i feel that it's very important to be well informed with something like this, especially since we're supposed to start vaccinating our children as soon as they're born, when their bodies are still so immature and sensitive to many influences.
like ed and i, my sister and ricardo have been doing their own independent vaccine research since before julia was born. my sister read over 10 books on the topic, and many articles. she tried to get info from sources with different points of view, and in so doing gather a well-rounded understanding of the relevant issues. recently, she put together 2 summaries on vaccinations, one of a book, and one of a video, which she found to be the most useful, and the least biased of all the info she's come across so far.
i am REALLY grateful to her for taking the time to write this down and share it with me and other people.
here are her summaries. please feel free to pass them along to anyone you think may be interested. i'd also like to add that my sister and ricardo did not start out thinking that they would not vaccinate. they started out wanting to know what's best for julia, and willing to spend a lot of time to find out. in my opinion, they're as unbiased as you can hope for, and so i trust their information and research.
----------
Dr. Sears "The Vaccine Book":
This is the best book I've read so far on the vaccines topic. Even though it is written by a pediatrician, and he is pro-vaccine, the book has less bias than most others I've read on vaccines, and contains a lot of useful information that I have not been able to find anywhere else (I think I've read about 10 books on vaccines so far, as well as seeing a few videos and reading lots of vaccine-related info on the internet).
His main conclusions are:
- Vaccines are important because they prevent some diseases which can be very serious/life-threatening
- Although disease-incidence may have been going down before the introduction of vaccines, he believes that vaccines have played a significant role in reducing or eliminating infectious disease in the US and have saved lives world-wide
- He believes parents' concerns about vaccines are well-founded and attempts to address some of them
- While he does not recommend avoiding all vaccines, he believes that not all vaccines are necessary, and that parents need to be well-informed and take responsibility for their decisions regarding vaccines
- He suggests selectively vaccinating and/or using an alternative vaccine schedule (which he has proposed) to minimize the risk of adverse effects
- For parents who choose not to vaccinate, he recommends breast-feeding for at least 2 years, and avoiding day-care and large play-groups.
- For each vaccine, he lists the different pharmaceutical companies who make the vaccine, and the ingredients used. I found this to be particularly useful/interesting in the case of the HIB vaccine, since it is the only one we've given to Julia so far. It turns out there are 3 different companies who make the HIB vaccine, and the ingredients are different depending on which brand you get. The one Julia got is made by Merck, and contains, amongst other ingredients, 225 micrograms of Aluminum. Dr. Sears has a long discussion on the potential problems with the use of Aluminum in vaccines, and recommends trying to minimize the amount and choose vaccines that do NOT contain any Aluminum whenever available. I didn't know it then, but we could have gotten a different brand of the HIB vaccine which DOES NOT contain any Aluminum. This is the first time I read this, and I wish I would have known it BEFORE we gave Julia the vaccine (Our pediatrician did not mention any of this, and has probably not even taken the time to look at the different ingredients for the different brands. I do think our pediatrician is well-intentioned and trying to do what's best for kids, but I also think that he's not well-informed when it comes to vaccines and the potential side-effects, I think he's just blindly following the medical-school mantra of "Vaccines good, Disease bad", as most other pediatricians/doctors.)
- Dr. Sears recommends an Alternate Vaccination Schedule which spaces out the shots such that an infant only gets one or two shots per visit, and only one of those containing Aluminum, thus minimizing the risk of adverse effects.
- Dr. Sears also talks about combination-vaccines, where kids get several vaccines in one injection. Although he does acknowledge the advantage of less pain from only getting one needle instead of several, he cautions parents to be careful w/ combination vaccines because some of them have a lot more Aluminum than getting the separate shots. For example, there's a combination shot which includes DTaP, HIB, and Polio, which kids are scheduled to get a 2, 4, and 6 months. The combination shot contains 1500 micrograms of Aluminum, which is by far the most of any vaccine, and it's a lot more than the sum of the three individual vaccines.
- As I said above, he spends a lot of time discussing Aluminum, and agrees that there is reason for concern. He quotes several studies published in Medical journals that show that Aluminum can be toxic even at lower doses, and he highlights that no one has yet shown what is a safe dose, especially for a small infant. He says he is frustrated that no one has done the research on what amount of Aluminum is safe in vaccines, the only articles published are about aluminum in the solution used in hospital IVs, and there is evidence that some newborns (particularly premature babies) have suffered toxic effects due to the Aluminum present in the IV. He also says he is
frustrated that the IV bags have a warning stating that the Aluminum could be toxic, but the vaccines do not have any warnings about Aluminum.
- He states that some diseases are no longer occurring in the US, such as Polio and Diphtheria, and some parents may want to skip those shots; he supports that decision, but says you may have to reconsider if you travel to some parts of the world where these diseases are still a problem
- He acknowledges that some illnesses such a chickenpox are really mild and suggests that parents who are concerned about vaccines may want to skip the chickenpox vaccine until the child grows up. If the vaccine is required to get into school, then you can get a blood test to see if the kid already has antibodies, and may be able to skip the vaccine altogether
- For measles and mumps, he says that the diseases are pretty rare in the US, so these vaccines are not as important/necessary as other ones and can be skipped
- He explains that some diseases are mostly a problem for infants or kids under 2, but for older kids, the diseases are a lot milder. There are 4 diseases that fit into this category: HIB, pertussis, pneumoccocal, and rotavirus. The alternate vaccine schedule he proposes includes these 4 shots for kids under 2, but he says that if you choose to delay all vaccines until after 2 years of age, then you might as well skip these 4.
- He argues that it makes no sense to give a Hep B shot to an infant, since it is mostly an STD, so he recommends holding off until the child grows up to be a teenager, when he/she may actually be at risk of catching the disease.
- He states that tetanus almost never occurs under the age of 5, so he recommends that if you are not concerned about pertussis and want to skip the DTaP shots, then you can hold off until the kid is 5 years old for the Tetanus shot
- He discusses flu shots, which are now part of the routine immunization schedule. He says some flu shots still contain mercury (thimerosal), and he strongly advises parents to make sure that any flu shots their kids get are mercury-free. However, there is often a shortage of the mercury-free flu shots, and if that's the case, he advises parents to just skip the shots, he
says the risk of the mercury is not worth it
- He acknowledges that some vaccines have more adverse effects than others, and says that although there is no detailed data on this, in his experience, HIB is the least problematic of the vaccines, and Hep B and MMR are some of the most problematic. He actually gives a whole list of vaccines from the least to the most problematic.
- He has an entire chapter where he does a numerical analysis of the risk of a severe negative outcome from catching each disease vs. the risk of a severe negative outcome from getting the vaccine (and by severe negative outcome, he means needing an extended hospital stay, and/or resulting in a permanent disability, and/or death, but does NOT include ER visits). I found
this to be one of the most useful and interesting parts of the book. He acknowledges that there is not a lot of reliable documentation on the adverse effects of vaccines, and he got most of his info from the VAERS (vaccine adverse reactions) database. Unfortunately, the VAERS data has
NOT been sorted out for each disease, so the best he could come up with is that the risk for any one child to have a severe reaction to a vaccine is 1 in 2600, although he acknowledges that some vaccines have more risk than others. Then he goes through each disease and works out the risk of having a severe case. For some diseases, that risk is 1 in 500, for others it's 1 in 10,000. Based on this analysis, you may conclude that the risk of the vaccine is higher than the risk of the disease.
- He also mentioned that some parents are concerned about the animal and human tissues present in vaccines, and recalls how vaccines in the 50's and 60's were contaminated with the SV40 virus which came from monkey kidney tissue. That virus is known to cause cancer in lab animals and has been found in cancerous tumors in humans. There is definite proof that the SV40 found in these human cancerous tumors is the same virus that was in those contaminated vaccines.
- He also acknowledges several other vaccine screw-up's, including the oral polio vaccine which cause paralytic polio, the DTP shot which had a high risk of seizures and neurological damage, and the rotavirus vaccine whichwas recalled after causing several deaths as a result of a severe bowel obstruction. He also spends some time talking about the problem with mercury and how if you summed up the amount on mercury in the recommended vaccine schedule, it far exceeded the "safe limit" set by the EPA. However, he states that this is no longer an issue now that thimerosal has been removed from almost all vaccines.
If you want to read more, I would recommend reading the book. I managed to finish it in 3 days.
His web site also has a lot of good info:
http://www.askdrsears.com/thevaccinebook/
-------------------------
And this is the summary of a 2-hour video of a talk on vaccines given by a pediatrician from California. His name is Dr.Jay Gordon, and he is fairly well-known (he also has a web site). His views are similar to Dr. Sears, although "The Vaccine book" by Dr. Sears is a lot more detailed than the 2-hour DVD by Dr. Gordon. In any case, I hope you get a chance to see it. Here's what I took away from it:
- Dr. Gordon makes it clear that he is NOT anti-vaccine. He believes that some vaccines can be beneficial in certain situations (for example, for people who travel to third-world countries and get exposed to the local population - he gave one example of someone who traveled to some third-world country to work in an orphanage). He makes a strong point that in his opinion, the vaccination schedule in the US makes not sense, and it is harmful to kids who get some many shots all at the same time, when the kids are so young.
- He recommends selectively vaccinating depending on the needs of the individual child/family. He also recommends delaying vaccines at least until the child is 6 months, but would prefer to wait until the child is 2 years old.
- There are certain vaccines that he thinks are no longer necessary for the majority of the US population, such as Polio, Diphtheria and Hib.
- He also explains that he is strongly opposed to the chicken pox vaccine, and thinks it will do more harm than good because it is shifting the incidence of chicken pox from childhood, when it is a mild disease, to adulthood, when it is pretty serious (especially for pregnant women).
- He said he is okay with people who choose not to vaccinate at all, he believes it is a personal decision
- He said people ask him if he was to give just one vaccine, which would it be. His answer is that he would want to vaccinate against pertussis. But there is no vaccine against just pertussis, so you need to get the combo w/ Diphtheria and Tetanus i.e. the DTaP vaccine. So he recommends giving 3 doses of DTaP starting at 2 years of age.
- The most interesting question he answered at the end of the video is: if he had a newborn baby, would he vaccinate? He said that he probably would not, but again, it's a personal decision.
No comments:
Post a Comment