Applied Evidence

When the answer to vaccines is “No”

J Fam Pract. 2018 June;67(6):348-351,359-364

From The Journal of Family Practice | 2018;67(6):348-351,359-364.

References

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If at first you don’t succeed, try again because patients often have an experience that changes their mind. Perhaps a friend died of throat cancer or a family member developed a complication of the flu that required hospitalization. You never know when something will influence patients’ choices.

Don’t wait for scheduled well visits. Use every patient encounter as a means to catch patients up on missing vaccinations.

Common misconceptions and concerns and how to counter them

1. I’ve heard that vaccines can actually make you sick.

When patients raise this concern, start with an explanation of how vaccines work. Explain that our bodies protect us from foreign invaders (such as viruses and bacteria) by mounting an immune response when we are exposed to these proteins. Vaccinations work by exploiting this immune response; they expose the body to killed or weakened viral or bacterial proteins in a safe and controlled manner. In this way, our immune system will have already developed antibodies to these invaders by the time we are exposed to an active infection.

To use an analogy to war, instead of being subjected to a surprise attack where we suffer large losses in the battle, vaccination prepares us with weapons (antibodies) to defend ourselves so that our bodies are now able to successfully fight off that attack.

Because the majority of vaccines are killed virus vaccines, they cannot cause the illness against which they are meant to protect. Triggering the immune system may make some recipients feel a little “under the weather” for a day or 2, but they do not make us “sick.”

Live attenuated vaccines are similarly safe for those with a healthy immune system. We don’t administer them, however, to people who have a weakened immune system (eg, pregnant women, newborns, people with acquired immunodeficiency virus, or patients receiving chemotherapy or other types of immunosuppression) because these patients could develop the illness that we are trying to protect against.

Continue to: 2. Don't vaccines cause autism? Aren't they toxic to the nervous system?