Over the past several decades there has been a movement in the U.S. to increase the awareness of concern over the side effects of vaccines. This has resulted in a decrease in vaccination rates and an increase in public concern over vaccine safety. The resulting “antivaccine” movement and public awareness campaigns have resulted in a generalized public fear of vaccines such as the Measles/Mumps/Rubella and Influenza vaccines. The following information summarizes briefly a history of this movement and ends with data in favor of vaccination.

In 1982 a documentary called “DPT: Vaccine Roulette” aired that attributed childhood epilepsy and mental retardation to the pertussis vaccine. The result of this was the mobilization of a group called Dissatisfied Parents Together and through its lobbying efforts congressional hearings occurred to assess vaccine safety. A slew of lawsuits occurred shortly thereafter and due to the costs of litigation most of the vaccine makers of this particular vaccine went out of business. At the same time the costs of the vaccine went from about $0.19 in 1980 per shot to over $12 in 1986 to cover the legal expenses that had ensued. Another inadvertent effect of the newly increased legal costs of the vaccine business was the number of manufacerors of the OPV/MMR/DPT fell from 3 to 1,6 to 1, and 8 to 1 respectively. In 2006 a research article was published by Berkovic that showed the majority of children who were purportedly harmed by the DPT vaccine in fact had a genetic defect (SCN1A mutation) that caused their seizures. This article never received any publicity and most physicians are not even aware of it. To this date there are significant concerns about the DPT's safety despite this study and information to the contrary.

The National Vaccine Information center claims that the infectious diseases we once had have been replaced by chronic diseases caused by the vaccines that eliminated those diseases. This group claims that the Hib Vaccine causes diabetes, pneumococcal vaccine causes seizures, the HPV vaccine causes chronic fatigue syndrome and the hepatitis B vaccine causes sudden infant death syndrome. This information has been disseminated through various media outlets and is commonly found on the internet which is the most common single outlet for medical information.

The legal requirements for getting vaccinated in the U.S. dates back to an outbreak of small pox in Boston in 1905. During this epidemic 200 residents died and the city placed a $5 fine on any resident of the city who refused to get vaccinated. Since then it has become commonplace to require childhood vaccines in order to prevent communicable diseases.

The logical question to all of this is what have we seen happen in local communities where people voluntarily refuse to have their children vaccinated. In 1972 there was an outbreak of polio in a Christian Science school in Greenwich, CN (at that time almost none of the students were vaccinated due to the religious convictions of their parents). Eleven of 128 students were paralyzed (8.5%). Of note, the epidemic did not spread to the vaccinated local community. The incidence of such outbreaks has increased in recent decades. In 2008 about 140 contracted measles in California, this outbreak was started by a single unvaccinated child who visited Switzerland. Over the last several years there have been several outbreaks of pertussis in Chicago and several other major cities. These are but a few of the current examples.

It is easy to forget that during our grandparents childhoods’ polio, meals, meningitis were all common illnesses and many children were disabled or died from these diseases. In 1900 there were 21,064 cases of smallpox, in 1920 469,924 cases of measles and 147,991 of diphtheria. In 1922 there were 107,473 cases of pertussis. In the 1950’s there were an average of 16,000 cases of polio annually. Prior to the implementation of the Hib vaccine in 1987 there were 20,000 cases of invasive disease annually. To put this impact into perspective, smallpox in now eradicated from the U.S., there were only 152 cases of polio from 1980-1999. In 2008 there were only 131 cases of measles and in 2001 there were 17 deaths from pertussis. It is easy to see from these numbers that the reduction is disease has been dramatic yet the movement against such common vaccines as the flu vaccine and TdAP is still alive and strong. Since we no longer see these devastating diseases, we have forgotten their impact and now are debating rare and questionable side effects. When we talk about the adverse events from vaccines we usually use numbers ranging from 1 in 500,000 to 1 in 1.2 million. So even if there is a negative impact it is extremely rare.

For a comparison chart of diseases from the prevaccine era vs. today please visit www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/G/impact-of-vaccines.pdf
The reduction is disease is staggering.

If you want more information about this you can reference the CDC website at www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00056803.htm

As always, if you have additional questions or concerns please discuss this with your physician.