Cases of whooping cough in Selangor as of May this year is reportedly increasing three-fold compared to last year. Seventy-three cases of measles have been recorded in Kuala Lumpur from January to June 30 this year, involving patients from a month-old baby to a 43-year-old. 79% of those infected were not inoculated with measles vaccine. Diseases that were considered rare are now growing statistically, with the decreasing number of children, the overall trend is a problem for all of us.
An internet connection does not make us all experts and it does not make it easier to differentiate facts from lies. That is why trained doctors and nurses are of more importance today than they have ever been. With advancement in healthcare over these forty years, infectious diseases should have been eradicated by now. The irony of the situation is palpable. The fact that the diseases that we are trying to eradicate recur, we have to periodically get a booster shot of reality to maintain immunity. Here are some of the common myths:
Vaccine causes autism
This claim is entirely without merit. The anti-vaccine movement got started on a totally discredited work of Andrew Wakefield in 1998. He suggested that vaccines cause autism based on false data. Since then, Wakefield’s paper has been discredited and withdrawn from The Lancet and Wakefield has lost his medical licence for showing “callous disregard” for children’s welfare. The largest study was done in Denmark and covered all children born from January 1991 through December 1998. A total of 537,303 children of which eighty-two percent were vaccinated for MMR were examined and there was no association between vaccination and the development of autistic disorder.
If a child is going to be autistic, he or she will be autistic regardless of being vaccinated or not. The only difference between now and fifty years ago is that kids with autism are diagnosed correctly now. They used to be called ‘mentally retarded’ if they could not speak, but that diagnosis is rare now. The rates of nonverbal autism are going up at the same speed that rates of “Mental Retardation” are going down. And autistic kids who can speak were not considered to have a disease until recently. They were called eccentric, or gifted. They were musicians and writers. There is no autism epidemic.
Now, let’s pretend for a moment that vaccines DO cause autism. Could you honestly look your child in the eye and tell them “I would much prefer it if you caught polio and suffered an extremely painful death whilst your body became fully paralysed than find out that you have autism”?
Parents should have the right to make decisions about vaccinations on their own. They should not be forced to vaccinate their kids.
First, let’s go through the concept of herd immunity. It is a form of immunity from communicable diseases for an entire community. The idea is that if a high majority of people in a community are vaccinated or otherwise immune to a disease, the few who are not vaccinated are also less likely to be affected by the disease. The reason is that the disease is not easily spread when so many people are immune. The odds of the disease reaching babies who are too young to be vaccinated and those who are immunocompromised are significantly lowered. These people have to rely on a highly-immunized population at large in order to be protected from certain illnesses. The health of such people is directly endangered by the anti-vaccination movement, which is why some physicians believe that getting vaccinated is a social responsibility, not just a personal decision.
Vaccine is non-halal for Muslims
Fatwa Committee of the National Council for Islamic Religious Affairs Malaysia has agreed that most of the vaccines are halal, except for Biothrax and Rotateq vaccine that contain porcine and is only permissible to be used when there is no alternative substances and when there is a concrete proof stating that people in the country are in dire need of such vaccine. The eminent Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi stated that the lawfulness of vaccination in perspective of Islam is as clear as sunlight. It is the duty of every Muslim to ward off harm as much as possible, and while we believe in natural ways to boost immunity, that does not mean we are entitled to deny ourselves of modern medicine that has stood the test of time.
“Vaccines can “overload” a child’s immune system. My kid will be stronger if he gets exposed to it naturally and fights it off on his own!”
Vaccine is a weakened or dead version of the disease so the immune system gets used to fighting it off when the real and alive version arrives. It is not a magical steroid chemical for your immune system. Not some tiny nanobots that are injected to fight off the disease. No, that is not why your upper arm ached for a couple of days after getting the last shot: not because it was training for the Anti-Pertussis Robot Army.
Most doctors agree that a child’s immune system can handle the immune-stimulating antigens in multiple vaccines. In fact, as San Francisco-based paediatrician Dr. Laurel Schultz wrote in a recent article, children are exposed to more antigens in the environment every day than to those in all of their vaccinations combined.
Vaccines contain toxic substances.
Some vaccines contain Thiomersal, a mercury-bases preservative that prevents bacterial growth in vaccines and maintains the effectiveness of the vaccines. Thiomersal contains ethylmercury. It is eliminated from the body quickly and does not reach a toxic level in the blood. The level of Thiomersal in vaccines are too little to cause harm.
We need to stop underestimating diseases and overestimating the side effects of vaccines. Taking MMR vaccines as an example, according to statistics from American CDC, only one in a million will get a life threatening allergic reaction. Adverse Event Following Immunization (AEFI) do sometimes occur but they disappear rather quickly.
In the shadow of the sword of Damocles is one humans are not designed to endure – a frequently unappreciated blight of modern diagnostics. Vaccines have turned many childhood diseases into distant memories in industrialized countries. If people are forced to have a car insurance, they can be forced to have a deadly-eradicated-disease insurance. Australia has introduced “No Jab, No Pay” policy to cut benefits from parents who do not vaccinate their kids. Your move, Malaysia.
Junaidah Mubarak Ali is a fourth year medical student studying in the International Medical University (IMU).
References
- Wakefield AJ, Murch SH, Anthony A, Linnell J, Casson DM, Malik M, et al. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. 1998;351:637–41. [PubMed]
- Taylor B, Miller E, Farrington CP, Petropoulos MC, Favot-Mayaud I, Li J, et al. Autism and measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine: No epidemiologic evidence for a causal association. 1999;353:2026–9.[PubMed]