FA16 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most other medical interventions, but truly adverse effects are to be reported so vaccines that are causing harm can be rescinded and reformulated, if possible.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. 

  • Josh Baalman
  • Nicholas Romito
  • Saadiya Jabbar