Alex Ramirez - Top 10 Vaccine Objections

Top 10 Vaccine Objections

Top 10 Vaccine Objections

Doubts and Conversations

ALEX RAMIREZ

EDITED BY CHARLES NATON

UNION BRIDGE BOOKS

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company Limited (WPC)

UNION BRIDGE BOOKS

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London SE1 8HA

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Copyright Alex Ramirez 2020

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-539-5 (Pbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78527-539-9 (Pbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.

Contents

Many thanks to Paco and Susana for the wonderful illustration work.

Hi! My names Alex and Im a biochemist.

Im a biochemist is a pretty short and succinct response to the inevitable occupation questions that come up within the first half minute of meeting somebody new.

Its not just me that it happens to, as most of us end up talking about our work in social situations because people are naturally curious. Thats why the fireman is asked about running into burning houses and the dentist ends up fielding questions about that toothache that kind of comes and goes. We all wonder about the lives of others, especially when someone has an unusual kind of job.

Its easy for me to forget just how unusual my job actually is, and I suspect thats largely because I spend most of my time locked in the lab with other biochemists, along with some other assorted flavours of nerds. However, Im reminded of the fact that I do have an unusual occupation when so many people ask me to tell them a little more about what I actually do with my day.

My pleasure, Im glad you asked.

Im a biochemist with a PhD in molecular immunology. When people ask me to translate that into English I explain that I do a lot of work with vaccines, both in academia and in the commercial sector. Now if its a good party and Im feeling three glasses of wine grandiose (and my conversation partner hasnt already fallen asleep), then I might expand my explanation still further to cover my specialist areas of antigen discovery, adjuvant research and process development. When Im inevitably asked to translate that into English, I just explain that I spend my time trying to figure out exactly which components are essential for a vaccine to make it work. I also do a lot of research into figuring out whether theres anything we can add to an existing vaccine to improve it, as well as helping to develop efficient, safe and cost-effective production techniques for the pharmaceutical sector.

The end result of all that fancy science-speak is that, in terms of vaccines at least, not only am I the guy who sees how the sausage gets made, Im actually the guy who comes up with the recipe in the first place.

Yeah, thats me, the vaccine sausage guy; although thats not how its written on my business card.

Like I said, I have a pretty unusual job and people are often very interested when they realise theyre talking to a genuine, fully paid-up member of the bona fide expert club at least when it comes to vaccines. Sausages, less so.

When Im not drinking wine at parties or talking to other scientists about vaccines, I spend a lot of my time talking to doctors, students and members of the public about the same subject, so I guess that really makes me a kind of go-to guy when it comes to questions about vaccination.

Thats how you came to be reading this book.

A quick Internet search will immediately tell you that there are plenty of other books about vaccines available right now. There are lots of incredibly detailed academic works, professional journals and epidemiology studies all outlining the case for using vaccines and providing the data to back it up. So much data

However, there are precious few books written by insiders like me that arent three feet thick and crammed with unintelligible graphs, tables and footnotes that in many cases are even longer than the text itself.

There are no graphs in this book, just as there is no unnecessarily complex language and no soul-destroying swamps of appendices and references. Instead, this is just a plain English summary of the huge number of discussions Ive enjoyed with folk from all walks of life about the subject of vaccination. Youll be happy to hear that I favour the amusing and the informative rather than any preachy, finger-wagging medical lectures. Many people are concerned about the perceived efficiency, safety or even the morality of vaccine use, and although its not technically part of my job to answer those questions, I do have some special insight regarding these matters.