduce a killed (dead) version of the virus into the body to encourage the development of the proper antibodies. It is not possible to contract the disease against which you are attempting to immunize by using an inactivated vaccination. The pathogen in an inactivated (dead) virus is unable to reproduce, so it cannot produce the disease.

The flu shot, as you may have guessed, is an inactivated vaccination. And because the virus is dead, it is physiologically incapable of giving you the flu. (Source)

The Flu Shot Can Make You Sick

True. (Kind of.)

As with any vaccination, reactions to the flu vaccine are possible. As aforementioned, if the vaccination is live-attenuated, it is possible to contract the full-blown disease after getting the vaccine. This is inordinately uncommon, however, as vaccinations are intended to keep people from getting sick; during production and testing of a live-attenuated vaccination, if the immunization is producing the illness instead of protecting against it, the vaccination is reformulated until it is effective before being distributed among a population. (We mentioned the motivation for pharmaceutical companies to distribute effective vaccinations in the first section of this post.)

If the vaccination is a killed virus (as it is in the flu shot), you cannot get the illness from the vaccine. It is common to feel a little under-the-weather for a few days after receiving the immunization, however, as the body is developing those antibodies. In rare cases, an individual may have an allergic reaction to something in the vaccination; but for the most part, vaccines do not make people terribly sick.

This idea that the flu shot itself makes people sick is one of the most common reasons that people are discouraged from getting the shot. In reality, the illness that people often attribute to the flu shot is more likely caused by either a non-flu pathogen, or by exposure to influenza before the immunization.

Sometimes, an individual will exhibit symptoms of the "stomach flu" after receiving a flu shot, and attribute the illness to the shot. In reality, they probably exposed themselves to a pathogen unrelated to influenza (but easily spread and quickly onset) in the facility where they went to get the flu shot, and associate the illness with the vaccine.

If you did actually come away from the facility where you received the flu vaccination with influenza, chances are you exposed yourself to the flu before the immunization had a chance to develop the proper antibodies; possibly in the very facility where you went to get vaccinated.

Bottom line, if you get sick and then better within a few days of receiving the flu vaccination, your illness probably did not come from the flu shot itself, but from an association with it.

The "Stomach Flu" is a strain of the flu.

False.

This confusion comes from the layman’s misunderstanding of the infectious disease commonly (but misleadingly) known as the “stomach flu”.

Viral gastroenteritis, the “stomach flu”, is a viral infection of the gastrointestinal system. Unlike the name suggests, it is not caused by the influenza virus (the pathogen that actually causes the flu). Viral gastroenteritis can be caused by several different viruses, but is most commonly caused by a rotavirus or norovirus. (Source)

Viral gastroenteritis is highly contagious and develops quickly, with the potential to produce symptoms just twelve hours after exposure to the pathogen. Symptoms include nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever (sometimes), and muscle aches or headaches. Disease progression is fast, with symptoms appearing and disappearing within just a few days (Source).

Influenza, by contrast, is a viral infection of the respiratory system, and generally has a much slower disease progression than viral gastroenteritis. Flu symptoms can last up to two weeks, and include: high fever; aching muscles in the back, arms, and legs; chills and sweats; dry cough; sore throat; nasal congestion; and headache. (Source)

Because gastroenteritis is so easily spread and is so quickly onset, this is usually what people often contract (likely in the very place that they have gone to get the flu shot), and then attribute to the vaccination itself. This is most likely why individuals believe that the flu shot made them sick; it’s a matter of correlation, not causation. The same thing often happens with the common cold (most often caused by rhinovirus).

The Flu Shot Can Kill You

True.

Technically, this is true. It is possible to have a fatal reaction to the flu (or any) vaccination. But the chances of experiencing this kind of reaction, especially to the point that it results in fatality, is extraordinarily unlikely. It is much more likely that you will end up fatally ill from not getting vaccinated. Somewhere between 3,000-49,000 people die every year from flu-related deaths according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (Source), and 200,000 people are hospitalized every year by the flu. (Source)

Reactions to the flu vaccine are so rare, in fact, that the CDC’s website provides a link to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program website, which allows individuals injured by the vaccination to be compensated for the reaction. (Source)

I would also like to point out that there are a lot of things in this world that can kill us, and it is impossible to avoid all of them. To function in the world, we determine every single day what the greatest threat to us might be, and we plan accordingly. That said, the chance of dying from the flu is much greater than dying from a reaction to the vaccination.

I Haven’t Been Vaccinated And I’ve Never Been Sick

Most likely because the majority of people around you are vaccinated. 

No vaccination is 100% effective. To compensate, Public Health strives for what we refer to as “herd immunity”, which means that a disease can be effectively controlled in a population when 80% of the population receives a vaccination that is 80% effective. This is how diseases are eradicated.

Although you may have never contracted a preventable disease despite having never been vaccinated, be careful about slipping into a false sense of security with this logic. Just because you haven’t gotten sick does not mean that you can’t. And if you take the risk of not vaccinating yourself or your child against a preventable disease, and you or your child contract that disease, the result could be fatal. If you do survive the disease, you could very well live the rest of your life with severe complications (for example, if a child was lucky enough to survive Polio, they were often left crippled).

And honestly, “you” are not valid test size for academic research. Your personal experience cannot shake a stick at years of professional, peer-reviewed study. And although it is much less commonly talked about, a lot of people that do not get vaccinated do contract preventable disease. For example, take a look at this blog post that I came across a few years ago about a woman sharing her personal experience about growing up living an entirely “organic” lifestyle, and still contracting preventable diseases. 

More importantly, however, you risk giving preventable diseases to others who are unable to be vaccinated (for health reasons) if you are not vaccinated, eradicating the effectiveness of herd immunity. Which is my personal biggest issue with people that adopt this logic.

Infants too young to be vaccinated for certain diseases, or individuals with weakened immune systems who are unable to be vaccinated (people with AIDS, chemotherapy patients, etc.), are at a huge risk being around someone that is not vaccinated. The ramifications for the infant or the person with the weakened immune system could be fatal. Even if you don't feel sick, you could very well be an "asymptomatic carrier" of a dangerous pathogen if you are not vaccinated (meaning that you carry the disease and spread it to others, even if you don't feel sick). Vaccination is not just an individual choice; it is a social responsibility.

Conclusion

I am usually very supportive of people thinking through issues and determining what they believe for themselves. But I am supportive of this only when an opinion is valid (such as in religion or philosophy), and when your decision does not affect the health of the people around you.

I will not respect your opinion about something that is fact. If you step off a cliff with the opinion that gravity is made-up science, you will still fall victim to gravity. The facts do not change based on your opinion of them.

American writer Harlan Ellison is quoted as saying, “you are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.” With him, on this topic, I very much agree.

Just because you can search the internet for days or weeks or months or years does not give you the same level (or quality) of education as someone that has professional, formal research training with peer-reviewed resources at their disposal. And on behalf of all of those formally-educated people, I say: vaccinations are our best defense against fatal diseases, and diseases can only be eradicated if everyone is immunized against preventable diseases. Vaccinating yourself and your children is your social responsibility.