the best place to get vaccines is in the
buttocks
well as much as i love the buttocks i
have to say that primarily vaccines can
also be received in your arms myth 7 it
is not necessary to vaccinate babies it
is definitely necessary to vaccinate
babies vaccines are not tested enough
this is definitely a myth because
vaccines are tested all the time hi my
name is dr nipuni rajapaksi i'm a
pediatric infectious disease specialist
i am maria elena
and i am a microbiologist virologist and
vaccinologist today we'll be debunking
some common vaccine myths myth one if
the disease has been mostly eliminated
in my country i don't need a vaccination
so this is a common question that we get
if we all lived in a bubble and there
was no movement of people this myth
might hold true but we know because of
travel and movement of people around the
world even if a vaccine preventable
disease has been eradicated from a
certain area it can easily be
reintroduced and you can come in contact
with that disease the only infection
that has been eradicated from the entire
world is smallpox and that was largely
done through vaccination we've come
close to eradicating other
vaccine-preventable diseases like polio
but unfortunately we have not quite made
it there yet and many of these
infections are still present in
different parts of the world myth number
two there's no use getting a vaccine
that's less than a hundred percent
effective that is absolutely not true
because any vaccine brings some level of
protection by having your body practiced
while it's awaiting to get exposed with
the real pathogen so even if you get
exposed and you are partially protected
that will mean that you will be getting
a less severe disease you probably will
not need to get hospitalized and they
probably can recover faster most of the
childhood vaccines are somewhere between
85-95 effective depending on the exact
vaccine and the person that you're
giving it to so how effective a vaccine
is depends on both the vaccination
itself as well as your own immune system
response to it myth number three
vaccines give you the disease that they
are meant to prevent
so this is definitely a myth there's
confusion because you may be getting
some symptoms when you get the vaccines
for example fever or you know sore at
the side of the infection and it gives
the perception that you're getting a
disease but vaccines are not going to
give you the disease the whole reason
for vaccination is to expose your immune
system to kind of trick it into thinking
it has been exposed to the infection so
that it has a chance to practice and
develop protection myth four vaccines
can cause autism there's been a lot of
evidence that vaccines do not cause
autism where the question came about
mostly relates to a study that was
published in the late 1990s by an
investigator who eventually was found to
be publishing fraudulent information
essentially made up data and had his
license revoked and is no longer allowed
to practice medicine and so that made
its way into the media and has caused a
lot of damage we've had a lot of kids
who have not received their measles
mumps and rubella vaccines and have
developed measles and ended up with
lifelong sequelae from that and so
people have looked at this they've
studied it time and time again multiple
different studies looking at hundreds of
thousands of children in different
countries and no link has been found
between vaccines and autism so myth
number five it's not safe to get more
than one vaccine at a time
this is false our immune systems are
very powerful systems within our body
and they're designed to react and
respond to many different pathogens
infections simultaneously and the number
of antigens we say that you are exposed
to in a vaccine is pretty minuscule
compared to the number of things that
you come across in your daily life and
so it is definitely safe to get more
than one vaccine at a time myth six the
best place to get vaccines is in the
buttocks most of the times they're being
given in your arms because you can also
look at a lot of the site of injection
and how it reacts and it's because it's
probably closer also to arriving to
indeed the most important immune
cells and where the immune cells locate
so that then the response can become
systemic for most children or younger
children sometimes the vaccine can be
given into the thigh as well so the
thigh and the arms are the most common
places that vaccines are given now myth
seven it is not necessary to vaccinate
babies infants and young children are
really part of our population that
stands to benefit the most from getting
their routine vaccines the way that our
vaccine schedule is developed in the
united states is to provide kids
especially with immunity to infections
at the times where they're most
vulnerable or at highest risk of
developing severe disease if they get
the infection and so that's why in the
first year of life we provide many
vaccines to kids because that is the age
group where they're at the highest risk
if they were to become ill with one of
these pathogens there are many
conditions for example whooping cough
that we know children under six months
of age are at the highest risk of
needing to be hospitalized or dying if
they get the infection and therefore it
is definitely necessary to vaccinate
babies and it provides them with
protection against many serious diseases
myth number eight vaccines are not
tested enough this is definitely a myth
because vaccines are tested all the time
yes i completely agree vaccines are
amongst the most studied things that we
use in medicine and they're evaluated
all the way from the lab until after
they're deployed and used in the general
population so vaccines get tested when
we're evaluating them in pre-clinical
settings in the laboratory they are very
much evaluated when we're doing
experimental trials phase one trials
phase two trials large phase three
trials and there's also testing even
after their approval myth number nine
the effectiveness of vaccinations has
never been proven vaccines have been in
some situations effective enough that
they have eradicated disease from the
planet and smallpox as the example there
or have allowed us to become very close
to eradicating diseases such as polio
these vaccine preventable diseases are
becoming less common as we maintain high
levels of vaccination in the general
population when the vaccines are
approved and they start being deployed
at large scales more information is
gathered to determine the effectiveness
of the vaccine so effectiveness is a
result of showing that they work in
large large numbers of populations myth
10 vaccines can contain harmful
ingredients
so this is definitely a myth so i work
specifically in vaccine production
in our laboratories we have to assure
that the ingredients are disclosed and
we have to assure that the ingredients
are part of what is called
acceptable ingredients that have
proven that they are not going to be
harmful especially to human populations
so many additional ingredients aside
from the vaccine components themselves
that you might see listed in a vaccine
are there to make the vaccine safer in
many cases or to increase their
effectiveness and so you might see
something like
aluminum added to boost the immune
system response and it's important to
realize how tiny the amounts of these
things in the vaccine are and that a
child who is breastfed or fed formula
ingests much more aluminum in their diet
than they would ever get through any
vaccination myth 11 is better hygiene
practices mean you don't need vaccines
it's not going to protect you 100 but
especially pathogens that are
transmitted through mosquitoes or any
other type of vectors you know hygiene
alone is probably not going to prevent
you being exposed to potential very very
bad pathogens
myth 12
doctors only recommend vaccines because
that's how they make money vaccine
companies in fact do not even make a lot
of money because now this is practically
a common good so this is not a one of
the essential medicines that really come
with any kind of economic attachment
vaccines are a public health
intervention they have actually done
some studies to look at it and in many
situations once you factor in all of the
things that are needed to deliver a
vaccine safely to someone so storage
purchase of the vaccine itself personnel
for your clinic when they've looked at
pediatricians who do a lot of
vaccination in our country in many cases
they have actually found that they lose
money by giving vaccines and so it's
quite the opposite of this but we all do
it and we recommend it because we know
that it is one of the best things we can
do to keep our kids safe and healthy so
our last myth is vaccines have
microchips that track you vaccines do
not have microchips as you know we have
to one disclose all the components of
the vaccine formulation and right now
there are no devices that are approved
to be combined with the vaccine
formulation where people may get
confused is sometimes the packaging of a
vaccine or a vaccine vial could have
information on it that they use to track
who got the vaccine so that if there's
any issues they know which patient to
contact or so that that information can
go directly into your medical record but
there are no microchips within the
vaccines themselves or that are being
injected into any patients for tracking
as a vaccine developer i would add that
also if you would like to understand how
vaccines have been evaluated during the
experimental trials is that you could go
into the food and drug administration
site and that paired with information of
course that is provided to you by your
primary care physician it's probably the
best location where you can look for
veritic and trustworthy information