Don't Get Sick of Vaccines!

If I’ve learned anything from playing poker, it’s that fear is much easier to perpetuate than trust. Unfortunately, fear has once again been injected into our society on a topic far more high stakes than a card game: children’s health. As vaccine numbers have been dropping and vaccine-preventable diseases have been rising, it’s vital to separate fact from opinion to ensure our safest possible future.

So let’s address some of the most common fears. If you vaccinate your child…

Will your child become autistic?

The rumor that vaccines cause autism didn’t start off as a rumor at all, but rather a conclusion in a highly respected medical journal (The Lancet) in 1997. Despite the paper having been completely discredited since, the fear was never completely extinguished. Sadly, scientists have not a definitive cause of autism, so many are still looking for something to blame. And thus, the reputation of vaccines have suffered. But rest assured, all of the studies that have been conducted since have not proven ANY correlation or causation between vaccines and autism.

Will you child be harmed by receiving too many vaccines?

Parents who believe their child can’t handle the CDC’s recommended 49 doses of vaccines before 6 years old likely don’t understand what their child can handle. The scientists at publichealth.org stated, “a baby would theoretically have the ability to respond to around 10,000 vaccines at one time.” Therefore, while 49 injections may seem like a scary amount, it really only uses a tiny fraction of your child’s immune system.

Will your child be poisoned by the toxins in vaccines?

Some vaccines have tiny amounts of toxic substances such as formaldehyde, mercury or aluminum. So many beg the question, how harmful are these vaccines? The actual answer is not at all. The amount of these toxins in vaccines is so small that they pose no threat to the human body. The FDA concluded, “formaldehyde is produced at higher rates by our own metabolic systems.” Therefore, the components making up these vaccines sound much scarier than they actually are.

So if you decide to vaccinate your child, they will simply be protected from many major diseases modern medicine has been preventing for decades.

Sources Used:

http://www.publichealth.org/public-awareness/understanding-vaccines/vaccine-myths-debunked/