Yesterday, I got my flu shot...and, since I am constantly doing my best to convince parents to give their kids flu shots, I want to explain a little bit about it. Let me start off by saying that the media like to portray all vaccines in a very harsh light; I'm sure we all remember the faulty link between autism and the MMR vaccine, which was proven to be completely and totally false research. (The Lancet published an article by Wakefield in 1998 stating that the MMR vaccine causes autism; it was finally retracted after insurmountable evidence proved that there is actually no correlation whatsoever between MMR vaccine & autism - despite what Jenny McCarthey claims). Wakefield has since lost his medical license, and his "research" has been called an "elaborate fraud" by the some of the world's most respected researchers. For more info, click here.
Sorry, off topic. Vaccination is such a hot topic. Let me also mention that we, as medical professionals, gain no monetary compensation by promoting vaccines; what we aim to do is prevent morbidity and mortality in our patients. We read all of the new research as it comes out, and we do our very best to provide the best care possible. So when we advise vaccinations, we are doing it to help you, and to help the society as a whole (through what we call "herd immunity" - so if one person does not elicit an immune response and build antibodies appropriately to the vaccine, he is still safe from getting the disease because he will never come into contact with it. The loss of herd immunity in California has caused several deaths due to pertussis in children too young to be vaccinated that were infected by children that refused vaccination and spread the disease). It is critical that we vaccinate; innumerable lives have been saved thanks to our vaccination efforts, and there is no reason to arrest that progress without convincing evidence to do so. Since vaccines are absolutely harmless in 99.99% of the population, they should be received by everyone that can receive them. There are only a few contraindications, and people with those problems will be saved from ever experiencing the disease if everyone else that is healthy approves to receive the immunization.
Ok. Flu shot. Seriously this time. The annual influenza immunization injection is made of dead parts of several particularly harmful strains of flu. A common misconception is that the flu shot makes you sick - this is impossible. Let me explain why... what we put inside of the vaccine are the pieces of the virus that our body's cells recognize as a foreign object, the outer shell of the virus, so to speak. The part of the virus that makes you sick is not in the vaccine. The virus' ability to replicate is not present. All of the vital parts that make you sick are not in the vaccine. The only part that is in it is the shell, which allows our cells to recognize that it's a foreign object and we can then make antibodies against it. If you think of a virus as a fresh egg, with the part that makes us sick as the white and yolk and the part that we recognize as being an egg as the shell, the vaccine is an empty shell. We cannot and do NOT get sick from the dead virus that is injected into our muscle, and our antibodies that form protect us from that virus indefinitely...so that the next time we encounter it from our friends or co-workers or classmates, when it is not just the shell but also the live parts as well, our bodies are already prepared and can launch a pre-planned attack on the virus, killing it before it ever has a chance to replicate or make us sick. If you've ever had the flu vaccine and then got sick a few days later, it isn't because of the vaccine - it is because you went into a doctor's office or other germ-filled place and encountered something else that makes you sick...but it is not the flu vaccine. It simply cannot be, because there is nothing in the vaccine that is able to replicate. Multiple studies have been conducted and have concluded that there is no statistical difference, no increase in adverse effects such as feeling ill, between people who receive a flu shot and people who receive a placebo shot. Conclusive, evidence-based medicine has supported our understanding that an inactivated virus immunization will NOT cause illness.
I would like to add a few websites which support the fact that the flu vaccine does not make you sick. Just simply click here. There are additional reliable resources which man be found through medical resources, such as Pubmed.gov, dynamed, and up-to-date, to name a few.
To end on a light note:
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