IMM250
February 22, 2018

Fighting the Good Fight: Separating Science from Non-Science in the Struggle for Vaccination
You’d have to forgive a parent who knows nothing about vaccination their initial
trepidation. The very word “vaccination”, after all, might evoke in some visions of a deranged
scientist in a lab coat jabbing wildly at their child with strange fluids, like some macabre hack-
and-slash killer from a horror movie. That’s natural. We’re at our most emotional when we’re
thinking of our kids—our desire to protect and nurture them is a force that has a hold over every
parent. However, in order to keep our families happy, healthy, and strong, it is an emotional
response that needs to be overcome.
This same paranoia and fear, in what currently manifests as a generation of anti-vaccine
parents and politicians (anti-vaxxers), is nothing new. Edward Jenner, back in 1795, met such
resistance after he created the first vaccine, designed to counter a disease in smallpox that was
killing 400,000 people a year at that time. Caused by the virus Variola major, the disease would
blister and scar the skin of its unfortunate hosts, blinding some and killing one-third of those
infected. Jenner, searching desperately for a way to prevent its spread, noticed something curious
however. Milk-maids, although sporting nasty blisters on their hands from the cowpox virus
present on bovine udders, did not contract the disease. Did previous exposure to cowpox (a less
virulent relative of smallpox) in some way prevent the development of the disease, he wondered?
In 1796, Jenner inoculated a young boy named James Phipps with the pus from one of these
cowpox blisters and then exposed him to scabs from smallpox patients to test his hypothesis.
Phipps developed a slight fever, but quickly recovered and otherwise walked away unscathed.
Despite it’s life saving power, parents throughout England objected to vaccination
strongly. Parents thought it barbaric to harm their children through the act of inoculation, while
the clergy seconded their outrage out of concern for the use of animal secretions in the vaccine
itself, a perversion they deemed unnatural. Indeed, over the next century the mistrust between the
paranoid and the scientific community would grow so much that over a hundred thousand
citizens would come out to protest compulsory vaccination law in the city of Leicester in 1885.
When all was done and dusted though, it was the vaccination technique that Jenner helped
pioneer that led to the complete eradication of smallpox just under two centuries later, in 1980,
by the World Health Organization. Vaccination, in the cases of smallpox, polio, and many other
diseases, has undoubtedly changed the course of history for the better. However, just as in the
19th century, modern opposition threatens to derail that good work and leave the most vulnerable
among us at risk. The best way to deal with this anti-vaxxer mentality is through education—
dispelling the myths that surround vaccination is the best way to increase its adoption once more,
and the point of this article is to do exactly that.
The first pervasive myth that often scares parents away from vaccination is the link
between the MMR vaccine (a vaccine that provides immunity against measles, the mumps, and
rubella simultaneously) and autism. In an explosive paper published in 1998 by the prominent
medical journal Lancet, Andrew Wakefield, an English gastroenterologist, claimed that nine of
twelve previously normal children he studied developed autism (this form of autism, affecting
what had been normally developing children, is described as regressive by those within the
medical community) within weeks of MMR administration. Panic overtook the world, and
vaccination uptake rates in England dropped from 92% in 1995 to 80% in 2003. The link was
damning but had just one issue—it wasn’t backed by any science. In a brilliant piece of
investigative journalism, Brian Deer of the Sunday Times interviewed the families of the study’s
subjects and found that only one of nine children purported to have developed regressive autism
actually had developed regressive autism. Five of the rest had pre-existing conditions, and a
further three didn’t have autism at all. Additional sleuthing put the final nail in the paper’s
coffin—Andrew Wakefield had been paid 150 pounds per hour throughout the course of the
study by parents eager to launch an anti-vaccine lawsuit through a lawyer named Richard Barr.
Although the paper was eventually retracted, and Mr. Wakefield’s medical license stripped, Mr.
Wakefield would earn roughly 436,000 pounds from the fiasco and would do irreparable damage
to the kids suffering from the measles outbreaks that ran amok following his forgery. Although
among the first in the modern era, it wouldn’t be the last allegation to hit vaccines—soon,
mistrust would popularize the idea of immune “overload” and cripple vaccine uptake yet again.
The MMR vaccine, as mentioned above, provides protection to measles, the mumps, and
rubella simultaneously. It does this by presenting the body with weakened, or attenuated, forms
of the viruses they are designed to immunize against; this way, the body gains an introduction to
the antigens (the toxins that the immune system responds to) that the microbial invader produces
and learns to respond to them without threat of actual infection. Next time, when the immune
system encounters those viruses in the real world, it is able to mount a defence so quickly that
not even the more virulent strains are allowed to spread. Some parents worry, though, that the
MMR vaccine, by providing exposure to three different (albeit attenuated) viruses at the same
time, will “overload” their child’s immune system and leave them vulnerable to secondary
infections. While the idea might seem scientifically plausible, research has shown that the exact
opposite is true. A study from the Health Protection Agency in England looked at children
ranging in age from twelve to twenty-three months in London and found that the MMR vaccine
led to a reduced risk of both bacterial and viral infection in the thirty days following
administration, with no increased risk in any time period after. The Center for Disease Control in
the United States added their voice in support, noting that the efficiency of multi-antigen
vaccination also saved parents considerable time and money. As these rumours swirled, one
more myth came to dominate vaccine discussion. Concerned parents, politicians, and even
celebrities like Robert De Niro (who offered $100,000 to anyone who could prove vaccine
safety) found a vaccine ingredient that just wasn’t sitting right with them. A ubiquitous vaccine
preservative, the compound thiomersal sounded innocent enough—however, concerned groups
weren’t letting the fact that it contained mercury slip past them.
Mercury gets a bad rap today, and rightfully so. If you’ve ever read Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland, you’d be interested to know that the Mad Hatter’s madness didn’t simply strike out
of the blue—Lewis Carroll, the author of the classic work, took inspiration from the issues
surrounding real-life hatters, who used mercury nitrate to turn animal fur into the felt they
needed. Prolonged exposure to the element was toxic, and many craftsmen soon developed
hallucinations, physical tremors, and a host of personality disorders. The heavy metal, as
scientists eventually discovered, is incredibly toxic to the central nervous system and can be
lethal in sufficient doses. However, the form in which mercury is present in the human body
matters, and with thiomersal, mercury’s presence is safe. A mercury derivative known as
methylmercury is the form that is toxic to humans, and its presence in seafood is the reason
regulatory bodies advise that the consumption of certain fish should be limited. However, when
thiomersal is metabolized by the human body, it breaks down into ethylmercury and another
compound called thiosalicylate, both of which are excreted with ease. Mercury is not allowed to
build up, and so its deleterious effects are never felt. The World Health Organization, the
American Academy of Pediatrics, and the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal
Products have all launched independent studies that reject any link between thiomersal
consumption and health risk. There is no scientific evidence to doubt the safety of vaccines, and
until peer-reviewed evidence gives us reason to worry, these myths will continue to be exactly
that—myths, and nothing more.
Some, however, do not frame the issues surrounding vaccines as medical in nature.
Instead, according to politicians like Rand Paul and Chris Christie, it is a matter of liberty, and
parents must have “some measure of choice”. It simply isn’t right for the government to tell
concerned parents what they can and cannot do when it comes to their children. There’s a serious
flaw in this argument, though. Libertarians all agree that the individual should have complete
freedom of choice, and that is an admirable goal—but freedom doesn’t give one the right to
inflict harm on others, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. John Locke, the grandfather of the
Libertarian movement himself, declared that the paths that one pursues cannot harm the “Life,
Health, Liberty, or Possessions” of another. Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children not
only threaten the health of their own children, but also threated the health of the ill, the old, and
those too young to undergo the process. It provides a vector for disease to target the most
vulnerable among society and infringe upon their right to life, and that’s why the debate
surrounding vaccination shouldn’t be about choice either. Vaccination is a duty that one holds to
the rest of society, and so the faster this clamor is laid to rest, the better.


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