How Do Vaccines Work?



How do vaccines work? Vaccines are made specifically for a particular flu virus. Flu vaccines can take months to produce but some scientists believe that vaccines may be the most effective protection against a pandemic flu.

Others disagree...



How do vaccines work?, photo of vaccination

Photo courtesy of Luis Markovic

Making Flu Vaccines

Scientists can't just pull vaccines out of the air. There are some very specific steps that they must take to make an influenza vaccine:

  • Identify the specific influenza virus that they will target. Currently scientists are working on bird flu vaccines, swine flu vaccines, seasonal flu vaccines and, of course, many others.

    In order to get started on a virus vaccine, scientists must identify the virus that they will target. This must be the exact virus--NOT one close to it!

  • Grow live flu virus in fertilized chicken eggs.

  • Separate the influenza virus particles from the egg.

  • Kill the virus particles by exposing them to heat. In some cases, they have used LIVE viruses.

  • Blend the dead virus particles with sterile water to produce a specific concentration of virus in the mixture.

  • In addition other flu shot ingredients like adjuvants may be added (examples would be squalene or thimerosal). These ingredients may be preservatives or extenders--to make a vaccine go further.

    A growing number of doctors and scientists are questioning the safety of these adjuvants.

Scientists may have to experiment with this a bit in order to get a specific concentration (of killed virus proteins) that is high enough to be recognized by the body, yet still low enough that they can produce large quantities of the vaccine (You only get a limited amount from each batch made).


Want to know more about your legal rights to refuse a vaccine? Attorney Alan Phillips, experienced at vaccine refusals, has written an ebook, Vaccine Legal Exemptions to help you.

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How Do Vaccines Work in the Body?

Vaccines do not protect you from getting a virus. Even if you have been successfully vaccinated, you can still get influenza. And, many people still do get the flu.

The theory behind vaccines is that you will not be as sick as you would—if you had not been vaccinated.

For example, in theory, an elderly person who is vaccinated, may have a mild infection of seasonal flu (of short duration) instead of a life threatening illness. (The truth is that most elderly people who die from the "flu" actually die from a secondary infection like pneumonia.

In fact, some people who get the influenza virus after being vaccinated do not even have symptoms of flu.

How do vaccines work? Here's how the vaccines are supposed to work. When you receive a vaccination, your body’s immune system develops a way to “recognize” the particular viral proteins from the specific virus that you were vaccinated for.

Your body now sees the flu virus proteins as enemies, foreign invaders. It gets ready to fight them and destroy them.

Your immune system makes antibodies against the virus and it sends out messengers that will seek and destroy the virus particles. This happens fairly quickly so that your body can stay ahead of the rapid multiplication of virus cells.

How do vaccines work and do they always work?

Do Vaccines Always Work?

No. There are a lot of “ifs” involved.

  • Scientists must identify the exact specific virus to be targeted. This is an educated guess. Sometimes the vaccine made for seasonal flu is not effective--because the flu virus targeted for that year is not the seasonal virus that actually circulates during flu season. Or the flu virus changes after the vaccines are made.

  • If the flu virus changes or mutates (viruses change a lot), the vaccine probably won't be able to target the NEW mutated virus.

  • The correct amount of viral proteins must be included in the flu vaccine. This is determined through experimentation, trial and error.

So, while we are hopeful for a successful swine flu vaccine, it is not a definite. It may take months to develop a safe and effective vaccine for swine flu.

And, even more important, it should be tested thoroughly and properly! Unfortunately, in the rush to get the swine flu vaccine to the public, the testing procedure has been largely overlooked.


How do vaccines work? They fortify your own body's defenses so that your body can fight a flu virus like the swine flu or avian flu on its own. They help your body to recognize that the invading virus is an enemy, and they give it the defense that it needs to overcome the enemy.

If you would like to look into your legal rights to refuse a vaccine, you might want to read Attorney Alan Phillips' book, Vaccine Legal Exemptions.



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