Can vaccines cause side effects?
Vaccines are safe, but like any medicine, vaccines sometimes cause reactions or side effects. Most of the time, the reactions are localized (soreness or redness where the shot is given), mild and brief (lasting no more than a day or two). A low-grade fever can also sometimes occur, but anything more serious is rare. Proving that a vaccine is related to a specific side effect isn’t easy. That’s because little kids get sick a lot anyway and there’s a chance they could be coming down with something coincidentally right around the time they received a vaccine – possibly causing some to blame the vaccine when the blame really lies with the germs picked up at the playground. It’s also important to consider that vaccines are given at a time in life when certain health conditions begin or become apparent. For example, the MMR vaccine is given at a year to 15 months, the same time that developmental delays are often noticed in a child, causing questions as to the relationship between the vaccin
