11 Vaccine Myths That Just Refuse To Die: Debunked

Vaccines. Tiny vials of scientific medical technology that have successfully eradicated smallpox, and measles, increased our lifespan and decreased the need for having as many children as possible in the hopes one or two of them will survive passed infancy.

Vaccines are a product of their own success. Ever since the invention of the smallpox vaccine in 1796, vaccines have done their job preventing disease and building a protective wall around the community to decrease the chance we ever experience our lungs filling with fluid due to an invasion by one of the 23+ strains of Streptococcus pneumonia bacteria.

Vaccines, however, aren’t without opposition.

A small but vocal minority of people have come together to attempt to ban vaccines bringing with them a trial of pseudoscience, misinformation and conspiracy theories to help them in their quest. They feel that vaccines are the cause of every major illness and behavioural disorder known and unknown, that the world’s governments are engaged in a secret plot to use vaccines to make pharmaceutical companies rich and that vaccines are nothing more than poison developed by scientists for profit. Disregarding the fact that scientists have children who have been vaccinated.

Talk to five members of the anti-vaccine movement, and you’ll come away with five different answers as to why they are against vaccination technology. Today I want to look at the science of vaccine technology and how they function to prevent disease, the results of their use and take a crack at some of the myths the anti-vaccine community hold near and dear.