How do vaccinations work?
The immune system works according to the proteins on the surfaces of living cells. All the cells in an individual organism have identical surface proteins. A cell from another organism has a different set of surface proteins. The immune system recognizes foreign proteins and marker cells attach special proteins to foreign cells. Larger cells known as macrophages then target the marked cells and ingest them. The marker cells of the immune system are very specific regarding a particular type of foreign protein. It takes the immune system a certain amount of time to generate marker cells for foreign proteins the system has never encountered. This gives infectious organisms the opportunity to increase their populations enough to resist attack once the immune system recognizes them as foreign invaders. Vaccines work by introducing dead or inactive foreign organisms into the body. These organisms have the same foreign proteins that living ones do.
A vaccine works by introducing a safe form of an agent which causes the disease in small quantities in order to stimulate the body’s natural defence mechanism (the immune system). The vaccine stimulates the production of antibodies which fight that particular disease and the antibodies remain dormant in the body to fight exposure to the disease in later life. Vaccination has been extremely successful in eliminating these serious diseases.
