VACCINE CONTROVERSY
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The
history of Immunology largely involves the discovery of vaccines.
Vaccines have undoubtedly saved millions of lives over the decades they
have been used. However vaccines are not without controversy. Many
people think that there is link between vaccines and autism. I have an
acquaintance who is a scientist who says it happened to his
child. There are some families that do not get vaccinated. There is
some evidence that vaccines have caused the disease they are trying to
prevent as in the recent case of polio vaccines..this is called
VDPV..vaccine derived polioviruses. There are consequences to not being vaccinated also. In 2010 there was an outbreak of whooping cough, 10 babies in the Los Angeles area died!
Polio has raised its ugly head again in Africa when officials thought it might be eradicated.
What should be our response as Christian biologists to this situation? There is a doctor in the LA area Dr Bob Sears who has some interesting things to say about this also.
Do some research and examine the evidence. Do you think there is a link between autism and vaccine use?
Check out the VDPV cases. Have there been deaths in this case? How many cases of vaccine induced polio have been documented? Is there enough evidence in this case to make all vaccine's suspect as dangerous?
Find Dr Sears views on vaccination. What do you think about Dr Sear's approach to vaccination do you think it has some merit?
Would you or will you have your children vaccinated?
Do you think polio will be completely eradicated?
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ReplyDelete1. Looking at an article posted by CDC (Centers for Disease Control Prevention), one can see that there was a lot of research conducted. The article provided multiple links to studies that prove that autism is not caused by vaccines. One such study from the Journal of Pediatrics tested 256 subjects with autism spectrum disorders and 752 control subjects with matched characteristics with exposure to antibody-stimulating proteins and polysaccharides found in vaccines (measles, mumps and rubella) for certain time periods. It was shown that the chance of developing autism did not increase (DeStefano et al., 2013.). The CDC article also mentioned multiple studies it has conducted since 2003 on thimerosal-containing vaccines which had no links to causing autism in children. Therefore, I conclude that there is not a lot of evidence that I could find tying autism with vaccines.
ReplyDelete2. Polioeradication.org reports that since 1962 there has been about 111 recorded deaths because of immunodeficiency-related vaccine-derived poliovirus (iVDPV). This is a very small number deaths over such a long period of time. Even though it is one kind, I was not able to find any articles giving the exact number of documents death due to VDPV which could mean that there have not been any recent death due to the vaccine. Due to this lack of articles claiming death because of the vaccines, I believe that there is not enough evidence to suggest vaccines are dangerous.
4. I believe that Dr. Sears makes a rational argument for his alternative vaccine schedule against the CDC’s vaccine schedule. It makes sense that you would not want to overload the baby with so many different vaccines that the body could not take it. I can see how this schedule would calm some parents’ fears due the spacing out of the time of vaccines. It is also refreshing to read that he does give both sides of the argument, not wanting to sugarcoat the risks of vaccines and deceive the parents who just want the best for their child. Personally, I would just follow the CDC schedule because that is what my parents did for me and I turned out fine. Also his schedule has not be tested and studied by the CDC or other party, so it has not be shown to reduce the risk of reaction to vaccines.
4. Yes, I will have my children receive vaccines because I was raised in a more medical family setting and my parents were strict and careful that all children in my family would receive our vaccines on time. I never have gotten any serious diseases so far, so I intend to go through the same process with my children.
5. I think that if third world countries will be able to gain access to the vaccines to create that herd immunity there could be a high possibility of eradicating polio.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with your conclusion, Bethany, about the vaccines not being the cause of autism cases. When first hearing any connection between the two, it's easy to respond with refusing to get vaccines before actually looking up the facts of the accusation. Doing the similar research as you, I still believe not getting vaccines could be more dangerous because you don't have that extra protection. Yes vaccines have risks, but the benefits far outweigh them.
ReplyDeleteSomething I found interesting in your post is you mentioned immunodeficiency-related vaccine-derived poliovirus as one of the possible effects of getting OPV. How would you compare iVDPV to cVDPV ( circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus)? In the article I read, cVDPV is more rare in general, but more common than the other forms of VDPV.
A fact sheet by Polio Global Eradication Initiative in February 2015 says that throughout the last decade, there has been 24 cVDPV cases in 21 different countries. Apparently, the condition to cause a cVDPV case is incomplete and inefficient vaccine treatment in which the strain becomes active and full grown polio, but this is extremely rare. It is hard to compare these statistics with the ones I gave above because it covers different lengths of time. However, if I would keep the number of cVDPV consistent over the last 50 years, there would be more cVDPV case compared to iVDPV cases. Nevertheless, that is a unreliable way to compare them. It hard to say for certain which is more common without having a study directly comparing the two kind of VDPV (which I could not find).
ReplyDeleteThank you for looking that up. It was interesting to learn more about the different kinds of VDPV. As far as my research goes, there are three kinds, circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses (cVDPV), immunodeficiency-related vaccine-derived poliovirus (iVDPV), and ambiguous vaccine-derived poliovirus (aVDPV). Little is known about the last, aVDPV, however, more is known of the other two.
DeletecVDPV happens on rare occasions when susceptible kids excrete vaccine-derived poliovirus and it circulates the population for a certain amount of time. When this happens, the strain can mutate and cause damage to the nervous system.
iVDPV doesn't occur as often, but when people with rare immune deficiency disorders get vaccinated, there is a possibility of them not being able to fight and rid the body of the intestinal vaccine virus.
Both situations are terrible, but they can happen and the public should remain aware.
The research done to find a link between autism and vaccine is not as convincing as the research done to show there isn’t a link between the two. This article published in the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) explains the reason why parents first started to have concern over vaccines and how the evidence supporting the theory isn’t valid. Andrew Wakefield published a paper talking about the possibility of autism caused by vaccines with weak evidence, but it scared the public. This article offers three hypotheses of how vaccines cause autism, but explains how each doesn’t hold up to the research done all around the world on the subject. Children either had autism before the vaccination or way afterwards. Some of the effects people have aren’t similar to the effects leading to or caused by autism, such as motor, speech, sensory, or visual changes. One of the theories is mercury in the thimerosal, which is used to prepare vaccines, caused autism. There is no concrete evidence of this statement. Just to be safe, vaccines no longer use it but this caused even more backlash. The facts are there are no sign or symptoms of mercury poisoning. In conclusion, I don’t believe that there is a link between autism and vaccines.
ReplyDeletehttps://academic.oup.com/cid/article/48/4/456/284219/Vaccines-and-Autism-A-Tale-of-Shifting-Hypotheses
In this feature written by the World Health Organization (WHO), 24 cVDPV outbreaks have occurred in 21 countries since 2000 resulting in fewer than 760 cases. These numbers sound like a lot, but oral polio vaccine (OPV) has saved millions of lives. In the research done, no cases with deaths could be found, however, the shortage of articles and papers can be evidence that VDPV isn’t a very serious danger as of now. I do not believe there is enough evidence in this case to make all vaccines suspect as dangerous. If anything, it would be more dangerous to not be vaccinated because that is how a strain of VDPV can circulate and cause harm to un- or under-immunized populations.
http://www.who.int/features/qa/64/en/
Dr. Sear’s approach to vaccination is spacing out the vaccinations more than what the CDC recommends. The CDC vaccine schedule includes giving the hepatitis B vaccination the same day the baby is born. Dr. Sear recommends the Hep B at preschool age where there could be a chance of encountering situations leading to hepatitis. The second separation is when the CDC schedules multiple vaccinations, such as pertussis, rotavirus, HIB, and pneumococcal meningitis at 2, 4, and 6 months. Dr. Sear suggests giving the two vaccines with very serious illnesses at the same time periods, and making up the ones he didn’t give at 3,5, and 7 months. This way, the baby’s body has more time to recover from the vaccinations previously given.
I believe there is some merit in what Dr. Sear says because he bases his reason off of common sense. God gave us brains to think; he is just exercising what he has. Dr. Sear is also trying to cater toward parents who are more skeptical of the CDC system and vaccinations as a whole. He isn’t trying to convert those who already vaccinate their children to use his method. He wants parents to make educated decisions when coming to vaccinations which should be what we would want of any doctor. We should want to hear both sides of an argument before making a decision.
Yes, I will have my children vaccinated. I will do it to protect my children from the possibility of contracting viruses and diseases, and for the community as a whole. One of the articles I read talked about passive immunization for a community where some of the population had vaccines, but not all. The people who did not have vaccines were potentially protected from the virus by the people who did, acting like a buffer.
For now there will always be the possibility that polio will be eradicated and that is something to look forward to. There is still the 1% out there, but a lot of countries and organizations are working together to make sure it will be eradicated.