Opting out of vaccinations could get tougher in California

[laconicsax]

46. The safety is independently verified through more than one area of research.

The first part is that our immune systems have evolved to handle lots of attacks at once (pretty obvious when you consider the bulk of human history). If being exposed to a handful of vaccines at once is enough to overwhelm the immune system, imagine what the vast number of different bacteria and other microoganisms we're exposed to every day would do. There are a lot of studies from different fields that confirm that the human immune system is more than robust enough to handle a few vaccines at a time, especially since modern vaccines are designed to stimulate the production of antibodies without the risk of causing an infection from the disease in question.

Another source is actual, direct studies on the question, one of which examines several factors involved in this issue.

In this review, we will examine the following: 1) the ontogeny of the active immune response and the ability of neonates and young infants to respond to vaccines; 2) the theoretic capacity of an infant’s immune system; 3) data that demonstrate that mild or moderate illness does not interfere with an infant’s ability to generate protective immune responses to vaccines; 4) how infants respond to vaccines given in combination compared with the same vaccines given separately; 5) data showing that vaccinated children are not more likely to develop infections with other pathogens than unvaccinated children; and 6) the fact that infants actually encounter fewer antigens in vaccines today than they did 40 or 100 years ago.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/109/1/124.full