To vaccinate or not to vaccinate?

Vaccines seem to be in the limelight in several countries in the world today. Different factions of the society are denouncing vaccines, adding to the growing tide of anti-vaxxers. On the flip side, diseases such as measles, whose vaccine has been around since the 1970s, has recently made a comeback. Is the anti-vaccine movement new? Are vaccines useful or are they dangerous tools propagated by “fake news”?

Controversies over vaccination began approximately 80 years before the terms vaccine and vaccination were coined. There were severe religious objections, one of which included a sermon in 1772 by an English theologian Edmund Massey. The sermon titled “The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation” stated that diseases were God’s way of punishing sin and any attempt to prevent smallpox was diabolical. This sermon was published and soon reached North America where it contributed to the initial opposition movement.

However, there were several clergymen, including Robert Ferryman and Rowland Hill who were influential advocates of vaccination. Ultimately, the anti-vaccine movement was galvanized due to legislation, both in England and North America, that made vaccination compulsory. Although vaccination worked, there were no techniques to ensure quality control. Therefore, the vaccines were sometimes contaminated with pathogens, leading to diseases such as tuberculosis, syphilis, and tetanus. As a compromise, governments introduced clauses that allowed parents to opt out of compulsory vaccination, provided that they fully understood the associated risks. Furthermore, smallpox recurred in previously vaccinated individuals, which caused anti-vaccine proponents to point out that vaccine protection was not absolute.

In the 20th century, there were several mishaps in vaccine formulation that caused major setbacks for pro-vaccination advocates. In 1901, antitoxin from a horse named Jim was contaminated with tetanus and killed 13 children in St. Louis, Missouri. In the same year 9 children in Camden, New Jersey died from contaminated smallpox vaccines. To add to this, Cutter Laboratories produced 120,000 doses of the Salk vaccine which were contaminated with live poliovirus in 1955. The vaccine caused 40,000 cases of polio, 53 cases of paralysis, and 5 deaths. The resulting polio epidemic was one of the worst pharmaceutical disasters in U.S. history.

One of the biggest vaccine controversies today involves the theory that thimerosal, a preservative used in some DPT vaccines, causes autism. Thimerosal gained popularity during World War I because it improved the vaccine shelf life and prevented the growth of pathogenic contaminants. Furthermore, thimerosal did not have any adverse health effects. The first real concern over thimerosal arose in the 1970s when it was discovered that methylmercury, which was used as a fungicide in agriculture, caused adverse health effects. This form of mercury is distinct from thimerosal, and unlike thimerosal, it is harmful to humans. Methylmercury also affects the fetus resulting in neurological defects in newborns. This observation set the stage for the autism controversy. In the 1990s several studies were carried out to understand the factors that contribute to the development of autism. Unfortunately, there were several conflicting theories on the causes and treatment methods of autism. Disillusioned by the lack of scientific consensus, parents of autistic children blamed thimerosal. Unfortunately, this erroneous belief is still propagated today. Currently one out of seven types of DPT vaccine uses thimerosal and the dose used has been shown to be non-toxic. Furthermore, thimerosal has been phased out of most vaccines as a precautionary measure.

The other noteworthy vaccine controversy is the claim that the MMR vaccine results in autism.  The controversy started in 1998 with the publication of a fraudulent research paper by Andrew Wakefield. This paper is singularly damaging because of the media attention it received that led to the repeated propagation of its findings. It is important to remember that the conclusions of the paper are inaccurate, several of the data have been manipulated, and the paper has been completely retracted. According to the paper, eight out of the twelve children investigated had developed pathologies related to autism after the vaccine was administered. Although the link between autism and the pathologies is real, the paper did not provide conclusive evidence that the MMR vaccine was involved. Several studies, including a 2012 study which involved 14,700,000 children, have concluded that there is no relation between the vaccine and the incidence of autism.

This article has highlighted the centuries of work that have gone into developing vaccines. It is this work that has eradicated smallpox, nearly eradicated polio, saved lives, and prevented infectious diseases including anthrax, cholera, influenza, and typhoid. Forgetting the benefits of the vaccine, listening to adverse media coverage, and believing fraudulent articles has terrifying and far-reaching consequences. Routine vaccinations are a cost-effective practice for disease prevention. More importantly, incomplete vaccine coverage weakens herd immunity – where the population of immune individuals protects non-immune individuals. Herd immunity reduces the possibility of a non-immune individual coming in contact with a carrier of the infection. The increase in measles outbreaks in different parts of the world in the past decade are evidence of this fact.

The benefit of herd immunity.  Source.

Author:

Ananya Sen is currently a Ph.D. student in Microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When she’s not studying oxidative stress, she is busy pursuing her passion for scientific writing. Currently, she contributes articles to ASM,  ScienceSeeker, and her own blog where she discusses the history of various scientific processes. She is an ardent reader and will happily discuss anything from Jane Austen to Gillian Flynn. Her graduation goals include covering all the national parks in the U.S. with her sidekick Oscar, a Schnauzer/Pomeranian mix.

Illustrator:

Arghya Manna is a comics artist, illustrator, and a Ph.D. dropout. He began his career as a doctoral student at Bose Institute, India. He had been working on Tumor Cell migration in a 3D environment. Along with this, he was an active participant in several projects related to tumor immunology and cancer stem cell. After leaving the lab without bagging the degree Arghya found refuge in art and got involved in drawing comics. He is an enthusiast in History of Science and has been running a blog named “Drawing History of Science”. Arghya wishes to engage the readers of history and science with the amalgamation of images and texts.

Editors:

Paurvi Shinde and Roopsha Sengupta

Paurvi Shinde did her Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Connecticut Health. She currently works as a Post Doc Fellow at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where she studies the role of immune cells in providing protection against HSV-2 infection. Apart from research, she loves editing articles, listening to podcasts, dancing and hiking in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Follow her on Linkedin.

Roopsha Sengupta is the Editor-in-Chief at ClubSciWri. She did her Ph.D. at the Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna and postdoctoral research at the Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, UK, specializing in the field of Epigenetics. During her research, she was involved in many exciting discoveries and had the privilege of working and collaborating with a number of inspiring scientists. As an editor for ClubSciWri, she loves working on a wide range of topics and presenting articles coherently, while nudging authors to give their best.

Blog design: Roopsha Sengupta

This blog was previously published, this is the edited version.

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