Vaccine Myth: Vaccines Are Not Part of a Natural Lifestyle
This blog post is adapted from our Parents’ Guide to Children’s Vaccines.
Many families that we talk to value following a natural lifestyle. For some, that means extended breastfeeding and cloth diapering. For others, it means eating organic food or using environmentally friendly house-cleaning products.
Because vaccines are produced in laboratories and administered by doctors, some parents wonder if vaccines align with their values.
Do vaccines fit into a natural lifestyle?
For families who are following a natural lifestyle, would it be more natural for their child to catch a disease and develop immunity on their own? This idea, while potentially well-intentioned, shows a misunderstanding of how infectious diseases work.
Catching a preventable disease can have dire consequences. The Great Flu Pandemic in 1918, for instance, infected 500 million people globally and killed 3% to 5% of the world’s total population.
The Ebola outbreak in 2013–2015, which primarily affected West Africa, infected nearly 29,000 people and caused over 11,000 deaths. Closer to home, the measles outbreak in the United States in 2015 infected 159 people across 18 states and Washington, DC.
And, with the current COVID-19 pandemic, we are getting a glimpse of how devastating it can be when the world doesn’t have a vaccine to ward off a deadly disease.
Even if a child can be treated after catching a disease, the long-term health consequences can be serious — for example, shortness of breath from whooping cough (pertussis), sterility from mumps, liver damage from hepatitis B, or kidney problems from pneumococcal disease.
How vaccines actually benefit natural health
The evidence shows that vaccines can fit into a natural lifestyle, and even enhance it, in the following ways:
Discourage the formation of superbugs. Because vaccines introduce the immune system to a very small part of the disease, which then triggers your body to build up its own immunity to the disease, vaccines discourage the formation of superbugs. On the other hand, if you have to get treated for a disease with antibiotics or antivirals, a small amount of the virus or bacteria may still linger in your body. Those few remaining bugs tend to be more resilient. As they remultiply in the future, they are increasingly resistant to prior treatment and become superbugs. So vaccines actually prompt the body to use its own immunity to defeat the virus or bacterium and prevent the development of superbugs.
Teach our bodies to fight illnesses naturally. Vaccination gives our bodies tools to build up natural immunity against a particular disease. After getting vaccinated, if we encounter that disease out in the world, our bodies know how to fight it because our immune system has already filled in the definition for that disease.
Reduce total pharmaceutical usage. Vaccines contain very few immunological components and ingredients, especially compared to antibiotics. If your child is unvaccinated and contracts a disease, the treatment they receive will likely include antibiotics, antivirals, and perhaps other drugs with far more ingredients and components.
Reduce environmental pollution. If your child requires hospitalization or any outpatient procedures to treat a vaccine-preventable disease, you will be increasing the amount of environmental waste. From disposable gloves and IV bags to single-use surgical devices and frequent bedsheet changes, the amount of garbage, water, and electricity required to sustain a single patient’s treatment is astonishing. If your child is vaccinated, all of that waste is avoided.
Many parents are relieved to learn that, in the context of how the human immune system works, vaccines can actually enhance a natural lifestyle.