Seriousness: vaccines

I have had it up to here with people scaremongering about potentially dangerous ingredients in vaccines. The latest is this: Flu vaccine contains mercury (via @TimMinchin on twitter). Basically, it claims that one of the flu vaccines used for children contains a type of mercury that some people think is dangerous. Please note: SOME people. So I did a little digging of my own. I've seen scaremongering like this before, particularly with regards to the MMR vaccine. The doctor who authored the research which suggested MMR was dangerous subsequently got struck off for his dodgy research and in my eyes and others is at least partly responsible for those children who died because he scared their parents into not giving them the vaccine (see HERE - yes, I know it's wikipedia, but all the relevant references are linked within that section).

So, onto this mercury compound, thiomersal,  in the flu vaccine. Even a quick dig through that ever unreliable site wikipedia is enough to say it's probably safe. The World Health Organisation reckons there's no evidence for it being overly dangerous (see HERE, there's a lot of stuff). I mean, they're the biggies of the health world, you'd think they'd check through the research properly and come to a justified conclusion. Apparently certain people think not and this gives them grounds to write scaremongering articles like the one linked above. In particular, the article suggests that the removal of thiomersal from vaccines in the US and Europe is due to its dangerous effects. Try again, love. These two pieces say otherwise and I'm more inclined to believe them than some shoddy journalist: Mercury, Vaccines and Autism and The US Food & Drug Administration's vaccine FAQs. I promise they're both easy to read. The point is, the removal was precautionary, because at the time there seemed to be some evidence that thiomersal could be dangerous.

So, coming to the conclusion that thiomersal isn't dangerous, at least in the low doses present in vaccines, why oh why do people feel the need to write articles that say they are? Because they sell papers? Well, yes. But you know what, I think people are genuinely scared. They hear one little whisper of a possible danger and not being the logical minded individual that some people are, they don't consider the overwhelming body of evidence and latch onto the one, dire example. That's what happened with MMR. One man wrote a paper containing manipulated evidence suggesting the MMR vaccine, given to almost every child in the UK, was a cause of Autism Spectrum Disorders, the newspapers got hold of it and suddenly parents are panicking. I doubt most of them read the original paper. There is no link whatsoever between any Austism Spectrum Disorders and the MMR vaccine. None, nada, zilch. Andrew Wakefield, the man who wrote the paper, was struck off in May last year (2010). Among the charges against him were 12 counts of abusing developmentally challenged children, i.e. those children with autism that he used to give (shoddy) evidence for his study.


Basically, everything about Wakefield's study was a load of absolute bollocks. Having said that, if the newspapers hadn't got a hold of it, maybe we wouldn't have had the problem we had. The paper would have sat in an issue of The Lancet (a medical journal) quietly by itself, perhaps provoking some discussion among medical professionals. Instead we got nationwide panic, vaccination levels dropping and a few years later, guess what makes a comeback? Measles, mumps and rubella. Measles and mumps especially and they kill people. The man sickens me.


What's really awful though, is that even though the study has been discredited and its author struck off, people still won't vaccinate their kids because they're scared. When I was with my relatives near Sydney at Christmas, I discovered that my mum's cousin isn't going to vaccinate her 5 month old little girl. Her older sister has a son with autism and the family seem scared that it was the vaccines that did it. Regardless of the fact that his older brother is fine, they're still scared. Now, I can kind of understand this, but you know what they're using as an alternative? Homeopathy. Yes. Homeopathy, this biggest load of bull the medical world has ever come across. There is absolutely no scientific evidence that it works. How can it, when the doses are so dilute there's basically no active ingredient left? The only effect you're going to get is placebo and I'm sorry, love, but that won't work against diseases. It hurt to see them putting their beautiful little girl at so much risk, simply through fear. I wanted to say something, but my mum gave me a warning look, like, don't upset them. Upset them? By all means, if it'll protect their daughter.


And at that, I am going to end, because I'm getting pissed off once again about something I can do nothing about. Suffice to say, all vaccines are stringently tested before use and if you do happen to come across something that claims a vaccine is not safe, I'd advise you to read up on it before you freak out. Things are not always as the newspapers make them out to be.