I touched on vaccine issues in previous blog entries (Jan 14, 2023; Jan 25, 2023, Jan 29, 2024) in the Medical Beat. But I am unable to resist passing on information on vaccines published in the June, 2025 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
For children born between 1994 and 2003, routine childhood vaccinations against common diseases (MMR, pertussis, hepatitis, influenza, tetanus, COVID, RSV,etc.) prevented more than 500 million illnesses, 30 million hospitalizations, and 1 million deaths. The direct savings cost was more than $500 billion.
Worldwide, epidemiologists have found that vaccines prevent up to 5 million deaths per year. This results in a life saved every six minutes.
Pushback
In 2001, 94% of Americans thought childhood vaccinations were important. The current figure is 69%.
A fraudulent British researcher helped fuel the anti-vax movement when he published a discredited article in a respected British medical journal in 1998 alleging that vaccines caused autism. The misinformation has snowballed to the point that the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy, Jr., is a prominent vaccine doubter. He has started and chaired an anti-vax organization and said in 2023 there is no such thing as a safe and effective vaccine. He has issued a tepid endorsement for the measles vaccine that started in Texas and is spreading across the great plains.
This year, he fired the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), an arm of the Center for Diseases Control and Prevention, replacing the members with at least two anti-vaxxers.
Where to Turn?
People have asked me where will they now get reliable information about vaccines. There are plenty of professional associations who have provided, and will provide, authoritative recommendations, and universities with strong public health programs are also good sources for scientific-based data.
Acquiring good information on immunizations, however, may not be the biggest challenge. Heretofore, the recommendations of the ACIP have conditioned insurance coverage for vaccines. It is anyone’s guess what will happen when the newly constituted committee comes out against a particular vaccine.
A Bit of History
Our founding fathers recognized the benefit of immunization. Thomas Jerrerson had himself inoculated against smallpox, as did Geroge Washington. In fact, Washington ordered his entire Continental army to be vaccinated against smallpox.
Ben Franklin failed to get the immunization procedure for his children, and he paid the price. He wrote:
In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of the parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it. My example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.