I know the word "facts" seems to have kind of a negative connotation these days, which I truly do not understand. Facts are good! Facts are one of the truly unbiased things in the universe. They are absolute truth whether you think they are or not, whether you "believe in them" or not, and they do not discriminate against anybody.
The first fact I'd like to present you with is that a few years ago, I graduated from pharmacy technician school and I was a nationally licensed, CPR qualified, CPhT (Certified Pharmacy Technician). So when I talk about medicine, I'm not just spouting off random things I read on the internet. I went to school for this. I know what I'm talking about.
Next, I'm going to post some links where you will find factual information about vaccines. Everything I talk about in this blog will be from a trustworthy, reliable, factual website.
The information on these websites was gathered by real doctors and scientists who are experts in their field. This information is factual because it has been tested, peer reviewed, and verified by other experts who did their own scientific testing.
All of that being said, let's get started. And what better place to start than at the beginning?
By beginning, I mean Andrew Wakefield. The person who originally started all of the misinformation that we currently have about vaccines. (The link to the article about him is the third one on the list of links I posted above.)
The article states:
In 1998, Andrew Wakefield and 12 of his colleagues published a case series in a medical journal called The Lancet which suggested that the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine may predispose to behavioral regression and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Despite the small sample size, the uncontrolled design, and the speculative nature of the conclusions, the paper received wide publicity and MMR vaccination rates began to drop because parents were concerned about the risk of autism after vaccination.
Almost immediately afterward, studies were conducted and published, refuting the link between MMR vaccination and autism. The logic that the MMR vaccine may trigger autism was also questioned because a temporal link between the two is almost predestined: both events, by design (MMR) or definition (autism), occur in early childhood.
A retraction of the interpretation of the original data was published by 10 of the 12 co-authors of the paper, and it stated, "No casual link was established between MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient." This was accompanied by an admission by The Lancet that Wakefield had failed to disclose financial interests. Wakefield had been funded by lawyers who had been engaged by parents in lawsuits against vaccine-producing companies.
The Lancet completely retracted the Wakefield paper in February 2010, admitting that several elements in the paper were incorrect, contrary to the findings in the earlier investigation. Wakefield and his team were found guilty of ethical violations (they had conducted invasive investigations on the children without obtaining the necessary ethical clearances) and scientific misrepresentation (they reported that their sampling was consecutive when, in fact, it was selective).
They were also found guilty of deliberate fraud (they picked and chose data that suited their case, and they falsified facts). The British Medical Journal has published a series of articles on the exposure of the fraud, which appears to have taken place for financial gain.
So, in layman's terms, he literally got paid to make up a bunch of lies about vaccines. Nothing he said was true, and he lost his medical license for lying and being unethical. If you google "scholarly articles about vaccines and autism" you'll find that many many studies have been done on this topic, and none of them have ever found any link between the two. In my list of links above, I've included a link to one such study.
Next, I'd like to discuss the ingredients in vaccines. Many of the ingredients found in vaccines that people tend to worry about can actually be found naturally in everyday foods that we eat. When applicable, I'll mention what food contains said ingredient.
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