Talk:Vaccination

Our article lacks and needs an effectiveness section. Should be first section after intro.

A thorough exposition on the burden of vaccine preventable diseases, and on vaccine's role of saving lives and health is needed.

Simply put, diseases sicken and kill. Immunization protects from vaccine preventable diseases. If you don't understand diseases, you won't understand what vaccine do.

Our current article's intro. mentions vaccine's proven effectiveness, but does not discuss it. Rather it simply points to the studies. More detailed discussion of effectiveness of a particular vaccine does occur later, but only in the context of rebutting "controversy" as to effectiveness.

We should re-outline so that our article begins with a clear exposition of the compelling benefits. With attention to presenting how those benefits have been proven. "Controversy" should then be introduced, so that there is a frame for evaluating, e.g., non-scientific studies. This avoids "controversy" inserting itself as a section headline and so becoming the cognitive frame.

The intro. of the current article includes brief effectiveness information, which might be enough if a "controversy" had not been declared. People interested would then simply click through the footnote links and read the sources cited.

... The effectiveness of vaccination has been widely studied and verified.[1][2][3] Vaccination is the most effective method of preventing infectious diseases;[4] widespread immunity due to vaccination is largely responsible for the worldwide eradication of smallpox and the elimination of diseases such as polio, measles, and tetanus from much of the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that licensed vaccines are currently available for twenty-five different preventable infections.[5] ...

Unfortunately, there is a lucrative business in vaccine denialism, (e.g., by the selling of books). Hence vaccine's proven and ongoing contribution of the well-being of families via the reduction of disease burden deserves space at the top of this page, right after the intro. The organization of the Influenza vaccine page could serve as a model.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Ocdcntx (talk • contribs) 19:06, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

@Ocdcntx: I have added an effectiveness section, copied from vaccine with a few minor changes, I'm not sure why vaccine and vaccination are separate articles. Tornado chaser (talk) 00:14, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

While I don't have a moment to actually *rewrite* any section here, I will note that there is a terrific US non-profit and non-partisan authority on the topic here: https://www.historyofvaccines.org

"History of Vaccines" is a project of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and is supported by Physicians and not by either Pharma or by Anti-Vaccine activists. This makes it a unique source that gets around some of the concerns expressed by partisans. There is a very good basic article here ^[1]that could be easily cited.

https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/why-vaccinate BrooklynBen (talk) 13:39, 13 April 2018 (UTC) BrooklynBen

I have CSD'd this article after merging it into vaccine relevant discussion may be found at Talk:Vaccine. Tornado chaser (talk) 23:06, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Merge undone, per same discussion. --GRuban (talk)`

In https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vaccination&diff=836221458&oldid=833502726 I added a paragraph on evidence of the influence of aluminium adjuvents on the brain, something for which there seems to be a growing amount of evidence (but I did not put it in those words as the "growing amount of evidence" is a subjective observations). (Something went wrong with the diff here; it's just the "Recent studies..." line.) In retrospect, my addition does not fit perfectly in this paragraph "Vaccination-autism controversy". For that, the sectioning in this article should probably be restructered a bit. Any ideas what's best to do here? Hulten (talk) 12:39, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

I think in the MMR section related to autism another key thing to put in is the research done by the ^[1]</ref>CDC. Including that article is also another useful source for this section as it is an ongoing debate between both sides.

Kisbell1 (talk) 18:25, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

I would like to add a section on public opinion of vaccination, or add some more information to the opposition section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Amschie (talk • contribs) 17:16, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

If all the opposition was listed in this article it would be really long, we actually have a whole other article about vaccine controversies. Tornado chaser (talk) 18:14, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

@Amschie:. Tornado chaser (talk) 18:15, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello! As part of a course through UCSF School of Medicine, I am editing the Vaccination Wikipedia page. Below is my work plan for the month:

- I will streamline some of the language in the article

- I will assess for the presence of any potential plagiarism or paraphrasing

- I will ensure that information is up to date, and if there have been changes in the field I will update them

- I will reorder some of the sections to improve the flow of the article

- I will expand on the section that talks about vaccination on a global scale

- I will include a section to talk about vaccination recommendations and schedule

- I will include a section to talk about some of the controversial ingredients in vaccines

Timeline:

March 4: first meeting

March 5: pick topic --> vaccination

March 5-8: first collect sources, make work plan (post to public talk page)

March 8: first WP-WiP

March 13: second WP-WiP

March 15: match day, take today and next 2 days off

March 18: third WP-WiP, start working again

March 25: fourth WP-WiP, peer review work

March 27: make last edit

March 28: end course, 10-12 wrap-up session — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thayermartin (talk • contribs) 02:01, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for giving me the chance to provide peer feedback on your edits so far. This is an important topic and you've made excellent choices in terms of what sections to flesh out more. Overall your edits were very effective in conveying complex concepts like chemistry and the vaccine regulatory process in easy-to-understand language.

Lede

• Excellent and easy to understand language in 1st and 2nd sentences.
• "it helps" should be "they help" if referring to "vaccines" from previous sentence
• I agree with your decision to make minimal edits to what is generally a well written section

Mechanism of action

• Good choice of exemplars for various vaccine applications
• Pronouns: "its" referring to plural rabies vaccines in P2 should be "their," and the "This" starting sentence 2 of paragraph 1 should be more specific or be "They" if referring to vaccines.

Safety

• Definitely a good choice to make Safety the main header and to beef this section up
• Excellent description of vaccine development in terms of clarity and ease of understanding
• I think the first two paragraphs could go under a sub-heading along the lines of "vaccine development and approval process" since they focus on that specific topic rather than summarizing the entire Safety section
• "thoroughly" is a subjective word that you could consider deleting, even if your citations use that word.
• Great decision to include a table of resources. The table format works better than paragraph format.
• Conveying event rates as "1 in #" format makes them easier to understand -- good choice
• I liked the conciseness of the description of metal salts vs the elemental form

Vaccination-Autism Controversy

• Well organized, concise description of the Wakefield paper and its fallout
• It was a good idea to flesh out this section even though there is a parent article, as many people coming to the vaccination page may be interested in this topic
• In this section or elsewhere it might be valuable to have some quantitative data on the scale of the anti-vaccination movement and the platforms it was most active on.

Again, I think you've done an excellent job so far!

Manuvenkat (talk) 04:08, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I noticed the vaccine safety chapter features predominantly US regulations for vaccines. From my point of view it would be nice if there were some paragraphs describing the handling of vaccine safety regulations in other countries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:C9:3F22:3301:452B:18F9:849E:7A8F (talk) 16:58, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

The claim in the article that the Miller, Goldman studies "have shown that current vaccine schedules increase infant mortality and hospitalization rates, arguably an effect of synergistic toxicity." is simply false. Their findings are consistent with that conclusion, and supportive of that conclusion, but there are numerous problems with the studies, and at a more fundamental level, because they are rather simple correlational studies, they cannot show anything about causality with confidence. Accordingly, I'm making wording changes to that section of the page to put the reference to the Miller/Goldman studies in a more scientifically grounded context. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Regutten (talk • contribs) 14:41, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

> Pandemrix was discontinued due to lack of demand, not due to side effects

This is plausible however all the information included is also referrenced from high quality sources... I hope. There might be WP:DUE arguments. What do you think about the suggestions here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Pandemrix:_People_probably_have_an_opinion_on_this.

Would you prefer a different title for this section. Talpedia (talk) 04:55, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

After a little discussion, I've added a more general discussion "adverse outcomes identified after mass vaccination". I'm going to move the content written to the main Pandemrix page. Talpedia (talk) 11:41, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you? Yes, everything in the article was relevant to the "Vaccine" topic. The article mentioned the mechanisms and functions of a vaccine, vaccination versus inoculation, vaccine development and approval, side effects, severe side effects, the ingredients of a vaccine (varies on the purpose of the vaccine), monitoring, society and culture, litigation, opposition, and the costs and benefits of a vaccine. Nothing in the article distracted me because the information was concise and straightforward with no bias just useful information. Elyybeth (talk) 07:22, 23 November 2020 (UTC)ElizabethA

The redirect Vaccinationists has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 September 4 § Vaccinationists until a consensus is reached. Jay 💬 07:17, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

This is a very complete and comprehensive article. If I were a major contributor, I would nominate it for GA status. But since I'm not, I'd like to give it an A rating, which is not frequent and per WP:CLASSES it should have at least one other editor agreeing with the assessment.

Would anyone agree to this assessment, and like to update the page? Just-a-can-of-beans (talk) 19:15, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on this topic, but I can see a couple of ways the article could be more complete:

• Herd immunity is mentioned in the intro so I expected to see a section on it.
• I expected to see a summary section on "vaccines"
• The "Usage" section doesn't seem to give an idea of the number of vaccinations world wide for various diseases.
• The cause of the measles uptick in the US is asserted without a reference. Here is what the CDC site says:
  • The majority of cases were among people who were not vaccinated against measles. Measles is more likely to spread and cause outbreaks in U.S. communities where groups of people are unvaccinated.

The difference between B and the higher levels is to be honest unclear to me, but they claim that coverage is important. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:33, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

• vaccinophiliac: A person who needlessly gets vaccinated* too many times.

2A02:2149:8B83:6500:9464:BD1F:2B81:D064 (talk) 23:57, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

The only reliable reference I was able to find:

• Neher, Jon O. (February 2017). "Vaccinophilia/phobia". Evidence-Based Practice. 20 (2): 2. doi:10.1097/01.EBP.0000541621.34008.4c. ISSN 1095-4120.

A definition for vaccinophiliac based on this reference would be more like "A person who likes vaccines because of their proven effectiveness against rabies, yellow fever, and meningitus."

However, this one reference was an uncited opinion piece and I did not see any secondary references. So my conclusion is that this word is not notable. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:07, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

The goal of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Vital Signs 2026 campaign is to bring all 101 top-importance articles—including this one—up to at least B-class quality. Many of these articles are widely read but overdue for review, so even small improvements can have a big impact.

If you watch or edit this article, your help would be very welcome. You can:

1. Add yourself as a participant
2. Note the state of the article in the Progress table (is the current class still correct?)
3. Update the article based on recent clinical guidelines and review papers
4. Help address gaps, improve clarity for a broad audience, or improve image selection

To reach B class, articles should have: suitable referencing, reasonable coverage, a clear structure, good prose, helpful illustrations, and be understandable to a broad audience. Contributions of any size are appreciated. Femke (talk) 16:00, 20 December 2025 (UTC)