Vaccines - Are They Safe?

Autism, seizures, and overloaded immune systems. Could these really be side effects of vaccines? This week, we dive  into t

Autism, seizures, and overloaded immune systems. Could these really be side effects of vaccines? This week, we dive  into the science to find out how safe vaccines really are. We also talk to public health researchers Prof. Dan Salmon and Prof. Amy Kalkbrenner and neurologist Prof. Ingrid Scheffer. Sign up to our newsletter >>here<< so you get the full transcript of the show with all of the footnotes and links to the science.

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Credits:
This episode has been produced by Heather Rogers, Wendy Zukerman, and Shruti Ravindran. Production help from Rose Rimler. Our senior producer is Kaitlyn Sawrey. We’re edited this week by Blythe Terrell and Annie-Rose Strasser. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with help from Rose Rimler. Sound design by Martin Peralta. Music written by Bobby Lord. For this episode we also spoke with Dr. Saad Omer, Dr. Neal Halsey, Dr. Paul Offit, Dr. Frank DeStefano, and Prof. Alison Buttenheim. And an extra thanks to Bonnie Stanway,Ivona Stamatoska, Reese and Walter Ludwig, the Zukerman Family, Joseph Lavelle Wilson and - of course! - Leo Rogers.

Selected References:

• The National Academies (aka Institute of Medicine) report on vaccine safety 
• A report on the genetic underpinnings of epilepsy
• This study looked for neurologic disorders after the MMR shot in half a million kids 
• This one looked at all children born in Denmark between 1991 and 1998

There are a lot of fads, blogs and strong opinions, but then there’s SCIENCE. Science Vs is the show from Gimlet Media that finds out what’s fact, what’s not, and what’s somewhere in between. We do the hard work of sifting through all the science so you don't have to. This season we tackle alcohol, fasting diets, DNA tests, race and the fertility cliff.