It's the start of the school year, and you're inundated with email. After each class, your iPhone seems to take on new weight, straining under the heft of 20 plus new emails which demand your attention. Your buddy laments, "Man, this is ridiculous! I wish we could go back to the days before email. Life must have been much simpler then."
"Yup, it sure was. Lots of hand-written letters that took 10 times longer to write. Sounds like a blast," you wryly reply.
The fact is, if you don't remember what life really was like before a paradigm-shifting technology comes along, it can be easy to notice only the inconveniences or perceived downsides of a particular advance. So is the case with vaccination.
Last week, the Institute of Medicine released yet another report validating the safety, efficacy and benefit of vaccinations for society. The science of vaccinations is well understood down to the molecular level. In essence, vaccines present molecular morsels to your body for sampling so that your immune system can remember it and fight it off later. Those morsels are generally prepared such that they are either completely dead or part of a weaker live bug which is unlikely to cause a serious infection on its own. Elegant in concept and effective in result, vaccines deliver an immense public health benefit which has become easy to take for granted.
Despite a myriad of similar reports and this well-characterized understanding, an extremely passionate and vociferous minority claim vaccinations are to blame for a wide array of medial ailments, ranging from diabetes to autism. The Institute of Medicine, which functions as the independent, nonprofit, health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, reviewed more than 1,000 peer-reviewed articles and scored their evidence for causal link between vaccination and adverse side effect. In some cases, the report found valid evidence for concern, such as finding that the chicken pox vaccine can rarely cause infection. But in most cases, the report points out that adverse effects are easily manageable and pale in comparison to the tremendous benefits offered by strong vaccination programs.
In fact, vaccinations are one of the strongest and most cost-effective advances in medicine in the last 100 years of research. Reaching even further into history, one can make a strong case that the success of Washington's Army in the American Revolutionary War rested on the successful vaccination of troops against smallpox in the fabled winter at Valley Forge. "For most of the vaccine-preventable disease, there has been a 95 percent or more reduction in cases," reported Dr. David Satcher of the U.S. Surgeon General's office, commenting on the historical impact of vaccination in a 1999 statement before the House Committee on Government Reform.
Since most people today are too young to have lived before widespread childhood vaccination, it may be easy to conclude that mandatory vaccination programs no longer provide benefit to society. But a study published in the Lancet in 1998 found that countries with diminished pertussis vaccination coverage saw the incidence of that serious respiratory illness rise 10- to 100-fold when compared to countries with strong vaccination coverage, like the United States. Even in Charlottesville, the impact of vaccination failure was seen just last summer. An unvaccinated woman returned from India, having contracted measles, and promptly infected two other people here in Virginia. Thankfully, most people in town are vaccinated, making an epidemic of this extremely contagious disease less likely.
Researchers in other fields would give anything for a cure as elegant as a vaccine. Can you imagine a vaccine which would prevent heart attacks or strokes? U.Va. researchers are currently investigating potential vaccines for melanoma, a lethal form of skin cancer with a predilection for metastasis. The fact that such robust cures do exist for some of history's most vicious public health threats should be cherished.
Vaccinations work. They're cheap. They protect you, your loved ones and your neighbors from lethal diseases. Get your shots.
Tom Mendel is a University Medical student. He can be reached at t.mendel@cavalierdaily.com
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