NOTE: This article was originally published anonymously, in four parts, in a physical magazine in 2019, well before the COVID-19 pandemic. I feel the topic is even more timely now, hence my decision to re-publish the final two parts. The first half can be read here.
We rely on evidence in medicine for a reason. Without it, we cannot be sure that the interventions we perform on our patients lead to more benefit or more harm. When my patients see me, they can expect me to follow up-to-date guidelines on treatment, as for me to do any less would be negligent on my part. Medicine is forever evolving, always built upon the lessons and mistakes of the past.
Consider someone murders your close relative. You rely on trained police officers, detectives, forensic scientists, lawyers and judges to compile the evidence to find, catch, prosecute and punish the murderer. Would you trust some random punter down the pub to investigate instead? Even if he’d read every single one of Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus mysteries? Of course not! Yet this is what people do when they follow biased anti-vaxxer advice to not vaccinate their child — they put their trust in charlatans rather than impartial science. In medicine we use what works. The evidence is incontrovertible. It stands up in court.
Not every anti-vaxxer objection comes down to disputes about evidence. Some of their concerns are valid and require careful consideration, especially from a Christian viewpoint. The risk of vaccination to an individual is small, but not negligible. We must be honest about this. Some people, children included WILL be harmed by vaccination. Such harm may be as innocuous as short-lived skin redness around the injection site, perhaps a brief flu-like illness with malaise and fever. The rare but most severe complication is Guillaine-Barre Syndrome (GBS), a severe neurological disorder that can be life threatening. The individual risk for GBS is less than one-in-a-million though, and the benefits for preventing disease far outweigh said risk by many orders of magnitude.
Another common objection to vaccines is in regards to their ingredients. Vaccines did formerly contain a (proven harmless) mercury-containing compound called Thimerosal, but at least in the UK, no vaccines containing this have been used since 2005. Some vaccines do contain antibiotics used in the production process to prevent contamination, others may contain pork gelatin or albumin from blood donors. None of these ingredients should pose an existential concern to Christians — after all nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them. Mark 7:15 (NIV)
A slightly more complex consideration is the claim that vaccines contain “parts of aborted foetuses” and “human DNA that can cause changes in a child’s brain”. The second quote is pure unscientific gobbledegook, however there is a grain of truth in the first that may cause some Christians to pause. Typical human cells can divide up to around 50 times and then they die — this is something called the “Hayflick limit” that prevents human cell cultures from growing eternally in the laboratory. Foetal cells however are not limited by this, and given the right environment can be encouraged to keep dividing many more times, providing an almost endless supply of identical cells. Human cells are required for human virus propagation because the viruses do not live in animal tissue.
Rubella viruses for vaccine production are cultured in a human embryo cell-line originally harvested from aborted foetal tissue obtained in the 1960s. The cells used in production are now countless generations removed from the original source. Also once the vaccine is refined, very little trace from these cells is left. Obviously, the original source of these cells was hardly ideal, but those cells can never be made into an embryo, they can never become a human being. The good that has come of that initial evil I think justifies our continued use of the technology. After all, the Bible is full of circumstances that while evil in origin, God turned around to use eventually for good. Countless millions of children’s lives have been saved by these vaccines (including those in the womb — rubella causes miscarriage).
God has given us the gift of modern medicine to relieve suffering and prevent disease. He has provided doctors and scientists, given them minds and the means to research and develop new ways to heal. He has instituted governments to govern and care for people as individuals and as a society. Vaccinations are an integral part of this gift, and although they are not perfect — nothing in this world is — we should make as best use of them as we can to protect the most vulnerable amongst us — the children, as Jesus would want us to do.
The Australian government recently voted to enact one of the strictest pro-vaccination laws in the world. Not only can children only attend nursery/daycare/school if vaccinated, but parents who refuse to vaccinate their children have their tax relief and benefits cut. When hit in the wallet, people’s conscientious objections to vaccinations seem to disappear as Australia now reports their highest vaccination rate ever amongst children.
If only the USA would follow suit. The recent Measles emergency in Washington State was driven by pockets of anti-vaccination sentiment, where in some areas less than 80% of school-age children are vaccinated at all. It’s hardly a surprise then that a disease as rampantly virulent as Measles took hold. Many schools in the USA do have mandatory vaccination requirements, however there are medical exemptions and “religious/non-medical” exemption clauses for parents who do not wish their children vaccinated.
What are we to make of parents who claim religious exemption from vaccination? Of course the Bible says nothing about vaccination, much the same as it says nothing about antiseptics, toilet paper, motor cars or canned food. Are we to take the argument that because the Bible doesn’t mention it, we shouldn’t do it? That is a ridiculous idea that no sane Bible teacher or mainstream denomination would ever promote. Such objections then originate from either ignorance or a faulty view of scripture.
Other objections that immunisations are “against nature” are so vague as to be hopelessly illogical. Living in concrete homes, driving cars and flying aeroplanes is “against nature”. If we were all to live fully in tune “with nature”, I expect we’d all be living in caves as hunter-gatherers. Personally, I’d miss my central heating.
One argument that infuriates me is that somehow the act of vaccinating your child against disease somehow demonstrates a lack of faith in God. Oh, where to start with this? What is a parent’s job, if it isn’t to protect their child? We cannot blindly assume that God will keep all believers’ children safe from all kinds of harm. Any parent whose child has died in an accident, or from childhood cancer, or from infection will know that is just not true. Bad things happen to “good” people. Read the entire book of Job. That’s the point of it. This world is tainted by sin, it is filled with dangers, sadness, heartbreak. It is not faithlessness that leads to parents protecting their children. It is good parenting, and faith in that which God has provided for us. Children do not die because we didn’t pray hard enough or because we’re not good enough Christians.
I can’t help but think of the joke where a man is drowning and someone rows past in a boat. He declines their offer of help because “I’ve prayed to God, so He will save me,” he says. He ignores similar offers of help from a passing submarine and helicopter, much to the pilots’ confusion. When he inevitably drowns and awakes in Heaven, he asks God why He didn’t save him after he prayed so hard for it. God says “But I sent you a boat, a submarine and a helicopter — why didn’t you take those?”
I feel vaccination is similar. I can imagine the parent of child who has died from Measles asking God a similar question — “Why didn’t you save my child after I prayed for them?” “Why didn’t you use the vaccines I sent you?” would be the answer I’d expect. Disease does not discriminate between believers and non-believers. It is wrong for us to put God to the test by not doing everything we can to protect our children and the other vulnerable people around us.
As a doctor, a parent, and a Christian who cares for the welfare of newborn babies and vulnerable patients who cannot be vaccinated, I am apoplectic with righteous rage at the injustice of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children. They are selfish and their inaction puts others at risk. I honestly feel that vaccination should be legally mandatory and parents who refuse should be prosecuted and their children vaccinated anyway. For us to act otherwise would be a dereliction of our duty as a parents, Christians, doctors, nurses, and citizens.
1 Timothy 5:8 (NIV) Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
