No, vaccines do not contain dangerous ingredients. While vaccines contain very small amounts of some additional ingredients as part of the production process, to prevent contamination, or to improve their effectiveness, they pose no health hazards. Unfortunately, there are many myths and misunderstandings about these ingredients.  

Visit here to learn more about these vaccine ingredients and why they are considered to be safe. 

No, vaccines do not cause autism. This is a very common misunderstanding that began when a doctor from England published a paper that was later found to be a fraud. The paper was retracted by the journal that published it, and the doctor lost his license to practice medicine, but the myth has persisted to this day. Many studies since then have shown that there is no link between vaccines and autism. 

Visit here to learn more about where this myth came from, and how we know vaccines do not cause autism. 

No. Vaccines are not a threat to a child’s immune system. There is a misperception that so many vaccines given at once can overwhelm an infant’s immune system. Vaccines contain small amounts of tiny pieces of a virus or bacteria, or a small number of weakened germs that cannot cause infection. On the other hand, infants constantly face threats from large numbers of actual germs trying to cause infection and disease. So, although it may seem that giving multiple vaccines at the same time is too much for a child, their immune system can handle them easily and still be able to fight off the many real threats it faces. 

Visit here for more information. 

The current US childhood immunization schedule was developed by leading public health and infectious disease scientists after extensive debate and examination of the best available evidence, and in the context of our country’s specific population and public health dynamics. There is no evidence that the schedule contains too many vaccines. On the contrary, the best available evidence strongly supports the current schedule. According to the CDC’s own report in 2024, “Among children born [in the United States] during 1994–2023, routine childhood vaccinations will have prevented approximately 508 million lifetime cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1,129,000 deaths, resulting in direct savings of $540 billion and societal savings of $2.7 trillion.” 

Visit here to learn more about the US vaccine schedule, and visit here to learn why it should not be changed. 

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act was passed by Congress in 1986 in response to widespread panic over one childhood vaccine that was believed by some parents to be the cause of brain injury in their children. With the passage of the NCVIA, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) was established. The NVICP is a no-fault, expedited process developed to compensate families who claim their children have suffered specific vaccine-related injuries. 

To understand how the panic about childhood vaccines arose in the first place and why it led to the NVICP, we need to review a little about the history of the vaccine in question. 

The first combination vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis, called DTP, was extremely effective at preventing these common yet terrifying diseases. Death records from Massachusetts during the latter half of the 1800’s indicate that diphtheria caused 3-10% of all deaths. In the first part of the 20^th century, these organisms still caused illness in hundreds of thousands of people each year in the United States. These serious diseases, if not fatal, often left children with severe and permanent damage. In the 1920’s, vaccines against each of these potentially fatal diseases were finally developed, and in the mid 1940’s the combined DTP vaccine was introduced. The vaccines were so effective that cases of these infections were practically eliminated. Today, few parents are familiar with the terror these germs once routinely caused. Though highly effective, the DTP vaccine could produce high fever and extreme irritability in some children, and sometimes frightening episodes of non-responsiveness. These side effects happened because the vaccine contained the whole pertussis organism in a weakened state so that it could not cause the disease itself. Using the whole organism, however, exposed the child to a large number of proteins, some of which were responsible for the fever and other side effects of the vaccine. Because DTP was given to young infants, these reactions were often incorrectly blamed for a multitude of neurological problems that would later arise in these children. We now know from many well-designed studies looking at millions of children, that this vaccine did not cause the brain damage and neurological complications originally attributed to it. However, the fear that developed around this vaccine, and of vaccines in general, led to a tidal wave of lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers. This wave of legal action threatened the future of the vaccination program in this country. While in 1979 there was only 1 DTP-related lawsuit, by 1986 there were 255, with a total of over $3 billion sought by claimants. This was not sustainable for the vaccine industry. Vaccine prices skyrocketed, and manufacturers found it difficult to obtain liability insurance. Many vaccine manufacturers went out of business. In 1967 there were 26 US manufacturers of vaccines. By 1980 this number had dropped to 15, and by 1986 there were only 3 companies still making vaccines in this country. 

With the future of the nation’s vaccination program at risk, and in an attempt to counter the wave of lawsuits coming from parents who now believed their children had been harmed by the DTP vaccine, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) and established the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) as a no-fault alternative to the traditional legal process. A major aspect of this process, and the one that saved the vaccine program from total collapse in the 1980s, is the liability protection granted to the vaccine manufacturers. Before suing a vaccine manufacturer, a claimant must first go through the NVICP process, or the so called “Vaccine Court”. If a parent rejects an NVICP ruling and decides to sue in court, the vaccine manufacturer is immune from liability if they have complied with all regulatory requirements and have not committed fraud or other crimes in the manufacture of the vaccine. The NCVIA states that vaccine manufacturers can’t be sued directly if “the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings.” 

How is the NVIP and “Vaccine Court” misunderstood? 

An important thing to understand about “Vaccine Court” is that it makes legal and not medical or scientific rulings. Unlike a traditional court, the “Vaccine Court” does not adhere to “reasonable doubt” criteria. In fact, “Vaccine Court” judges, the “Special Masters”, are not bound by formal rules of evidence at all. A major premise of the Court is to expedite cases, moving them through quickly so as to reach a settlement and avoid extensive litigation that might lead to potentially industry-ending legal action against vaccine manufacturers. The purpose of “Vaccine Court” is not to determine whether a vaccine caused harm to a child, it is to quickly compensate claims of harm brought by parents, as long as the side effect being claimed appears on the Vaccine Injury Table, which is the official list of potential vaccine complications. It is important to note that some of the complications on this list (such as encephalopathy following the original DTP vaccine) have been clearly shown not to be a complication of the vaccine. Unfortunately, rulings in favor of parents are often incorrectly interpreted as an indication of the truth or as scientific fact, and as evidence of the dangers of vaccines. This is not at all the case. The judges are not scientists or doctors, do not require evidence of any kind to make their rulings, and even allow opinion testimony. The rulings are primarily procedural, and are typically awarded in favor of a parent as long as the claimed injury or condition matches one on the Vaccine Injury Table, and the signs or symptoms occurred in the right time frame. 

To summarize, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) was enacted, and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) was established in 1986 in response to an avalanche of lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers that threatened to destroy the US vaccine program. That wave of lawsuits was triggered by public fear over the dangers of the original DTP vaccine. These dangers were shown to be unfounded. Since then, parents can claim their children have been harmed by a vaccine if that child’s condition appears on a list of side effects deemed possible to occur as a result of a vaccine. Some of these conditions are rare but possible, such as a severe allergic reaction to a vaccine ingredient. Others have been shown not to be caused by vaccines, such as encephalopathy after DTP vaccination, though they remain on the Vaccine Injury Table. Some people incorrectly view the NVICP as evidence of a conspiracy to protect pharmaceutical companies and “Vaccine Court” decisions in favor of parents as evidence that vaccines are dangerous, when these rulings are not science-based. On the contrary, the passage of the NCVIA was instrumental in preserving this country’s childhood vaccine program, which has saved millions of lives.