First, we need to know what these vaccines are. The MMR (mumps, measles, and rubella) vaccine is actually three vaccines in one. It consists of viruses from each of those three diseases. That might sound like a rather odd way to keep people from being infected with measles and mumps viruses, but it works by infecting people with very mild versions of the viruses. The mumps and measles viruses, for example, are grown for the laboratory in chicken eggs. This means that the type of viruses are well-suited for living in chickens. People, however, are not poultry. When a virus that is optimised for living in a chicken is injected into a human, it is not a happy virus. It does not do well.
The viruses are kept in solutions solutions containing any of the following: table salt, vitamins, amino acids, beef serum, table sugar, phosphate, gelatin, sorbitol, and a human blood protein that is grown in yeast cells (they make it in yeast cells rather than get it directly from actual human blood because it is easier, safer, and it doesn't use up blood supplies that are otherwise needed for transfusions; it is identical to what is in the human body, though). Neomycin is also added to keep bacteria from growing. Nothing too exotic, really, although obviously there is the risk of some people having an allergic reaction to traces of egg or gelatin or neomycin or whatnot. Autism is not an allergy, however, and anybody administering the vaccination is supposed to be aware of the possible allergic reactions and to be sure that nobody who will drop dead from exposure to, say, gelatin gets the shot. No preservative is used in the vaccine, because preservatives could kill the weak viruses and make the vaccine ineffective. Instead, the vaccine is freeze-dried for storage and shipment, and then reconstituted shortly before being used. Since viruses are basically just genetic code in an armoured shell, freeze-drying them does no damage to them at all.
Typically, the vaccine is given at a very early age, and then a second dose is given several years later. The second dose is not a booster shot, and most children could actually get by without it. The problem is that in a small number of cases the first shot doesn't “take”, and a second shot is needed to effectively vaccinate those kids. It is considered safest to go ahead and give all kids the second shot even though the first one probably already worked, because people figure it is better to be certain than to risk even a small chance of a kid being susceptible to the diseases.
There is no real reason why all three disease vaccines have to be given in one shot. It is mainly a case of there being no real reason not to do so, and so pediatricians decided that it would be best to only traumatise kids with having to get one shot rather than three separate ones.
The three individual parts of the vaccine were all developed way back in the 1960's, and in 1971it became standard to use the combination of the three. So the vaccines have been used for about 45 years or so, and the combination for 39 years. It has been around for a fair bit of time. Millions of people heading into middle age have had the vaccine.
Why, then, was there suddenly a big panic in the late 1990's about it?
The answer is that there was a doctor in England, by the name of Andrew Wakefield. He published an article (another source has it displayed in full without need to sign up here) in the medical journal The Lancet concerning autism and the MMR vaccine. Since then, there has already been a ton of information published revealing subsequent follow-ups to that article, the discovery that Wakefield was basically paid by a law firm to discredit the vaccine, the complete failure of all similar tests since then to come up with the same results, and so on. It is pretty much taken for granted now that the article and Wakefield's later claims are at best dishonest and at worst totally false. Since this has already been so thoroughly covered elsewhere, I'll not get into details of it.
Because none of it really matters. Even if Wakefield was a certifiable saint, and his paper had instead been the epitome of scientific rigour and integrity, it wouldn't matter.
Wakefield has in the last twelve years gone around loudly protesting about the MMR vaccine and scaring countless people away from vaccinating their children due to fears of autism. . .yet his paper never actually linked the vaccine to autism. It found no connection between the two things. None. Even after having quite probably secretly “adjusted” his data in the report, he was unable to show any indications that the MMR vaccine can cause autism. Behind all of the fuss and trouble and illness and death that he has caused, his basic claim is not that the vaccine was found to cause autism. It's not even that the study suggests that the vaccine causes autism. It was that his test didn't show that the vaccine didn't cause autism. Everything he's said and written is based on his vague suggestion that perhaps maybe the vaccine might in some mysterious way, that he saw no indication of but that he attributes to mixing the three viruses, cause autism.
This paper of Wakefield's is the basis of pretty much all the hysteria about this one vaccine. And it never actually concluded anything against the vaccine.
No study has ever found a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Not Wakefield's (even when he seems to have intentionally stacked the deck to try to do so), nor any of the many subsequent ones. In fact, whenever anything definite is able to be concluded, it is that rates of autism have nothing to do with vaccination at all. Take this study from Japan, for example. The country stopped giving the mixed vaccine and started giving them as individual shots in 1993, years before Wakefield's paper. According to Wakefield, it is the combination of all those vaccines mixed together that is causing autism rates to climb. According to Wakefield's claims, the reported autism rates should drop if the vaccines are given individually rather than as a mixture.
Guess what the reported autism rates did when Japan stopped giving the mixed vaccine? They did exactly the same thing as the autism rates did in countries that still used the mixed vaccine. They kept climbing.
Wakefield's paper didn't find any evidence that the vaccines have no influence on autism rates. Other papers did find that evidence. That's about as conclusive as things get.
The mass hysteria about MMR vaccines is based on a flawed study that didn't report what people think it did and that has since been outdated.
And yet Wakefield still goes to rallies and sells his books trying to scare people away from the vaccine, and thanks to his influence the rates of measles, mumps, and rubella (rates that have been conclusively linked to the vaccine: the vaccine pretty much eliminates those rates) have skyrocketed. Thousands of kids have been hospitalised. Many have been permanently affected, such as by brain damage. And a few have died.
Yes, there are some risks to the MMR vaccine. These risks are the same whether you get the vaccines all as one or separately, though, and the risks are known to the people producing, distributing, and administering the vaccinations. They're also known to any parent who takes the time to read the warnings that the vaccines come with.
The risks, however, are far less than the risks of leaving a kid unvaccinated. Even if everybody else in a country has been vaccinated and the disease has been eliminated from that country, you're not safe. There have been many flare-ups of measles in the US, for example. . .most of which involved people bringing the disease from overseas. People who were never vaccinated keep getting the diseases, even in the relative safety of the US. And these diseases are far from harmless. The risks from the vaccine are very unlikely, and pale in comparison to the risks that come with measles.
There has been nothing to connect MMR vaccines to autism, and plenty that suggests no connection. There has been an overwhelming amount of evidence showing that MMR vaccines save the lives of countless people.
The whole scare is based on nothing.
What about the big thiomersal (aka thimerosal) scare, then? Thiomersal is basically mercury, which everybody knows is bad for you, right? So surely the worries about thiomersal in vaccines are warranted, right?
Well, first of all, thiomersal isn't mercury. It contains mercury, but it isn't just mercury.
Thiomersal is nine parts carbon, nine parts hydrogen, one part sodium, two parts oxygen, one part sulphur, and one part mercury. That's one atom out of twenty-three. Just because a molecule has an atom in it that is dangerous, that doesn't mean that the molecule as a whole is going to be dangerous in the same way. The qualities of each individual atom do not always show up in the combined molecule. For a good example, consider sodium chloride. In other words, table salt. Pure sodium explodes violently in the presence of any moisture. And yet countless chefs throughout history have safely thrown large quantities of sodium chloride into pots of water with no drastic consequences (unless you count high blood pressure). So just because thiomersal has mercury in it, that doesn't mean that thiomersal acts like mercury.
As it happens, thiomersal is dangerous. In fact, it wouldn't be much use if it wasn't. But what matters is just how it is dangerous. There has been no sign that thiomersal causes the same health problems that you find in mercury poisoning. It is indeed a poison, which is why it has been used in vaccines; it helps keep anything unwanted from growing in the mixture. Again, though, just because something is a poison doesn't mean it is going to be dangerous. Again, we can consider table salt. Even though table salt doesn't explode when it gets wet, it still can cause bad things to happen to you. Salt can cause your blood pressure to do horrible things, can kill cells, can dehydrate you, and all sorts of other not fun things.
At the same time, though, salt is an essential for life. You couldn't live without salt.
The key is not just the substance itself, but the amount of the substance. A little bit of salt is good for you. Too much salt is bad for you. For countless other chemicals, it is a similar story: in small amounts, it is either beneficial or does nothing to you. In high doses, it can kill you. Pretty much every vegetable we eat, for example, is full of all sorts of horrible ghastly toxins. Yet it isn't often that somebody falls over dead from eating a slightly undercooked potato. That's because the toxins are in such small quantities, and people are such big critters, that there's not enough of the toxin to do anything to our bodies.
This property extends to all chemicals or substances, really. There's a certain amount that is harmless, and then there's a certain point beyond which it gets dangerous.
Thiomersal is dangerous. If you work in a factory where it is made and you spill a vat of it, you can get sick or die from the fumes or from getting it all over you. But the amount that is found in a vaccine is tiny. It is enough to kill tiny things, such as fungi and bacteria. It is not enough to do anything to a human. So you're not going to fall over dead from sniffing thiomersal-containing vaccines or from spilling them on you (unless the vaccines contain some other horrible stuff along with the thiomersal, though I have yet to hear of any vaccines made with curare or puffer-fish venom).
So thiomersal isn't a problem, any more than is the tiniest scattering of uranium atoms that are, without question, all over you right now. However, there is an added complication. Thiomersal doesn't remain thiomersal. When it is injected into the body, it is thiomersal. But the body takes the stuff and breaks it up and mixes it around and changes it. The molecule gets torn apart. It gets made into smaller molecules. And one of those molecules is a thing called ethyl-mercury.
Now we have something that is actually called mercury, even by scientists and medical people. And we've all heard countless times about how even tiny traces of mercury in seafood can be bad for us, about how it can gradually build up in our bodies, and so on. So now we should be worried, right?
Well, not yet. Mercury, you see, tends to not sit around as pure mercury in nature. Mercury atoms don't really like each other, and prefer to find other different atoms to be friends with. Mercury atoms tend to form into molecules with other non-mercury atoms. Carbon and hydrogen are big favourites. The two big important such molecules are ethyl-mercury and methyl-mercury. Ethyl-mercury is C2H5Hg, while methyl-mercury is CH3Hg. There is a slight yet critical difference, therefore, in the two different molecules.
And it is methyl-mercury that has been shown to be the big danger in seafood. Methyl-mercury is the one that gets into your body and lingers there for ages and ages, gradually building up until it reaches that critical amount where it switches from being no problem to being a poison. Methyl-mercury is why they stopped using mercury thermometers, and why hat-makers used to go nuts.
But does a slight difference in chemical formula really make any difference? Does ethyl-mercury having one more carbon and two more hydrogen atoms than does methyl-mercury really matter? Yes, it does. In the same way that the difference between H20 (water) and H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) matters. Would you rather drink a nice big cool glass of water on a hot day, or would you prefer to try to refresh yourself with a big gulp of hydrogen peroxide? A tiny difference in chemical formula can make a huge difference.
Nothing has ever shown ethyl-mercury to be dangerous in tiny amounts, which is something that can't be said for methyl-mercury. What's more, ethyl-mercury passes quickly through the body. It doesn't build up and linger for ages and ages, so you don't have to worry about the occasional tiny doses of it adding up to one big poisonous mass lurking somewhere inside of you. For the sake of safety, ethyl-mercury was held to the same safety guidelines as is its dangerous cousin methyl-mercury, yet the main reason for the latter being dangerous is that ability it has to accumulate. Which means that the safety regulations for ethyl-mercury have actually been as over-protective as requiring an asbestos-lined room, full fire-protection suit, and a fire brigade standing by every time you use your kitchen stove. There have been many tests conducted on the safety of the doses used in vaccines. There is absolutely no sign of ethyl-mercury being harmful in the amounts used in vaccines, either in the short term or in the long term. Unless you're a mold spore, that is. If you are a mold spore, then I strongly advise you to avoid thiomersal.
Also, consider the history of thiomersal. It has been being used in vaccines (and in all sorts of ointments and creams and whatever else) for over seventy years over seventy years. If anything, it is actually used in less items now than it has been. How, then, would it be responsible for a sudden rise in autism in the 1990's? If thiomersal was causing autism, then you'd expect for there to have suddenly been a huge number of autistic people roaming around starting in the 1940's, and for the number to have leveled off as the use of thiomersal leveled off.
In fact, the use of thiomersal has dropped considerably in the last few decades. Most vaccines don't use it anymore. Not because it was deemed unsafe, but because substitutes that are even more benign have been developed. If there was a link between autism and thiomersal, then we'd have seen the rates of autism drop in recent years. Which hasn't been the case.
For another example of the history of thiomersal use in relation to autism, we can look to the Danes. Half a million Danish children were tracked over many years. Some of them received vaccinations containing thiomersal. Some of them received vaccines that didn't contain thiomersal. And some were never vaccinated. If the thiomersal was causing autism, or even just increasing the chances of developing autism, then you'd expect for the proportion of autistic children in the thiomersal-vaccinated bunch to be higher than the proportion in the other two groups. If vaccines in general were linked to autism, then you'd expect for the unvaccinated group to have the least autistic children.
In the end, they discovered that there was no difference amongst the three groups. The levels of autism were the same. And this is about as large-scale as studies get.
Furthermore, suppose that the mercury atom in the molecule was poisoning the kids. Well, mercury poisoning is a well-known and well-studied ailment. People who are afflicted with mercury poisoning display certain characteristic symptoms. And those symptoms are nothing like autism:
Mercury poisoning symptoms
- - - - - - - - - -
- Peripheral nervous system damage, resulting in imagined burning or itching feelings
- Skin discolouration and loss
- Swelling
- Sweating
- Increased heart rate and blood pressure
- Drooling
- Loss of hair, teeth, and nails
- Sensitivity to light
- Weakness
- Kidney failure
- Insomnia
- Uncontrollable emotional outbursts
- Memory loss
That doesn't sound much like the typical symptoms of autism, now, does it?
It is a situation similar to that of MMR vaccines. There is absolutely no sign that thiomersal contributes in any way to autism, and quite a lot suggesting that there is no link at all. And unlike MMR vaccines, thiomersal isn't really even likely to be used in any vaccines today. So why would anybody avoid vaccines for fear of thiomersal causing autism in their children, especially given the huge and verified advantages that vaccines give to kids?
And notice that in the case of the MMR vaccines, it is the combining of three different viruses that is blamed for causing autism. While in the other case, it is mercury that is blamed. People who are blaming both for causing autism are blaming two totally completely utterly different mechanisms, about as different as they could be. If such disparate causes can cause autism, then probably just about anything would be able to cause autism.
In summary:
1) There is no shown link between MMR vaccines or thiomersal-containing vaccines and autism.
2) There are many studies showing a lack of any link between MMR vaccines or thiomersal-containing vaccines and autism.
3) Vaccines have a proven ability to prevent diseases.
4) Avoiding vaccines puts you at a much higher risk for catching avoidable diseases, and of suffering major permanent effects from the diseases.
