Earlier this year, measles spread from an unvaccinated woman to seven individuals at Disneyland. The outbreak has since expanded to 26 people in California. Since then, the virus has spread to Canada. Measles declined drastically in Canada by 1997 because of vaccinations, but the growing anti-vaccination movement has caused a resurgence in the childhood disease.
In 1998, a paper was published in the medical journal The Lancet purporting to have uncovered a link between the childhood MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism. However, after the efforts of journalist Brian Deer revealed that the study was flawed and in some cases, outright fraudulent, the paper was retracted in 2010.
“After The Lancet, medical bodies across the world published scientific reviews and have rejected any causal association between the MMR vaccine and autism,” said Dr. Simon Kapaj, a public health physician with the Saskatoon Health Region.
But the damage was done. According to UNICEF, Canada’s vaccination rate is at 84 per cent, which is about 10 per cent less than the threshold for herd immunity, which refers to having so many people vaccinated that the disease cannot take hold. This protects infants and those who can’t get vaccinated for whatever reason.
Parents are worried about their children getting drastic reactions from the vaccinations. This fear is not helped by a recently retracted Toronto Star article telling stories about girls who received the HPV vaccine Gardasil and then got sick. The article was flawed in that there was no scientific evidence linking the illnesses to the vaccine.
In the wake of the MMR-autism controversy, study after study was done, some with hundreds of thousands of subjects. There was never any evidence showing that the vaccine caused autism.
Reactions to the vaccines aren’t that uncommon, but they’re also nothing to worry about. According to Kapaj, some reactions to the vaccine include local swelling or sometimes fever. Since the reactions occur very soon after receiving the vaccination, doctors know what the cause is. If reactions occur weeks or months later, it could be explained by another cause.
“If it’s a child, children go to school, there might be some type of virus going around ... it might be another medical condition that the child has,” Kapaj said. “It’s difficult to associate it with the vaccine.”
Vaccines are rigorously tested before going on the market, and Kapaj says it takes about 10 years of research and development for a vaccine to be approved by Health Canada. After that, they’re consistently monitored for safety and effectiveness.
“The vaccine is one of the best biological products that is produced,” Kapaj said. “It’s very safe and it goes through a very strict process of approval before it gets on the market and before it’s provided to our children.”
One concern by anti-vaccine proponents is that since “Big Pharma” is making money off vaccines, they have a motive to obscure the risks and push the product out onto the market as soon as possible. On the contrary, Kapaj said that vaccine monitoring is a very transparent process and furthermore, physicians are part of the community and not connected to a pharmaceutical company.
In Canada, adverse effects to the vaccine can be reported to the Vaccine Adverse Effect Reporting System (VAERS). The Toronto Star story about Gardasil took its data from VAERS and reported it as fact. However, the system is monitored by the Public Health Agency of Canada and reports are investigated. In 2009, the CDC and FDA released a report analyzing VAERS data on the HPV vaccine. They found that of over 23 million doses of the HPV vaccine between June 2006 and December 2008, 12,424 adverse effects were reported. Of these, 94 per cent were not serious – the adverse effects included nausea, fainting, dizziness, headache, or local reactions at the time of the injection. Of the 32 deaths reported to VAERS, none were connected to the vaccine.
Another concern with vaccines that gets brought up is the presence of toxic substances in the vaccines, such as aluminum or mercury. According to Kapaj, the presence of aluminum is so small as to be negligible.
“Aluminum is in our environment, present in the breastmilk as well,” he said. “The amount that children receive is so small that it’s not considered a risk at all.”
As for thimerosal (a type of mercury, which is a preservative), it hasn’t been used in childhood vaccines since 2001, and the MMR vaccine never had thimerosal in the first place.
A related concern is that children’s immune systems can’t handle the vaccine schedule recommended by Immunization Canada. However, Kapaj said that the number of antigens (a foreign substance used to induce an immune reaction) is very small compared with the number of reactions that the human body has to initiate any type of infection.
“The number of antigens in vaccines is smaller than what our immune system on a daily basis has to fight to protect immunity,” he said.
An individual’s decision whether or not to vaccinate does not only affect them. Herd immunity is needed to protect infants and immunocompromised people as well.
“Measles is coming back because not as many people are getting the vaccine and it is causing problems from one community to the other,” Kapaj said.
Whooping cough is also making a comeback, and it can cause coughing spells, lung infection, and brain damage. One in 400 babies (too young to get the vaccine) who get whooping cough will die.
Above all, the decision to vaccinate or not vaccinate affects the community.
“It is important that parents understand the consequences of not getting the vaccine,” Kapaj said. “And at the end of the day it is also important that it is not only your child or my child at risk, it’s everybody’s child.”
