• Vaccines are one of the most monitored and studied things in medicine because they are given to healthy children.
• Severe adverse events from vaccines are extremely rare and are closely monitored and tracked nationwide. For example: risk of anaphylactic (serious allergic) reaction is literally 1 in 1 MILLION doses of vaccine given.

What about vaccine components?

Vaccines are made with ingredients that make them safe and effective. Components in vaccines are used in very small amounts and their use has not been linked to disease or illness.

Vaccines are made up of many components:

• Formaldehyde - naturally occurring in the human body and helps with your metabolism. There is approximately 10 times the amount of formaldehyde in a baby’s body at any time than there is in a vaccine.
• Aluminum - the most abundant element in the earth's crust, it is found in air, food and water. Aluminum salts help vaccines to work faster, better and longer. Aluminum is present in breast milk and in infant formula in similar amounts as vaccines. This amount is very small and extremely safe for infants.
• Gelatin - is contained in some vaccines, but is prepared from cows known to be free of mad cow disease.
• Fetal Tissue - Abortions are not performed to make vaccines. Some vaccines are made from cells that came from an aborted fetus in the 1960s. The fetus was not aborted to make the vaccine, but had been aborted for a medical reason.
• The cell line is replicating but the original cells have not been used since.

Is there a connection between thimerosal in childhood vaccines and autism?

• No - studies have shown that there is no link between thimerosal and autism.
• Much of the increase in autism is due to a broader definition and inclusion of behaviours and learning disorders that previously had no specific diagnosis. They now fall under what is known as autistic spectrum disorders.
• Thimerosal is a safe and effective preservative that has been used in some vaccines since the 1930s. There has never been any scientific evidence that it is harmful in the extremely small amounts used to preserve vaccines.

Does MMR Vaccine Cause Autism?

• No - there is no increased risk of autism with MMR vaccine.
• Because children with autism are often diagnosed at around the same time as they get their shots, people sometimes think that it’s related to the shots themselves. Just because some things happen close together doesn’t mean that they are related.
• There are lots of studies that show that MMR does not cause autism. A study of 500,000 children in Denmark confirmed that the likelihood of autism was the same in kids who were immunized as those who weren’t.

For more information on vaccine safety, please visit:
 ImmunizeBC vaccine safety