Get Yer' Shots!

An issue I discussed a few posts ago dealt with the concept of "settled science."  Thanks to ever improving experimental techniques, and more and more data from a variety of sources, it is very hard to call any science settled.  However, tonight I would like to discuss another topic that has been in the news a lot lately (although not as much as the first issue), which is a lot closer to "settled science" than anything in the first issue.

Certain people in the pop culture world (aka NOT scientists) are trying to push the idea that vaccines are merely power plays by "Big Pharmaceutical" to steal your money.  Oh yeah, and they give your kids autism.  Probably the most vocal pretty person who has been on that bandwagon lately is Jenny McCarthy (who is NOT a scientist...and apparently not anti-vaccine either...yeah right).  As a result of this scare campaign, several parents are refusing to give their kids their vaccine regime at an early age.  This is allowing diseases that had previously been on a major decline (such as measles and chicken pox) or nearly eradicated (such as polio) to start making comebacks which could lead to major health emergencies.  Most of these diseases are starting to return to the USA due to unvaccinated individuals going overseas to countries where the disease has not been controlled, contracting the illness, and returning it home, potentially spreading it to other unprotected individuals.

The push to possibly do away with vaccines is another case study in bad science with a capital BS, and an excellent cautionary tale of what can happen when you jump to conclusions based on faulty information without doing your homework.  May I remind you that there is no causal link between vaccines and autism!  The efficacy of vaccines in eliminating potentially fatal diseases has never been questioned for hundreds of years.  Let me give you a brief history of one such disease that vaccines have saved us from: smallpox.

Could Old Bessie have saved humanity
 from one of it's biggest killers?

Edward Jenner (yes I linked the Wikipedia page...it's accurate as of this posting) is considered the father of the modern vaccine.  He lived in a day and age when infectious diseases such as smallpox were the top killers in the world.  He discovered, however, that milkmaids that had contracted a non-fatal relative of smallpox (cowpox) had amazingly come into contact with smallpox victims, yet never actually got sick.  This got Jenner to thinking that perhaps the virus that causes cowpox, upon successful recovery, allows the body to become immune from similar diseases such as smallpox.  Both diseases had similar outward symptoms: high fever, itchy rash, chills, etc.  Yet, the milkmaids who had cowpox always got better, and did not get sick again.  So, in 1796, Jenner conducted what at the time was one of the riskiest biological experiments ever.  He intentionally injected an 8-year old boy with a serum containing cowpox virus.  As you might expect, the boy got sick, and then he recovered.  Upon recovery, he intentionally injected a serum containing the lethal smallpox virus into that same boy.  Even after repeated exposures, the boy never once showed symptoms of the disease that had killed millions of people before him.  He was officially immune.  Fast forward nearly 200 years later, in 1980, thanks to a worldwide vaccination effort, and smallpox was officially declared eradicated by the World Health Organization.  It was impossible to contract smallpox anywhere in the world.

Vaccines and other medications to cure bacterial infections (see Jonas Salk and Sir Alexander Fleming) have allowed humans to extend their lives more than ever possible back in the 18th and 19th Centuries and prior.  Unfortunately, there are some individuals who have taken it upon themselves to challenge this institution, putting several lives at risk, especially in the developing world where the WHO does continue to sponsor major vaccination drives to get people inoculated.  There are some people who sadly, truly, are unable to receive the vaccine.  The most common reason is an allergy (egg mostly, which is used to culture the virus to prepare it for the vaccine), and receiving the vaccine could cause anaphylaxis.  These people are protected through the "herd immunity" concept which is really quite simple.  If everyone else is vaccinated against the disease, they cannot catch the disease and give it to somebody who is not protected.  However, if fewer people are receiving vaccines, the number of people in the herd goes down, and the community protection is weakened.

The evidence is there, hundreds of years of it.  Attempts to prove a causal link between vaccines and other disorders and syndromes have thus far failed to produce anything.  Is this to say that vaccine research is finished (i.e. "settled science")?  Absolutely not.  Any time a potential problem is revealed, work should be done to explore potential causality.  Until diseases are eradicated like smallpox, there are always ways to improve vaccines.  However, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that vaccines cause anything other than better health for anyone receiving one, and for people surrounding them.  The rewards of vaccination tremendously far outweigh the risk of not getting them, and these rewards have been seen since 1796.  Perhaps further research can be done into how allergic people can receive the vaccines without having to solely rely on herd immunity and become personally protected.  Nevertheless, comparing where humanity was when Edward Jenner infected a small boy with cow pus, and where we are now, I think it is safe to say that we are so much healthier and happier.