"My Crystal Clear Stance on Vaccination" #5 :Flawed Research--Giving Infants the Same Dose of Vaccines As Adults Doesn't Make Sense

The chiropractor wrote,

Giving a child a vaccine with an adult dose and assume they would react the same way doesn't make sense.

This is an error of common sense (appeal to common sense fallacy), equating the biological activity of a medication (like aspirin, for example) with a vaccine. It's the sort of error you would expect from a person who had no medical education, but it is surprising from someone who belongs to a profession claiming to have an education equal to an MD. Surely this would have included basic pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics?

Roughly speaking, medications work by being distributed throughout the body, and achieving a certain concentration in the entire bloodstream.  Thus, adjusting the medication dose for the size of the patient makes sense.

Vaccines, on the other hand, do not circulate evenly throughout the body.  For injected vaccines, the immune response generated by vaccination typically occurs at or near the injection site.  As we saw in a previous post, when the immune system recognizes a vaccine component as "not-self",  cells of the immune system flock to the area and activate the immune system to respond to the invader. Likewise, adjuvants also only act locally.  Once the immune response has succeeded in protecting the body from the invader, a small number of cells -- memory B and T cells--remain, to recognize the specific antigen provided in the vaccine.

Further, not all vaccines given are in the same dosages for children and adults. For example, the adult version of the hepatitis A vaccine, hepatitis B vaccine, and influenza vaccine contain higher doses than the one for children, while Tdap vaccine used in adolescents, teens and adults contains lesser quantities of the diphtheria and pertussis antigens.

Source: Refutations to Antivaccine Memes, http://tinyurl.com/RtAVM-15Sneezes

Source: Refutations to Antivaccine Memes, http://tinyurl.com/RtAVM

Summary:
The chiropractor's thinking about how vaccines work is naïve at best.

Sources:


American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, Concepts in Clinical Pharmacokinetics, Introduction to Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics http://www.ashp.org/DocLibrary/Bookstore/P2418-Chapter1.aspx


Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Vaccine Education Center, Questions About the Vaccine Schedule http://www.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-schedule/vaccine-schedule-qa.html

Offit PA, Moser CA, Vaccines and Your Child: Separating Fact from Fiction (excerpt) http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15307-2/vaccines-and-your-child/excerpt

Screen Capture of Chiropractor's Claims 

Source:  "My Crystal Clear Stance on Vaccinations" by Kurt Perkins DC, posted May 2012