Protesting vaccines: Fact or Myth

Antivaccination movements often can have a significant effect on public health, primarily as a result of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. But, are the fears and concerns of the antivaccination movement unwarranted? What is the trade-off between benefit and risk? While 19th- and early-20th-century fears of vaccination might have been based on anecdotal horror stories, vaccine safety is a real and constant concern. New vaccines and vaccine combinations that provide a wider array of protection from diseases often require more injections, which, in rare cases, may lead to serious reactions. As with other pharmaceutical products, vaccines can produce side effects ranging from local injection-site soreness or redness to low-grade fevers to more serious adverse events. Therefore, safety concerns are not entirely off base. Public health experts believe that the system of routine childhood immunizations rests on a tenuous foundation of public support. Primarily because the success of immunization programs depends on parents' beliefs that vaccinating their children is safer than not doing so, it is imperative that parents and the public understand the risks as well as the benefits of vaccination. Parents should understand the consequences of choosing not to vaccinate. For some diseases, for example, pertussis, unvaccinated children are much more likely to contract the disease compared with children who are vaccinated.

Yet, all it takes is the hint of vaccine-safety controversy to scare off people from getting vaccinated. For example, in 1976, there was a scare that the swine influenza vaccine was associated with a severe paralytic illness called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS). During the 1976-1977 swine influenza vaccination campaign, for example, 1,300 cases of GBS were reported to the CDC.[54] According to the CDC's vaccine information sheet on the influenza vaccine, if there is a risk of GBS from this influenza vaccine, it is estimated at one or two cases per million persons vaccinated, much less than the risk of severe influenza. Nevertheless, at that time, fear of developing GBS after a flu shot heightened distrust of getting an influenza vaccination. The overwhelming majority of people who get the influenza vaccine have no serious problem from it.

Also in the 1970s, when a suggested connection between the DPT vaccine and neurological damage in children was alleged, acceptance of this vaccine plummeted, resulting in a widespread resurgence of pertussis, especially in Great Britain where parents refused to have their children immunized.[55] Many parents who chose not to vaccinate their children doubted the reliability of vaccination information from authorities, believing that doctors overestimate protection and underestimate dangers of vaccines.[56] Furthermore, vaccines have been so effective that many parents, thankfully, have never seen cases of diseases against which vaccines protect, which in a sense diminishes the vaccine's perceived value and creates apathy.[57] A survey showed that 25 percent of those polled felt that children receive more vaccines than needed.[58] Between 1990 and 2000, for example, vaccines against four diseases (Haemophilus influenza type B, hepatitis B, chicken pox, and pneumococcal disease), entailing 10 to 12 injections, were added to the immunization schedule. Parents felt that children were becoming "pediatric pin cushions."[59]