Vaccines are one of the most successful scientific breakthroughs and most cost-effective health investments in history. In fact, with the exception of safe drinking water, vaccine is widely considered to be the greatest medical invention of modern civilization. So how did we get to this point where parents refuse to allow their children to receive vaccines? Vaccines are victims of their own success. Vaccines have been so effective in fighting childhood diseases that most parents today have never seen or heard of a case of measles, rubella, meningitis, polio or pertussis. These diseases have become so rare that most people are not aware of them. Majority of humans process visual information better and are visual beings – out of sight, out of mind. We rarely see people infected with measles so we think measles no longer exists.

Many people these days are more afraid of vaccines than of the diseases they prevent. This fear of vaccines has been perpetuated by celebrities, fraudulent and now stripped-of-medical-license researchers, blogs and media hype. People avoid vaccines for several reasons. Some have concerns over the use of aluminum, formaldehyde or mercury admixed in vaccines. These chemicals are toxic at certain levels, but only trace amounts are used in vaccines. In fact, our own metabolic systems produce more formaldehyde than is used in vaccines and there is no robust and reliable scientific evidence that the very low levels of mercury or aluminum in some vaccines can cause harm. In the UK, decreasing rates of the use of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination have paralleled the reappearance of the diseases and this was due to the fraudulent research paper in the medical journal The Lancet that claimed that autism spectrum disorders were linked to the MMR vaccine. The paper has since been completely discredited, the researcher lost his medical license, and the paper was retracted. The British Medical Journal published a series of articles on the exposure of the fraud, which appears to have taken place for financial gain. Yet this vaccine – autism story still lives on in anti-vaccine blogs and continues to be shared every now and then in social media. And we don’t anticipate this story to end any time soon despite having been disproved and discredited several times over and over again in the last 2 decades. US President-elect Donald Trump met with prominent anti-vaccine proponents during fundraising events this summer.
I came from a country in Southeast Asia considered low-middle income (by World Bank’s definition) where people value vaccines. In my previous role, I had the privilege of spending some time in Africa – I have worked with local doctors and spoke to mothers who understand the importance of vaccines because the compelling need forces them to focus on the benefit. In economically developed countries, parents worry more about theoretical side effects and risks blown out of proportion.
If you Google “vaccines” and “safe” – the overwhelming breadth of (mis)information available makes it feel almost impossible to bridge the dialogue gap, because the genuine scientific understanding of facts and reliable information is very different from the pseudo-science on the internet. What makes an expert? In the 2008 best-selling book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the “10,000-Hour Rule” – that is, the key to achieving mastery in any skill largely depends on practicing the correct way, for a total of ~10,000 hours. If you’re browsing the internet trying to learn about vaccines and immunology for two to three hours each day, you’d need 3,300 to 5,000 days, around nine to fourteen years, to get close. If someone spends that amount of time reading credible and peer-reviewed information about vaccines, infectious diseases, and immunology, that someone will appreciate the evidence in support of vaccines – and I am almost sure that he or she will become a convert and a solid supporter of them. Gladwell’s critics argue that you can accelerate learning and master something in much less time than you think – but vaccinology and immunology needs a lot of reading and doing and cannot be mastered by browsing the internet. The immune system takes years to understand. I have been working on vaccines for over 8 years now (a couple more years and I can claim to be a world class expert per Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule, yay!), but I do not claim to know everything about the immune system. It is a complex system of organs, immunoglobulins, cells, proteins with different functions and researchers spend years to understand just one tiny portion. How can someone just reading Google hits for a few hours believe they know everything about something?

Photo credit: CDC/ Amanda Mills
Vaccines are safe, despite implications to the contrary in many blogs and anti-vaccine publications. They are thoroughly tested for safety and must undergo strict evaluation by national authorities before they are made routinely available. Each vaccine is continually monitored, even after it has been introduced. Independent experts and the WHO have shown that vaccines are far safer than medicines. Most adverse events after vaccination are minor and temporary, such as pain and swelling of the injection site or mild fever. More serious adverse events occur rarely.
Also, the media needs to be responsible in their reporting. The negative aspects of vaccination get much more publicity than the positive aspects. Sadly, our brains are more likely to accept statements as being true if they are frequently repeated, even if we are aware of facts that contradict those statements. The “so-called” fair and balanced reporting of both sides of the argument is not fair and balanced – it is not fair to report on emotional interviews of mothers of kids who claim to have been harmed by vaccines together with ‘boring’ scientific data talking about vaccine safety. Why can’t media show mothers whose kids were harmed by diseases because they refused to have them vaccinated? Media likes to sensationalize only one side and this is doing more harm than good and devalues vaccines. Vaccines deserve better press. This is not a matter of opinion, but of scientific evidence and public health and safety. Telling people that they are wrong only strengthens their pre-existing positions. The truth is now just an opinion. Unfortunately, thanks to social media, people can live in their own bubble of opinion of “truth” for as long as they like.
Melvin Sanicas is a Vaccinologist, Public Health Physician and a Regional Medical Expert, Sanofi Pasteur
Scientific evidence supporting vaccines has been accumulated for decades now – vaccines work! “Media likes to sensationalize only one side and this is doing more harm than good and devalues vaccines. Vaccines deserve better press. This is not a matter of opinion, but of scientific evidence and public health and safety!”
Great article! This should be shared widely so more people will read it. #VaccinesWork http://www.vaccineswork.org/
If the 10,000 hour rule is followed, not one single medical professional is qualified to give advice on vaccines after qualifying. When looking at the time spent during medical studies and the amount of study material in their syllabus, at most 5 pages is dedicated to the subject of vaccines and the immune system, with lecture time limited to at most seven hours according to doctors that have completed their studies. In many medical schools a new trend of removing study material related to vaccinations has emerged, with Germany seeming to lead the charge. Fortunately the Lancet still has Wakefield’s CASE REPORT available for all to read where it states: “We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described. Virological studies are underway that may help to resolve this issue.” The full GMC charge sheet is also available on Brian Deer’s website so that people can see for themselves under what charges Wakefield lost his licence. Another indicator of how dichotomous the information is regarding vaccine ingredients with formaldehyde as an example, it is deemed safe in trace amounts when injected and the fact that the body manufactures its own is used to justify its use as safe, but when flooring sold by Lumber Liquidators in the USA was found to exceed the 0,09-0,13 parts per million emission standard as stipulated by the EPA, mayhem ensued. The FDA allows a level of 200 ppm in vaccines, or 0,02%.
Agree with you on the Wakefield Case Report and the information on vaccine ingredients. On your first sentence – actually doctors who are specialized on infectious diseases or immunology or pediatrics easily reach this 10,000 hour rule. They typically work 8-10 hours 5-6 days a week 51-52 weeks a year. So let’s take 8 minimum x 5 days x 50 weeks = this is 2,000 hours per year. This does not include the time they spend reading publications at home. Depending on the education system it takes them 4 to 6 years to finish postgraduate training after medical school. For others who pursued Masters or PhD in Vaccines / Vaccinology / Immunology the hours are much longer. This is from experience as a physician with MD and PhD