Some concerns about the use of vaccines

Many media articles and reports have been written by individuals opposed to vaccination. Their concerns must be taken into consideration and work needs to be done to restore public confidence in the principle of vaccination.

Among the typical comments are:

Vaccines cause long-term side effects

There is no scientific evidence to prove that vaccination results in side effects which only develop many years later. There is much stronger evidence that allowing children to develop infections which were once considered as a normal part of growing up is potentially much more dangerous.

Vaccines can cause disease

Reports in the media have claimed that vaccination causes autism, bowel disease, brain damage, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and many other conditions. This is understandable, since many people in the 21st century want to believe that every occurrence must have a cause. In a society where vaccination coverage is high – more than 90 per cent – it is an inevitable coincidence that some diseases may be first diagnosed within weeks or months of vaccination. This chance association does not prove that vaccination was the cause.

Vaccines are ineffective

Evidence for the effectiveness of vaccines and vaccination policies can be seen in the dramatic drop in measles, mumps and rubella notifications following the introduction of MMR vaccine, the almost complete elimination of Hib meningitis in the UK and the recent dramatic drop in the incidence of Group C meningitis. The eradication of smallpox and the possible eradication of polio and measles should be added to these successes. The UK experiences in the 1970s, when whooping cough vaccine uptake dropped dramatically and the disease returned with a vengeance, prove that vaccines work.

Clean water, diet and exercise are more beneficial than vaccines

There is no doubt that improved living standards have helped to reduce the incidence of disease, but these alone would not have been able to eradicate diseases such as smallpox and polio. Living standards in the UK in the 1970s were high, but whooping cough returned when vaccination coverage dropped. Living standards in the 1990s were high, but children were still dying from Hib meningitis and Group C meningococcal meningitis – vaccination changed this picture. Living standards in the Netherlands and in Ireland are high, but that did not prevent recent epidemics of measles in unvaccinated children, with subsequent deaths.

Multiple vaccines ‘overload’ the immune system

There is no evidence to support the overload theory. From birth, the human immune system is designed to cope with many challenges each day. A fall in the playground will introduce far more germs into the body than the controlled introduction into the muscle tissue (not the bloodstream, as so many media reports state) of a highly purified vaccine. Introduction into the muscle tissue actually causes a completely natural immune response involving the white blood cells