(This is the sixth in a series of guest posts by Dr. Mark McColl answering reader questions about vaccination. Please check out my vaccine history and Dr. McColl’s introduction before reading.)
Why are there ‘toxic’ ingredients in vaccines? Are they necessary and do they cause harm?
That’s a pretty loaded question. I don’t think there are toxic ingredients in vaccines. Don’t get me wrong, I buy my beef grass fed and apples organic and I understand vaccines are neither. I care about what goes in my body. The point is that contact lenses, titanium artificial hips, and aspirin aren’t “organic” or “natural” either. There are lots of things in life that make it better, safer, and richer which don’t fit the organic, paleo model of moral superiority that seems to pervade the anti-vaccine movement. What we need to realize is that there are lots of ‘toxic’ ingredients to the measles virus. Those toxins like to scramble your brain just enough to rob you of about 40 IQ points as well as your hearing. The really insidious toxins will rob you of your personality five or ten years after a measles infection only to kill you after a few more years. Tetanus produces a toxin that causes the painful agony of never being able to relax your muscles. You’ve never felt pain like that. Ever. The list goes on. I’ve chosen to vaccinate myself and my family not because vaccines are free of potential toxins and always provide perfect protection but because I’d rather have that stuff injected in me than contract those diseases.
Are aborted fetus cells used in vaccinations?
Early in the process of vaccine manufacturing (1960s) embryonic cell lines were used to manufacture the required proteins necessary to produce the some vaccines. These embryonic cells were obtained from two children aborted prior to birth. Embryonic cell lines have the ability to continue to grow and multiply for many years while mature cells have a limit of about 50 replications. This is part of the reason why embryonic stem cell use for research is such a hotly debated issue in modern times. There is no requirement for new sources of fetal cells to continue the process of vaccine manufacture. The established cell lines need only to be maintained. No more children are aborted or need be aborted to further vaccine production or manufacture. In fact, given the recent discovery allowing voluntarily donated adult stem cells to become pluripotent (useful to make many other types of tissues) the need for embyronic stem cells is all but disappeared.
This is a tough issue for me. I certainly see a moral argument against supporting this type of research. It’s easy to say that I would not support any new research or manufacturing process based on this method. However, what do we do with ‘good’ that has come from ‘evil’? In World War II, the Nazis did many horrible experiments on enslaved Jews in the concentration camps. In particular they took otherwise healthy young adults and performed all manner of gruesome studies in trauma to learn how best to help their soldiers injured in war. Much of our modern day trauma care is based on this research. What do we do with good and useful information obtained through ill-gotten means? That’s just a hard question. Do we refuse the best surgical technique to fix a fractured femur after a car accident because the initial study was done at Auschwitz?
How do you know there isn’t a link between vaccines and autism?
This is one of the easiest questions to answer out of the whole bunch. The two main positive lines of evidence that show me there is no credible link between vaccines and developmental delay are the international data rates of autism and what has been called ‘the home movie studies’.
By two years of age about 70% of children within the United States have been fully vaccinated according to the recommended schedule. In Northern Europe, where all the outbreaks of measles in the recent past have originated, they have a vaccination rate closer to 30%. So in the US we vaccinate our two year old toddlers over twice as much as they do. What are the rates of autism for each region? If vaccinations are the cause shouldn’t our autism rates be twice as high as theirs? Shouldn’t they be seen as a island of safety in the world of pediatric development?
In fact, all industrialized, First World countries have the same rate of developmental delay and autism. The quoted statistic is around 1 in 100 to 110 children have the diagnosis of autism. This is the same in Nebraska as in the Netherlands. If vaccines carried a causal link to autism, then by definition we should see a higher rate of the disease here as compared to places that don’t vaccinate as much.
The second line of evidence is based on our videography culture. When home movies of children are evaluated by experts in development they can identify developmental delay before one year of age in 90% of children who go on to formal diagnosis later in life. This turns out to be irrespective of vaccination rates from any or all vaccines. Specifically notice that the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine isn’t given until one year of age. So no child who was diagnosed with developmental delay through these home movie studies had had the MMR vaccine by the time they were symptomatic.
The most widely reported study that linked autism and vaccination rates was originally published in 1998 by Dr. Andrew Wakefield in the United Kingdom. He posited a link between 12 children who had received the MMR vaccine and the development of autism. It has been well documented that many thousands of parents did not vaccinate their children after this news came out. As it is known now, Dr. Wakefield was paid by personal injury lawyers to help his study and they even provided some of the 12 case studies. The other authors of the study have all retracted their names as well as The Lancet retracted the article. This was greedy, junk science and should be ignored. Incidentally, this study has been recreated by several reputable authors and when the proper validation took place it failed to show the causal link Dr. Wakefield proposes.
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