Saar Kuzi
Alessandra Coutinho Fernandes
William Cope
Richard Tapping
Kashif Ahmad
Reda Sadki
Shubhra Kanti Karmaker Santu
Adam P Rusch
Elle Meisner
Nereyda Ochoa
Landon J. Kunzelman
James DotimasFA16 Immunization Module’s Updates
Relative Safety of Vaccines
As someone who is very pro-vaccine, I always hear how unsafe vaccines are – how someone got so sick from whatever vaccine they received. Similar to what Dr. Tapping said at the end of his lecture on vaccines, vaccines are relatively safe compared to the diseases you could contract.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/patient-ed/conversations/downloads/vacsafe-ensuring-bw-office.pdf
Here’s a document from the CDC on how they ensure vaccine safety both during vaccine develop and during vaccine use. Yes, there are side effects as there are with most other medical interventions, but truly adverse effects are to be reported so vaccines that are causing harm can be rescinded and reformulated, if possible. The ultimate goal of vaccines is to protect us from disease, obviously, not make people sick one way or another.
Live attenuated vaccines so pose some risk as the live microbe may not be fully attenuated, but wouldn’t the repeated vaccination with inactivated vaccines also pose a risk as you repeatedly inject individuals with booster shots? What if the microbe wasn’t fully killed (inactivated) and some still lives? Of course the CDC tries to monitor both instances carefully to ensure safety for the public, but no system is perfect.
The safety concerns of the public are of utmost importance as safety is a primary reason some parents refuse to vaccinate their children. We as medical professionals cannot say vaccines are 100% safe. However, I believe we can show the public we hear their concerns while addressing those concerns in a way to show vaccines are safer than the diseases they are preventing.
I totally agree with being pro-vaccine and that we as medical professionals need to really teach and expose our communities to the reality of vaccinations. But I also agree with the sentiment that we should be respecting of other peoples' opinions, cultures, religious beliefs, etc. I am not sure how I would respond when I am faced with a resistant patient to vaccines, when they could clearly be compromising other peoples' health. Hopefully we will receive some sort of coaching/education into how to handle this matter in the future.
Dr. Tappings lecture (listed as a resource under Update 1) gives a table with the relative frequencies of death due to vaccine administration vs if the vaccines were not to be administered at all. Usually severe allergic reactions are typically the reason for the risk of a vaccine when being administered. The second most prominent risk (which was not in Dr. Tapping's lecture) is likely due to the manufacturing process of the vaccine, where foreign pathogens can possibly make their way into the vaccine. I used to work for a biopharmaceutical company that produced injectable drugs, and there is always a level of non-conforming product that gets sent out to the public. This non-conforming product could be contaminated and cause adverse side effects or unexpected results. Although biopharmaceutical companies have strict non-conformance specifications, there are still cases where contaminated product gets injected into patients.
You bring up a very interesting point. I can understand why some parents might be apprehensive to vaccinate their children. But, as future medical professionals, we do have to emphasize that vaccines are important in preventing diseases that could potentially be life-threatening even though we can't fully guarantee vaccine safety.