11 Vaccine Myths That Just Refuse To Die: Debunked
10. Myth: Vaccine Injury
In order to accept the idea that a highly contiguous disease such as measles or diphtheria or tuberculosis is less harmful than the technology designed to prevent it, anti-vaxxers will state that “Vaccine Injures” are much more prevalent now than in pre-vaccine times, and that we are faced with an “epidemic of vaccine caused disease”. Illnesses and conditions ranging from diabetes, AIDS, autism, SIDS and the various cancers have been promoted as being caused by getting one or several vaccinations.
The “research” offered as supporting evidence for these ideas is low quality, poorly designed and riddled with flaws at best. Often, the study itself doesn’t even support the idea being put forth, or the person making the claim is making it not based on science but correlation of unrelated events.
The idea of a “vaccine injury” originated as a by-product of the known fact that vaccinations – like all pharmaceutical – intervention can have side effects, an adverse event or even adverse reactions. Pain at the injection site is a common side effect of vaccination. Meanwhile, an adverse event may be having diarrhea after an influenza shot; it happens while I was undergoing treatment but is not linked to the treatment.
An adverse event doesn’t need to be linked to the vaccination at all, but they do need to be reported for further research. Adverse reactions are reactions that happen where a causal link between the reaction and the vaccination has been found – anaphylaxis for example. The side effects, events, and reactions are all well-documented and monitored.
The “vaccine injuries are more prevalent now than in pre-vaccine times” argument doesn’t make a lot of sense; diabetes has been reported since the time of the ancient Greeks and so have the various cancers. The difference between now and then is that doctor has better diagnostic tools to find and treat these illnesses, rather than them going unnoticed or untreated. The myth that vaccines cause Type 1 diabetes has been debunked several times, the so-called vaccine link to Autism has been refuted so thoroughly that when an anti-vaccine organisation paid for research to study the “link”, the researchers found no evidence.