Risks of immunization

Relatively common adverse effects of immunization include high fever and fits. Other symptoms and death have also been linked to vaccinations. Often the symptoms are milder versions of the disease against which the vaccine is administered.

Overdoses of vaccines against the following diseases can cause medical complications: BCG, typhoid, paratyphoid, cholera, plague, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, smallpox, rabies, typhus, yellow fever, measles, poliomyelitis, and various viruses.

Research reported in 1994 into adverse reactions to MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and DPT (diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus) vaccinations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta, USA) has identified 34 major side effects, including asthma, blood disorders, infectious diseases, diabetes and neurological disorders (polio, meningitis, hearing loss and others). There have also been reports of cot deaths linked to the DPT shot and asthma, allergies and arthritis to the rubella injection. Reactions to DPT vaccination were immediate whilst the worst reactions to the MMR vaccine came between eight days and two weeks after the injection. The most significant finding was the increase in the rate of seizures, which rose to three times above the national norm within the first day of a child receiving either a DPT or MMR injection.

The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine can cause a rare bleeding disorder called idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP). The reaction, caused by the destruction of the platelets that help blood clot, seems to occur most often within the first 2 or 3 weeks of receipt of the vaccine. The resulting thrombocytopenia is described as transient and benign. In the UK, the absolute risk (of hospitalization for ITP) within six weeks of immunization was assessed as 1 in 22,300 doses. It is noted that ITP can also occur in children following a viral infection, such as measles, rubella or mumps. For instance, one case of ITP occurs for about every 3000 rubella infections.

In 2001, The US Food and Drug Administration were investigating more than 100 people whose arthritis or joint pain (symptoms of Lyme Disease) were possibly linked to their vaccination against the Lyme disease.

Aluminium oxyhydroxide is a commonly used adjuvant in vaccines.  Researchers have discovered that, far from being an inert and stationary anchor holding the antigen at the injection site before it is excreted, as was believed in the past and public health still maintains, aluminium adjuvants trigger an immunological storm of events and cascades of immune activity far from the injection site, including cytokines (inflammatory proteins), with names such as interleukin-1beta and  interleukin-6, that have been found at significantly higher levels in autistic patients than healthy controls.  This evidence adds to a growing, current body of research that autism is, at root, a disease of a dysfunctional and hyper-stimulated immune system.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration maintain a database of information about adverse effects from the administration of vaccines licensed in the U.S. The database is called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a program created under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.  Reporting is voluntary.  Vaccine manufacturers are shielded by the US Government from civil liability from any vaccine-related injuries.

Meningitis was reported after several types of vaccinations. One study published in the journal Neurology evaluated data from VAERS to look at the rate of occurrence of meningitis after vaccines were administered to individuals from infancy to 74.7 years during the period 1990 to 2010, looking at the onset of meningitis within six weeks after an individual was vaccinated. Of the 722 cases found, 415 (57.5%) occurred in the first six weeks and 327 (45.2%) occurred within the first two weeks. In the group, 76% of the individuals were hospitalized and 6.9% were disabled after the infection cleared.