Comments on: Dr. Sears Alternative Vaccine Schedule

By: Susan

Susan — Mon, 10 May 2010 22:34:01 +0000

The decision to vaccinate or not is best left in the hands of educated parents. As a child of the 50’s, I had very high titers for mumps, measles, and chicken pox, and elected that protection for my children as long as they breast fed. My children did not go to daycare, and so did not require hep A. I like Dr. Sears’ book, I have no idea why he would make anyone crazy! He is very rational and informative.

By: glasnost

glasnost — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:19:56 +0000

Well Done! I Like it!

By: Teenycakes

Teenycakes — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:29:45 +0000

There are many options out there, not just what we do in the US. For me, this year, that has meant waiting to vaccinate my newborn so that she was not exposed so heavily to the H1N1 outbreak we had locally in the drs office.

Other than that, I look outside the US where there is less monetary incentive to do this. I will likely be following a version of the schedule as done in Denmark.

By: Julia

Julia — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:26:25 +0000

What I would like to see is a comparison of the risk of getting a particular disease, the risk of serious complications (long-term permanent harm) or death from that disease, and the risk of getting serious complications from that disease’s vaccine. I find it hard to think that it is healthy to inject mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde and other dangerous chemicals and metals into our bodies or our tiny babie’s bodies either. If I could get vaccinations that just had the viral component in a dead or disabled condition, and get it with just one virus at a time, then I would probably feel a lot more comfortable with the whole thing. As it is, it is very hard to find some of the information I want to find. If my child’s chances of contracting a particular disease is 1 in 10,000 and the chance of suffering serious complications or death is 1 in 5,000 but his chances of contracting serious injury or death from a vaccination is 1 in 2,000; my question becomes why would I expose him to more potential damage from a vaccination than from the disease itself. The numbers above are not particular to any virus or vaccination, they are only a potential scenario because I am finding it hard to find this kind of information on most of the sites I have visited. Until I have this kind of information, it is pretty hard to determine which is safer.

By: Steph

Steph — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:01:50 +0000

It’s so ridiculous when people say, “if vaccinations cause autism, then everyone who is vaccinated would be autisic.” Ummm…really? So because everyone who smokes cigarettes doesn’t have cancer, they must NOT cause it.

By: Maria

Maria — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:43:16 +0000

Oh, I just went to look at Offit’s critique of the Vaccine Book and realized I had already read it. It is mostly nonsense. Anyone who has read the Vaccine Book will see that Offit has cherry picked to make Sears sound like an idiot. For those who haven’t seen the Sears response, here it is:

http://www.askdrsears.com/thevaccinebook/archives/2008_12_01_archive.asp

By: Maria

Maria — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:35:27 +0000

I love the Vaccine Book by Dr. Sears because it is rational, lays out the evidence, and lets you decide. A lot of the anti-vaccine “evidence” is actually very poorly done, but if you are not used to evaluating scientific studies, you would not know that. Why is Dr. Sears saying that the MMR is OK but still saying that you might want to get separate shots and space them out? He’s saying that because he has humility, frankly – something completely lacking in this vaccine debate. He knows he doesn’t know anything. Based on the available research, it looks like the MMR is OK, but given we don’t know everything and many more studies need to be conducted, it might be better to space them out and get them as separate shots. I think his willingness to admit that all the evidence is not in and that he is making best guesses based on the available research is incredibly refreshing. I found this website because my daughter just got her MMR today and I was looking for some discussion of possible side effects. I’m living in New Zealand right now where they have a major outbreak of measles because so many parents do not vaccinate their children. The worst part is that babies are dying from it because they are too young to be vaccinated, but they are catching it from older toddlers who weren’t vaccinated because their parents didn’t want them to be vaccinated. I am not religiously pro-vaccinations – I used an alternative schedule close to Dr. Sears’ – but I do think vaccines are useful and if masses of people stopped getting them, we’d see a quick resurgence of lots of serious illness that once were wiped out. What a shame that would be.

By: Julie

Julie — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:29:19 +0000

Amanda, I looked at that website and it is very biased on the anti-vaccine side. Here are some examples:

Articles: This link includes controversial information that the mainstream media doesn’t report, and that your doctor and government authorities would like to suppress.

This is very loaded language and the paranoid assumption that my doctor and government authorities want to suppress information implies a vast conspiracy.

Studies: Authorities often claim that “anti-vaccine” websites do not provide valid documentation. We provide hundreds of peer-reviewed studies from scientific and medical journals. Many of these studies link vaccines to the onset of new diseases.

I glanced at their list of studies, and the widely debunked Wakefield study that started this whole mess is still on there. I suspect this list of studies is not very good and probably out of date.

Personal Stories: Heart-wrenching personal stories by parents whose children were harmed by vaccines.

Those stories are indeed heart-wrenching, but they are all over the map in terms of just what illnesses they attribute to vaccines. And none of them provide proof beyond the parents’ assumptions that the vaccines did the damage. I feel for those parents, but those stories just don’t prove that vaccines cause harm. Neither do the cases of the five children at your sister-in-law’s preschool. That kind of third hand story is very far from being substantial evidence.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:51:49 +0000

I think a lot of what this issue boils down to is allowing the parents to decide what is best for their child and not the goverment. I am on the fence myself about vaccines. My sister in law is the administrator at a local preschool and at that school alone, thre have been 5 cases of children developing various forms of autism (some severe, some mild) within 1 month of getting the MMR.

http://www.thinktwice.com does have a lot of good information – scientifically based – regardng vaccines, how they are made, and tons of other resources. They are advocates for allowing parents to decide…not bureaucrats.

After doing a ton of research myself, I am not quite convinced that it was the vaccines that have reduced illnesses in our society (at the same time, better hygine practices were also being encouraged, along with better sanitation and nutrition). So it is difficult to tell really just how much the vaccines alone helped.

I am not an advocate for either side, rather, I am a rational monther that thinks parent should have soveriengty in making decisions regarding their children’s health. Bravo to you, though, for creating a site that strives for a discussion group that is non-emotionally based. It is tough for us moms to not get emotional about our kids – but sometimes those emotions can cloud our thinking…gotta be clear headed about these things!

Best Regards to you.

By: Julie

Julie — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:05:21 +0000

Thanks for writing, Christel. This is an older post, so I don’t know if comments will continue to accumulate. But I did want to say that at first I believed, as you do, that delayed vaccinations were better than no vaccinations. And it logically followed, for me, that Sears was doing something of a public service by acting as an intermediary between the big world of medicine and frightened parents.

A more cynical view might be that he panders to frightened parents to sell his book. But it is difficult to believe, when you hear the man speak, that he is so calculating. He seems like an awfully nice guy. Still, he does sell a lot of those books.

I think the truth is somewhere in between. Sears’s latest info on his site says that even he has given the MMR his blessing. Yet he still says that it might be better to split up the shot if possible. There’s no logical reason to do it, but he says hey, better be safe. But safe from what? I think there’s really an element to him (as nice as he seems) that just wants to be this guru to parents, and keeping a little fear in the equation helps his self appointed position, because then he can constantly provide updates and advice.