MMR, Mercury, and Mass Media: The Convoluted Coverage of Vaccines
Vaccines are one of the greatest successes of modern medicine. Before vaccination, people around the world were struck by a myriad of deadly diseases. Several notable killers in history like polio, smallpox, measles, and many others have either been controlled or outright eradicated by distribution and administration of vaccines. According to the World Health Organization, there are a total of 25 licensed vaccines for preventable diseases. A vaccine works by exposing the immune system to dead or inactive pathogens. This exposure causes the body to prepare an immune response in the event of a real threat. For example, the polio vaccine contains the protein shells of sterilized polio viruses. This allows the immune system to recognize the polio virus and have a coordinated attack plan for any time the body is exposed to an active virus. In epidemiology, there is an established threshold coverage percentage for a disease to be “controlled”. If 95% of the population is vaccinated, the disease cannot gain enough of a foothold to spread sustainably and cause an epidemic. For decades, this threshold has been met and we did not see many if any cases of the commonly vaccinated diseases. In recent years, that has changed. Around the world, parents are choosing to not vaccinate their kids because of perceptions of the safety and effects of vaccines. In some countries, vaccination rates have fallen to less than 80%. The concerns of these parents can be generally grouped into two chief concerns. The first is that vaccines cause autism and other forms of mental retardation. The second is the ubiquitous “chemicals” concern centered around one mercury-containing compound. The spread of this information via the internet and social media to concerned parents has caused some diseases like measles that should have only been a concern of a less advanced past to become modern epidemics.
The concern that vaccines cause autism traces back to a single study and a Watergate- style journalism review. In 1998, then Dr. Andrew Wakefield and others published the famous study claiming to have discovered a link between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism. Quoted directly from the published study, Wakefield made the following claim: “Onset of behavioural symptoms was associated, by the parents, with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination in eight of the 12 children”. Predictably, his claim garnered immense attention from the media and was simultaneously subjected to intense scrutiny by the scientific community. Brian Deer from The Sunday Times launched an intensive investigation into Wakefield and the larger circumstances of the study. Red flags appeared almost immediately. Deer found several cases of undisclosed conflicts of interest and discovered evidence of manipulation of the data. Concurrently, many researchers performed similar experiments to try and replicate Wakefield’s results to no avail. As this came to light, the journal in which the study was originally published redacted the study, Wakefield lost his medical license for falsifying data, and all credibility of the study and its results was lost. However, the damage was done. Media and parents seized onto the study as scientific evidence of their long-held belief that vaccines were dangerous. It became the poster child for justifying refusing vaccination. The science was rejected in favor of confirming preconceived conceptions and biases. Vaccination rates fell and diseases like measles started to reappear.
At around the same time as Wakefield published his study, the FDA was conducting a risk assessment of another controversial chemical in vaccines, thimerosal. Thimerosal is a preservative in vaccines that serves as an antiseptic to prevent contamination by other diseases. Thimerosal is added for a reason. In 1928, 12 of 21 children died after receiving a diphtheria vaccine that did not contain thimerosal. The vaccines had been colonized by Staphyloccocus bacteria, one of the most common infectious diseases in medicine. Thimerosal caused so much distrust of vaccines because thimerosal contains mercury. The mercury in thimerosal is a single atom bound in the chemical structure of thimerosal. To a concerned parent whose only knowledge of mercury is the incredible toxicity of liquid mercury, this would be very scary, but chemically, the mercury in thimerosal behaves nothing like liquid mercury. When chemical bonds form, the properties of their constituent atoms change. The best example of this can be found in nearly every kitchen across the world. Table salt is made up of sodium and chlorine ions (positively or negatively charged atoms). Pure sodium is a highly reactive metal that explodes when it encounters water. Pure chlorine is an extremely toxic gas that was used as the first chemical weapon during World War 1. When these two extremely dangerous elements bind to each other to form a compound, you get the most common flavoring agent in the world. Salt doesn’t explode when it comes in contact with watery saliva and doesn’t poison and kill you.
The FDA is responsible for fear of the mercury in thimerosal because of several assumptions they made when studying thimerosal. When studying its safety, they analyzed how thimerosal breaks down in the body and the effects these by-products would have. The mercury atom in thimerosal dissociates to form ethyl-mercury, which is toxic in high quantities if not broken down further. Because ethyl-mercury had not been thoroughly studied yet, they had to extrapolate the body’s response to ethyl-mercury from a similar more-studied compound, methyl-mercury. Methyl-mercury is quite toxic and is not easily eliminated by the body at all so the FDA decided to hazard on the side of caution and take out thimerosal. However, they were wrong. As thimerosal and ethyl-mercury were studied more, researchers found that ethyl-mercury is significantly less toxic and breaks down into inorganic mercury in about 14 days. For reasons not yet understood, the inorganic mercury is actually less toxic than normal when created from ethyl-mercury. However, once again, the solid science was ignored and the fear of the “chemicals” in vaccines remained. The antivaccination movement subsequently declared that mercury was responsible for vaccine-caused autism.
There’s a common link between the issues people have with vaccines with parallels to a serious problem at a larger scale. The perception of a significant proportion of the population does not match the consensus of the scientific community, particularly those who specialize in the issue. You find this disparity across a number of controversial scientific topics like climate change and evolution. With regards to climate change, scientists are very much so at a consensus about its existence and effects, yet according to a Yale study, 27% of Americans don’t believe climate change is happening. In the case of vaccines, on two occasions a flawed study identified dangers of vaccines either though fraudulent data or an invalid assumption. As the rigor of scientific study demands, in both cases, the scientific process ran its course, identified the problems, and debunked their claims. Despite this, sound science still couldn’t displace the sheer volume of transmission of incorrect information related to vaccines through the internet and social media. The problem is so pervasive that Facebook is considering a ban on antivaccination posts on their platform, a dangerous move that may have extensive unintended consequences. In many developed countries, enough people have succumbed to the misinformation for the vaccine rates to drop below the 95% threshold. Consequently, diseases that had been declared as eradicated in the US are returning. Very recently, outbreaks of measles have been reported in Washington, Colorado, Arizona, and several other states. All of these can be traced to falling vaccination rates. There are now 26 states that have fallen below the 95% threshold for the measles vaccine. All but 3 states in the US allow religious or philosophical exemptions from the required vaccines. As a result, a disease that was declared eliminated from the US in 2000 is seeing a staggering resurgence.
Here is where I will break from the majority of the thousands of articles written about vaccines. To anyone reading this who has concerns about vaccines or to anyone who knows someone who has concerns about vaccines, this paragraph is for you. The purpose of this article was not to point fingers. If you did not vaccinate your children for whatever reason, you are only partly to blame. The system failed you and told you something was dangerous where it was not. The way to fix this problem is to talk about it. If you see a study or article pinpointing this and that about how vaccines are dangerous and the article seems accurate, cross-check the information somewhere else. Many direct quotes of studies are taken out of context by a biased source to make their arguments. Read other sites and use trusted sources. If some major development comes to light and catches the media’s eye about a new study linking vaccines to cancer or some other terrible side effect, wait a couple days before buying into the claim and sharing potentially false information. Let the fervor blow over and then look again. If the study or article was wrong or fraudulent, the problems will be identified, and accurate information will be published. If none of the previous suggestions work and you still have concerns, talk to an expert. The CDC provides abundant resources for anyone interested to put their concerns to rest. All of this aside, and no matter what the circumstances may be, do your research and understand the decisions that you make. In cases like vaccination, lives actually hang in the balance. Vaccines were developed for these diseases because of their severity and deadly effects. Being hesitant or misinformed about an issue is not a justification for putting future generations at risk of contracting lethal but completely preventable diseases.
SOURCES:T
Center for Disease Control: Vaccines
World Health Organization: Global Vaccine Action Plan