How vaccines train the immune system in ways no one expected | Christine Stabell Benn | TEDxAarhus

Christine Stabell Benn gave a speech at TEDx Talks, which was published on 8 January 2019. She summarised their decades of research on vaccines. She began by defining non-specific effects and gave examples of positive non-specific effects. But then, at the 8:46 mark, Benn describes their findings about the negative non-specific effects of the DTP vaccine.

The description below the TEDx video reads:

“Vaccines do much more than protect against the disease they are designed for. Watch this talk from TEDxAarhus 2018 by medical doctor and professor in global health Christine Stabell Benn and learn how hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved every year just by using the existing vaccines smarter.

“Christine Stabell Benn is a medical doctor and professor in global health. By studying real-life effects of vaccines in Africa, she has found that vaccines do much more than protect against the target disease; they have so-called non-specific effects. In most cases, they come with an added bonus of increased resistance against other infections than the target disease. If we take that into account, we can save hundreds of thousands of lives every year just by using the existing vaccines smarter.

“Christine argues that we should not only study vaccines' effects on the target infection, but also ask the often ignored question: what is the impact of vaccines on overall health?

"This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organised by a local community.”

Related article https://expose-news.com/2025/09/25/who-unicef-dtp-vaccination-programme/

Sources and resources:
- Original video https://youtu.be/_d8PNlXHJ48