Vaccines

I’ve been learning A LOT about vaccines lately. I’ve been learning the science behind them and exactly how they work, and the somewhat recent debate about getting vaccinated or not.

What is a vaccine?

Basically, it’s a dead or weakened virus that is injected into the blood stream. Your body makes antibodies in your blood that are your defense mechanism against disease. By having a dead (aka inactive) virus or a weakened one, your body recognizes it and build up antibodies. Some of these are retained so that when this virus enters your body again, the antibodies quickly recognize it and can fight it off much quicker than without.

Where did they come from?

Back in 1796 a guy named Edward Jenner had hypothesized about this. He took some cowpox from someone’s infected hand and injected it into a boy. The boy was sick for a couple days, but recovered completely. A few months later, Jenner exposed the boy to smallpox, and he didn’t get it. This is where it all started, but it wasn’t until the 1940’s that vaccines were readily available to everyone.

So why wouldn’t we get vaccines?

Well, in 1998, a doctor named Andrew Wakefield published a study stating that the MMR vaccine (protects against measles, mumps, and rubella) caused autism. He had only 12 kids in this study and despite the lack of scientific evidence, his paper was published in a medical journal. As the current cause of autism is unknown, parents clung to the idea that this provided an answer for their autistic children. The entire study became the only basis for anti-vax. 12 children. 1 study. This study was also retracted because it was completely falsified. Wakefield was working on an alternative to the MMR vaccine, and was actually paid to post this false study. Long story short, he was wrong. The full details are linked below (thanks Kahn Academy and SciShow).

Andrew Wakefield
Scientific article that proves his study wrong

If you don’t believe me, do a little research on it. There is only one “scientist” that I’ve found to believe vaccines cause autism, and he made it up. Every other scientist knows that this is not true and that vaccines save hundreds of thousands of lives every single year.

Why does it matter if someone is vaccinated?

Have you ever met someone who has had cancer and had to do chemotherapy? What about known someone who was older and got sick more easily than others? Ever held a baby? All of these people are at serious risk because of those not vaccinated. For a healthy person, it is unlikely they will contract and die from diseases we have vaccines against. There is something called “herd immunity” that is basically protection for those not vaccinated because everyone around them is, so they aren’t exposed to the disease because no one else can get it. However, people who have compromised immune systems can’t fight off these diseases if they’re exposed to them.

This basically means if you aren’t vaccinated, you are mostly putting other people’s children, grandparents, and sick relatives at risk. All because you don’t want someone to have autism. If you ask me, even if it was true that vaccines caused autism, that still would be much better than losing people to diseases we have protection from.

Vaccine history