Nature: Vaccines: The real issues in vaccine safety

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John Salamone is not a vaccine sceptic. He has never been persuaded by spurious claims that vaccines are toxic to children and responsible for autism or a host of other ailments. But tragically, Salamone found out first-hand that vaccines do have real, rare side effects when he saw his infant son, David, become weak and unable to crawl shortly after receiving the oral polio vaccine in 1990. After about two years of physical therapy and doctors' visits, Salamone learned that owing to a weakened immune system, David had contracted polio from the vaccine. "We basically gave him polio that day," says Salamone, who has retired from a position as a non-profit executive, and lives in Mount Holly, Virginia.

That was a known risk of the vaccination, which causes roughly one case of the disease per 2.4 million doses, often in people with an immune deficiency. A safer, inactivated, polio vaccine was available at the time, but the oral vaccine was cheaper, easier to administer and thought to be more effective at controlling outbreaks. But by the 1980s, polio had been all but eliminated in the United States; all cases originating in the country came from the vaccine. Salamone and other parents successfully campaigned for the United States to shift to the safer version in the late 1990s.

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http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110525/full/473436a.html?s=news_rss