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How Safe are Vaccines? 5-24-08
Life, if you're a bacterium or virus, boils down to this: finding a pristine
human home to provide for your every need, from food and nutrients to shelter
against biological storms. As a microbial drifter, you can literally travel the
world, hopping from host to host when the opportunity presents itself or when
conditions at your temporary residence start heading south. There's no worry
about taking along life's necessities either-viruses in particular are adept at
traveling light; incapable of reproducing on their own, they think nothing of
co-opting the reproductive machinery of their cellular sponsors to help them
spawn generation after generation of freeloading progeny.
But ever since Edward Jenner, a country doctor in England, inoculated his son
and a handful of other children against smallpox in 1796 by exposing them to
cowpox pus, things have been tougher on humans' most unwelcome intruders. In the
past century, vaccines against diphtheria, polio, pertussis, measles, mumps and
rubella, not to mention the more recent additions of hepatitis B and chicken
pox, have wired humans with powerful immune sentries to ward off uninvited
invasions. And thanks to state laws requiring vaccinations for youngsters
enrolling in kindergarten, the U.S. currently enjoys the highest immunization
rate ever; 77% of children embarking on the first day of school are completely
up to date on their recommended doses and most of the remaining children are
missing just a few shots.
Yet simmering beneath these national numbers is a trend that's working in the
microbes' favor-and against ours. Spurred by claims that vaccinations can be
linked to autism, increasing numbers of parents are raising questions about
whether vaccines, far from panaceas, are actually harmful to children. When the
immune system of a baby or young child is just coming online, is it such a good
idea to challenge it with antigens to so many bugs? Have the safety, efficacy
and side effects of this flood of inoculations really been worked through? Just
last month the U.S. government, which has always stood by the safety of
vaccines, acknowledged that a 9-year-old Georgia girl with a preexisting
cellular disease had been made worse by inoculations she had received as an
infant, which "significantly aggravated" the condition, resulting in a brain
disorder with autism-like symptoms.
Though the government stressed that the case was an exceptional one, it provided
exactly the smoking gun that vaccine detractors had been looking for and vaccine
proponents had been dreading. More and more, all this wrangling over risks and
benefits is leading confused parents simply to opt out of vaccines altogether.
Despite the rules requiring students to be vaccinated, doctors can issue waivers
to kids whose compromised immune system might make vaccines risky. Additionally,
all but two states allow waivers for children whose parents object to vaccines
on religious grounds; 20 allow parents to opt out on philosophical grounds.
Currently, nearly one-half of 1% of kids enrolled in school are unvaccinated
under a medical waiver; 2% to 3% have a nonmedical one, and the numbers appear
to be rising.