This afternoon my sister sent me this graphic, which a colleague of hers had posted on Facebook. I have seen ones like it quite a few times and unlike my earlier posts where I talked about the general role of scepticism in issues around vaccines, for this I took the time to look into the specifics of this particular graphic.
I’ll begin by addressing all the individual points:
Beta-propiolactone: not in the flu vaccine in Canada.
Neomycin sulphate: there are trace amounts in the vaccine. This is an antibiotic, and is often prescribed orally or in creams. This is not an immunotoxin, but is toxic to the kidneys. As with any toxin, its effect is a function of how much you get. In a typical flu shot this is less than 0.02 mcg per dose (that’s in micrograms, which is 1000x smaller than a milligram). It does not last long in the body – about 2 to 3 hours. In comparison, to kill a human you’d need about 17.4 mg/kg, or 1.4 g for an 80kg adult, as a rough estimate (based on LD50 for intravenous route for a mouse). Note that this is roughly one million times more than you’d get in a flu shot.
Polymyxin B. Also an antibiotic. This is not present in the vaccine provided in Canada. The antibiotic that IS present is called kanamycin, at less than 0.03 mcg/dose (again, that’s micrograms). This is also toxic to the kidneys at high enough doses. A killing dose, based on the LD50 for a mouse, is about 240 mg/kg.
Sodium taurodeoxycholate. Also called TDOC, this is used to break up flu particles to make the virus. This is not used in the manufacture of vaccines for use in Canada. It was used in an Australian vaccine, and was not properly removed from the preparation, causing high fevers and convulsions in some children under five. Australia, like most countries, tracks adverse effects due to vaccines, and the incident is still being investigated.
Potassium chloride: This is a salt, much like table salt (sodium chloride). You probably ate some today. It is not a neurotoxin in any concentration that you’d be capable of ingesting.
Thimerosol: This is a preservative used in vaccines and is present in one of the two major flu vaccines in Canada. It does contain mercury. However, it contains ethylmercury, not methylmercury. Methylmercury is what you get from eating fish, and has been linked to toxic effects. Ethylmercury is eliminated by the body much more quickly than methylmercury. In addition, the amount of ethylmercury in a flu shot is less than what you would get from eating fish. This preservative has been used since the 1930’s, and despite the fact that every modern nation carefully tracks adverse events linked to vaccines, there is no evidence that ethylmercury has ever caused harm. The only vaccines in use in Canada that contain thimerosol are the flu vaccine and the hepatitis B vaccine.
As for the other claims:
Vaccines have never been convincingly linked to: narcolepsy, arthritis, MS, lupus, cancer, or dystonia. There have been reports that an older polio vaccine may be associated with giving polio in some people, but extremely rarely. If you lived in a place where polio was still endemic, you’d still have better odds by taking the older vaccine. I have never heard of the flu vaccine being linked with paralysis. There were cases in the 1976 of people getting Guilain-Barre syndrome after a flu shot. It’s important to note that GBS is a not uncommon problem for people who are recovering from the flu. Again, even in this incident in the 1970s the odds of getting GBS from the flu shot were many tens of times lower than from getting it from the flu. It was estimated that getting the flu shot that one year contributed to 1 person in 100,000 getting GBS. In comparison 80-160 people get GBS each week in the United States.
Finally, vaccines have never, EVER been convincingly linked to autism. Ever. That ridiculous and fraudulent claim has done more to harm public health than any other fraud in human history. And it was fraud, Andrew Wakefield made this claim at a press conference, NOT in a scientific paper, in order to sow distrust of the triple dose MMR vaccine so he could sell more of his single dose MMR vaccine. He has been sued for harming an autistic child in his care in order to further his “research,” and was stripped of his medical license.
It’s easy to distrust a medical intervention that you get when you’re healthy. In this day and age we don’t see measles, mumps, rubella, polio, dyptheria, pertussis, or pneumococcal pneumonia, so we’ve forgotten how devastating these diseases are. We also tend to get better from the flu, and forget that though we may get better, the child, immunocompromised adult, or elderly person who we just sneezed on may not get better. Our idea of what the risks of vaccines are way overblown, and we’ve forgotten how bad vaccine preventable illnesses are. The result is a huge crisis in public health, and the reappearance of whooping cough and measles in western countries. Children have died because of it.
The galling thing about all this is that people distrust vaccines because they distrust big pharma. That’s fine, big pharma has some crap to answer to; however, the damage done by pharmaceutical missteps pales in comparison to the damage done by holistic practitioners, who for some reason aren’t asked to answer for their profit motive in the same way. The only reason Andrew Wakefield is not destitute and ruined is that he found a second life as director of the Johnson Center for Child Health and Development, where he can continue to leech off of parents of autistic children, who legitimately need help and hope. Why these quack scientists, doctors, and holistic practitioners are not held to the same standard of evidence and ethics as mainstream medicine and science is beyond me, and is a breathtakingly cynical example of the triumph of marketing over reason.
Unlike the anonymous hack who produced this graphic, I will list my references. These are all simple mainstream sites where you can access information that has been vetted by medical professionals, scientists or reputable journalists. There is a lot of information on the internet, a lot of it fraudulent, misleading, or of general poor quality. As much as possible, if you’re concerned about medical issues, be sure to get your information from sources that take care to vet their materials.
For the contents of the flu vaccine:
Glaxo Smith Kline Fluviral insert. http://www.gsk.ca/english/docs-pdf/Fluviral_2009_PM.pdf
Novartis Fluviral prescribing information.
Regarding constituents in vaccines:
Public Health Agency of Canada: Thimerosol in Vaccines and Autism.
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/im/q_a_thimerosal-eng.php#a2
Science Insider: FDA Fires Warning Shot at Australian Vaccine Maker. June 2011.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/06/fda-fires-warning-shot-at-australian.html
Basic information on the chemistry and toxicity of any commercially available chemical can be found with the simple google search “[chemical] MSDS.” This will bring up a chemical’s material safety data sheet, which lists information on its characteristics including toxicity. This is the first stop for anyone who is dealing with a chemical.
Kanamycin monosulphate Material Safety Data Sheet. http://www.bioeng.nus.edu.sg/cellular/msds/k0126.pdf
Neomycin sulphate Material Safety Data Sheet
Regarding the 1976 increase in GBS:
US Centers for Disease Control: Guillain-Barre syndrome
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/guillainbarre.htm
Regarding Andrew Wakefield:
The Sunday Times (London) 2004
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/health/article1879347.ece
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