This is the end of my 13-week series on Vaccine Myths. I hope the series has been helpful to you. Today, I’d like to address the fact that some people have questioned whether the use of fetal cells in the production of vaccines is moral and ethical. This question is timely due to a news story just out: Doctors and Families Asked to “Just Say no to New Aborted Fetal Vaccine!”

Early batches of poliovirus vaccine used in the late 1950s and early 1960s were contaminated with a monkey virus called Simian Virus 40, or SV40. Recently an investigator found proteins made by SV40 virus in unusual tumors in adults. The studies were suggestive enough that the National Institutes of Health continued to research the association. However, subsequent studies have not confirmed the initial observation. Nevertheless, no currently manufactured polio vaccines contain SV40, so current poliovirus vaccines pose no risk of ill effects from the virus. You can read more about vaccine myths in my book God’s Design for the Highly Healthy Child. 

One researcher claimed that infants immunized with one dose of Hib vaccine at twenty-four months of age were less likely to get diabetes than if they received four doses of the Hib vaccine (at three, four, six, and eighteen months of age). He concluded that the risk of diabetes could be reduced if children did not receive vaccines at a young age. 

After carefully reviewing the data, researchers discovered that analytic methods used in the study were incorrect.

Superficially speaking, the statement (Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Occur More Often in Vaccinated People Than in Unvaccinated People) is true. However, it is important to understand why. 

Medical doctors Paul Offit and Louis Bell explain: 

Let’s say that among 100 young adults living in a college dormitory, 95 were vaccinated against measles and 5 were not. 

An outbreak of measles then strikes. 

Six of the 95 vaccinated people get measles, as do 4 of the 5 unvaccinated ones. 

This would seem to indicate that vaccinated people get measles more commonly than unvaccinated people. 

But let’s look more critically. 

The attack rate for measles in the unvaccinated group was 80 percent (4 of 5), whereas the attack rate for vaccinated people was only 6 percent (6 of 95). 

So people were much less likely to get measles if they received the measles vaccine.

A study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that unvaccinated people were thirty-five times as likely to get measles as vaccinated people.

You can read more about vaccine myths in my book God’s Design for the Highly Healthy Child.

In 1999, a study revealed that the preservative thimerosal, a mercury-containing compound present in many vaccines, caused several infants to have levels of mercury in their blood that exceeded guidelines recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Preservatives are used in vaccines to reduce the risk of contamination by bacteria once the vial is opened. 

Exposure to high levels of mercury, especially in the developing child before birth, is associated with neurological disturbances. Therefore, parents began to fear that thimerosal may cause neurological difficulties, like autism.

When this study was first described, physicians, scientists, and public health officials quickly assessed the situation and found that:

Natural infection with certain viruses can weaken the immune system. So when children are infected with one virus, they can’t fight off other viruses or bacteria as easily. 

This happens most notably during natural infection with chicken pox or measles. Children infected with chicken pox are susceptible to certain bacterial infections (MRSA or flesh-eating bacteria, for example). 

Children infected with measles are more susceptible to bacterial infections (resulting in sepsis) of the bloodstream. 

But vaccines are different.

It is true that natural infection almost always causes better immunity than vaccination. In fact, only the Hib and tetanus vaccines are better at inducing immunity than natural infection.

Natural infection causes immunity after just one infection, but vaccines usually create immunity only after several doses over a period of time.

The Myth - Infants are too young to get vaccinated.

The Truth - It’s very important to make sure that infants are fully immunized against certain diseases by the age of six months.

Despite what is often falsely reported in the media and at many scaremongering web sites, all recommended vaccines are extraordinarily safe. 

When you consider that the 3.5 to 4 million children born every year in the United States receive more than twenty different vaccines to protect them from at least eleven different preventable diseases by the time they are six years old, and that some of these vaccines have existed for more than fifty years, I think you’ll agree that the record of vaccine safety in this country is remarkable.

A huge story is breaking today, about what the Washington Post is calling “the largest resurgence” of measles since 2001.

This story should, by itself, put this myth to rest.

And, the story is unfolding in 10 states, with at least 72 people ranging from infants to the elderly becoming ill. And all but one of them were unvaccinated.

The LA Times ran an article today about the ongoing controversy over the fear that the MMR vaccine may cause autism.

Because of this fear, there are parents who have chosen not to give their children this life-saving vaccine.

As a result, the Times reports that some in the research and medical community “are worried about” potential outbreaks that could be “fueled by clusters of people who are not vaccinated as a matter of choice, rather than access.”

This is the second entry in a series from my book God’s Design for the Highly Healthy Child.

Probably the best recent example of the positive impact of vaccines is the Hib vaccine, which prevents meningitis, ear infections, and other serious infections caused by the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib).

When the current Hib vaccine was introduced to this country in 1990, Hib was the most common cause of bacterial meningitis.

For decades, Hib had caused approximately 15,000 cases of meningitis and 400 to 500 deaths every year. After the current Hib vaccine was introduced, the incidence of Hib meningitis declined to fewer than fifty cases per year—typical of all widely used vaccines.