The short answer is no. The very last thing that companies who make vaccines, or doctors who administer them, want to do is harm children. Many of the researchers, executives, health officials, nurses and doctors involved in vaccination have children themselves. They want to protect children against dangerous diseases.
Some people who oppose vaccination have suggested that vaccines contain dangerous doses of chemicals. If this were the case, health authorities would not endorse them, doctors would not administer them, and companies would have no interest in inventing, making and selling them.
The Robert Koch Institute notes that the source of confusion in this area stems from the fact that certain vaccines mercury, formaldehyde, phenol or aluminium in minute concentrations – safely below the well-established toxicological threshold.
This often leads people to ask, quite reasonably, why it is necessary to include even tiny amounts of these substances. There are a range of reasons, none of which is sinister. Aluminium hydroxide, for example, can help enhance the immune response and thus makes the vaccine more effective; formaldehyde can help to kill viruses; phenol is a useful preservative.
Perhaps the most high-profile substance which critics have highlighted is thiomersal, a mercury salt, used as a preservative in certain vaccines When it was suggested by two American doctors that the rise in autism cases was somehow connected to thiomersal, the World Health Organisation (WHO), the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the United States Institute of Medicine conducted separate, independent investigations. Each concluded that there is no evidence of a link.
Nonetheless, the controversy threatened to damage vaccination rates so a number of pharmaceutical companies responded by developing mercury-free vaccines. Experts continue to believe that there is no connection between thiomersal and autism.
For more information, see ‘Vaccination – 20 Objections & Responses’, produced by the Robert Koch Institute and Paul Ehrlich Institute
