Customer Reviews

Vaccinations: A Thoughtful Parent's Guide: How to Make Safe, Sensible Decisions about the Risks, Benefits, and Alternatives

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Objectivity in the controversy of vaccinations is almost non-existent. Aviva Jill Romm has accomplished a singular feat in providing parents with an intelligent discussion of the issues without telling the parent which they should choose. Rather, she presents summaries of the most pertinent vaccination studies, analyzes difficulties in interpreting existing data, and explores thoughtful questions involved in the decision. She makes it clear that "to vaccinate or not to vaccinate" is not an easy question, and it has no easy answers that will suit everybody. To help parents make an educated decision, Romm also offers a succinct primer on how the immune system works, what symptoms and risks present with each "vaccine-preventable disease," and standard treatments for each disease. The last half of the book includes herbal remedies and recipes for common childhood diseases, as a supplement to other healthy choices to improve immune system functioning. This book serves as an outstanding reference on vaccination-related facts, a balanced decision guide for parents, and a handy cookbook for home remedies. I buy this book for my friends who are seriously and genuinely investigating the vaccination decision without prejudice.

Amidst the plethora of fanatical and unbalanced writing on vaccinations (both pro and anti), this book is the ONE book you should read on vaccinations. The author, a midwife who is supposedly working on her MD, covers the history of vaccinations, including the mistakes made. She covers each disease, it's risks and likelihood of complications, as well as each vaccine, it's risks and efficacy. It also provides a section on naturopathic approaches to immunity.

What I like about this book is:

- it does NOT tell you what to do
- it presents the pros and cons in a balanced fashion, almost to the point that you can't tell which side the author takes (in the end, I think she is mostly against vaccination)
- it discusses how to approach exemption, and how to deal with schools etc.
- it is fairly complete and up to date, and includes discussions of the more recent DTaP (v. DTP), and the chicken pox vaccine.

Check out this quote: " I have made an effort to substantiate the information in this book by relying heavily on medical literature and not vaccine-critical books or popular health books so that you have a fairly objective view of vaccine issues." p. 151.

What I don't like about this book is:
- it does NOT tell you what to do ;)
- if you decide to selectively vaccinate, it doesn't tell you enough about how you can deal with finding, for instance, vaccines that are just Diptheria and Tetanus, without Perstussis, or just one of the three of MMR.

WHAT I DECIDED TO DO

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I have a 6 month old daughter, who has not had any vaccinations yet. Here's a per vaccine list that I have decided so far:

- Hepatitis B: NO. They recommend that all children get this at birth, but according to Romm, this is because they can't actually vaccinate the real at-risk patients ahead of time, those who are IV-drug users and sexually promiscuous. I figure that the risks of getting Hep-B when the baby is so small are not worth it. She may get it when she approaches puberty, when her body is stronger. Romm also reports that between 10 and 17 percent of pediatricians are against hep-B immunization at birth.

- DTaP: Selective. First of all, the goverment's own guideline says that this can be given as early as 2 months (which most pediatricians do), but that the *optimal* time is 15 months! Not only that, it's 2 years old in Japan, and in Europe, the Pertussis vaccine is no longer given. Imagine that! However, since Diptheria and Tetanus are pretty serious, we plan on getting just those, but NOT pertussis. One of the problems with all vaccines, btw, is that they do NOT give you life-long immunity (with Pertussis, it's as low as 50%), so you are often better off getting the disease as a child - most of the diseases we vaccinate for, including chicken pox, measles, and mumps, have almost no long term affects for healthy children who get standard and timely medical attention. And, if you get the disease, you usually get lifetime immunity.

- Polio: NO. We may get this before we travel overseas, but there is no risk of getting it here in the States, and again, every time you inject a vaccine into the bloodstream, not only are you injecting all of the *other* ingredients (including other animal genetic material from the culture of the vaccines, and often metals such as mercury and aluminum) in a vaccine, but you are tampering with the immune system, and conferring questionable immunity (may not last). Of course, we no longer use the live OPV (Oral Polio Vaccine), and the non-live IPV can not give you polio.

- MMR: Still deciding, probably NOT.

- Chicken Pox: Still deciding, probably NOT.

- HiB (influenza B): Still deciding, probably YES.

Anyway, you get the idea. Now get this book!

I am a father of a two-year old boy. Until the baby was born, I had never been aware of any issues surrounding pro or anti vaccination. My wife, I found out, is adamantly against just about every vaccination. Being deeply confused and frustrated when my wife simply refused to have the boy vaccinated, I decided to educate myself on the issue - so I can actually have civilized and educated discussions with my wife. In summer 2002 the reviewer below freedom2think kindly replied to me by stating that this book was the only non-biased book she had found on the subject issue. One by one, the book breaks down and discusses every major vaccine preventable disease and its respective vaccine known today in America in a manner that is easy to understand. It talks about the bio-chemical mechanism of how vaccines are supposed to work, its history, risks involved in both cases of vaccinated versus non-vaccinated, statistics, data, symptoms to watch and what-to-do in both cases where symptoms are observed. If does not tell you which side you should join, but rather helps you understand what really the issue is about and perhaps decide more comfortably. I would strongly recommend this book to you especially if you are a novice on the topic.

This is an excellent book to get you acquainted with the pros and cons of vaccinations. You can do some more research after reading this book, but it will give you good background to get started. This book does not give you answers, because answers would depend on your particular situation: whether you're going to stay at home with a baby, breast-feed, send him/her to day care at 3 month, etc. After reading this book you will be able to make more intelligent decisions about whether to vaccinate, not vaccinate or vaccinate selectively - strongly recommend!

I am a former biochemistry researcher who researched experimental drugs that were submitted for FDA approval. I am also a new parent who recently had to face the decision of whether or not to vaccinate.

The FDA is made up of approvals boards that have had to retract or revise their decisions on many occasions. Science is still in its infancy in some regards, and when it comes to testing long-term effects of vaccines on infants and children, it is frankly primitive. As many readers know, the FDA has also been sued numerous times for conflicts of interest. Additionally, as a scientist, the possibility of diseases jumping the species barrier through vaccines via the DNA fragments of monkeys or aborted fetuses on which the vaccines were grown is a very real concern.

I am simply not convinced that vaccines have been sufficiently studied, each batch properly screened for the hundreds of known diseases that can be inadvertently transferred, and that all conflict of interests have been eliminated on the part of the FDA.

Of course, I realize the difficulties that such a task would pose. But that does not stop me from facing the fact that vaccines are still experimental substances with known adverse reactions, whose widespread use is heavily influenced by powerful pharmaceutical companies. These companies have a vested interest in making sure each and every newborn gets a Hepatitis B shot (regardless of whether a risk exists and regardless of the fact that the shot is ineffective within a matter of years) and that all children are given waves of booster shots, regardless of the concentration of the vaccine in the child's system at the time. Needless to say, my husband and I chose not to vaccinate.

I would encourage every parent to read this book and to understand their options. Research the history of conflicts of interest and errors on the part of the FDA. And above all, do not be afraid of asking questions and making a decision that others may find controversial. It is a shame that the Hippocratic Oath's edict to "First do no harm" cannot be faithfully applied to the subject of vaccines...

This is one of the books I used to help me decide whether or not we should vaccinate our children. I got this book when it first came out and I was expecting it to be very biased towards not vaccinating, but it's actually quite good and is not biased either way. She basically details all the illnesses that we vaccinate for and then describes the vaccines and how effective they are. It was quite an education. When I was initially researching whether or not to vaccinate I found that most books were either pro or against with nothing in between. This book was like a breath of fresh air in that regard. The Stephanie Cave book is also excellent. Between the two of them I found I was able to make an educated decision about what was best for our family (we decided to selectively vax.)

I loved the "Natural Pregnancy Book" by Aviva Jill Romm, and I was excited to see that she had a book on vaccines. However, it's not a very good book. It was clear to me that she was asked to write about something that she didn't really know that well. I found the book kind of confusing, sometimes out of date (a lot of discussion on vaccines that are no longer used), and generally lacking in the details/statistics I wanted. Try "The Vaccine Book" by Robert Sears, instead. It's a much better choice. "The Vaccine Book" offers the details and actual statistics that this book lacks. The Sears book also offers a nice discussion on the use of animal tissue in making vaccines and a nice discussion on the concerns about aluminum toxicity.

Romm has thoroughly researched this guide to vaccinations, referencing hundreds of studies from peer-review journals published around the world. An excellent, non-hysterical, honest interrogation of vaccine history, adverse effects from vaccines, disease risks, and practical home remedies for many of the diseases discussed. A must have for your health/parenting library.

I purchased both this book and *Vaccine Guide* by Randall Neustaedter at the same time. I read this one first, and when I read Neustaedter's right afterwards, I thought Romm's was very derivative of his (published originally in 1996). They both follow similar organizational forms, and use a lot of the same research. The main difference between the two is that Romm gives herbal remedies/healthcare ideas, and Neustaedter gives homeopathic ones.

When it comes to the way the books are written, and the information offered, Neustaedter's is much better. I own another book by Romm, and don't find her to be a particularly good writer. This one is by turns too medical/scientific (or trying to be, at least), and too informal...one minute she'll sound like she's talking to another scientist, and the next, to her best friend.

I think she does try to be impartial, but I had the impression that she was "trying," not giving her own real opinion a lot of the time.

If you're considering buying this one, I'd go with Neustaedter's instead, unless you want this one for the herbal remedies it contains. That part of the book is helpful!

This book is well-written and well-researched. It presents a fair and balanced vies and provides much-needed information which is not regularly provided by medical doctors.