Customer Reviews

The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child (Sears Parenting Library)

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1 star:		(17)

 

 

As soon as I heard Dr. Bob Sears would be releasing a book to help parents make vaccine decisions, I pre-ordered it and waited two months for it to be published and arrive on my doorstep.

The Vaccine Book was well worth the wait. Finally, I was able to read detailed information about each vaccine choice available for my children. Dr. Sears thoroughly investigates all the options and lays them on the table for parents to decide. I worried that this approach might be a little wishy washy and leave me with more questions than answers, but he manages to get everything out there.

I've read plenty of pro-vax and no-vax literature. Most is either staunchly against any immunizations or suggests that parents should ask no questions and just do what the nice doctor says. There are even a few things written somewhere in between, in which the authors present their recommendations. It's hard to find something that presents all the facts so parents can make educated decisions. This book did it for me.

The Vaccine Book is very readable. Dr. Sears writes in language a layperson like me can easily understand. His conversational style makes it feel like he's sitting and talking to me. He's even a little funny at times. I especially enjoy his use of Star Trek wisdom (p. 220).

He goes through each of the 12 standard vaccine choices and answers the same questions for each vaccine-preventable disease: Is it common? Is it serious? Is it treatable? When is the vaccine given? How is the vaccine made? What ingredients are in the final solution? (Including "Are any of these ingredients controversial?") What are the side effects? Should you give your baby this vaccine? (Includes reasons to get it, reasons some people choose not to, travel considerations, and options to consider when getting it.) He ends each chapter with "The way I see it" summarizing key factors, yet he does not send a message that parents must do it one way or another. He covers special vaccines for travel and combination vaccines that reduce the number of shots given. There's a chapter for parents who decide to delay or decline vaccinations and one called "What Should I Do Now?" He offers Dr. Bob's Alternative Vaccine Schedule near the end of the book. It ends with 20 pages of additional resources in which he summarizes journal articles.

Reading The Vaccine Book left me confident I could make the right vaccination decisions for each of my children.

And a big plus for me: He recognizes breastfeeding as a way to reduce disease risk. On his list of eight ways to boost your child's immune system, "breastfeed" is No. 1.

The web site www.thevaccinebook.com promises online updates to the book as vaccines and data change. There's also a forum, blog and other resources.

I got this book in the mail yesterday and have already finished it. It's great! For each disease, Dr. Sears lists the following questions: What is this disease? Is it common? Is it serious? Is it treatable? When is the vaccine given? How is it made? What ingredients are in the final solution? Are any of these ingredients controversial? What are the side effects? He then lists the reasons to get the vaccine, the reasons NOT to get the vaccine, travel considerations and his own opinion. These are exactly the questions that I wanted answered.

I would say that Dr. Sears is pro-vaccination, but also for a selective/separated vaccination schedule. He provides such a schedule in his book. He also discusses the controversies surrounding some of the ingredients in the vaccines, namely aluminum and human/animal tissues. This section will make any parent pause and question whether they really want these things injected into their child. He drew his information from the medical literature (or lack thereof in some cases). He provides a detailed "Resource" section at the end of the book so that you can pull all of his journal article, if you so choose.

Overall, this book was informative and well-balanced. Dr Sears does not go into great depth with each vaccine, which makes the book light reading, especially for a book on vaccinations. If you would like a more in-depth analysis, I would recommend Aviva Jill Romm's book "Vaccinations: A Thoughtful Parents Guide".

I really liked this book. It is written by a mainstream, famous medical doctor. He's the darling of La Leche League, has written several books, and been on TV. He provides a lot of good research as to why we don't need to follow the traditional vaccine schedule.

Chapter 1-A note to fellow physicians
He says "we receive little information on vaccines, other than that they are safe and effective..." He also says that a number of pediatricians have dismissed families who won't vaccinate, and that goes against what the American Academy of Pediatricians says a doctor should do. Instead, continued refusal to vaccinate after adequate discussion should be respected, and doctors should avoid dismissing patients from their practice simply because they don't vaccinate.

I don't like the order he uses to discuss each vaccine. If I were doing it, I would have gone in the order the vaccines are given. I have no idea how he chose his order. But chapter 2 is about the HIB.

Chapter 2-haemophilus influenzae type B and the HIB vaccine

Haemophilus influenzae type B is a bacterium that normally remains in the nose, ears or throat and only causes cold symptoms. Only rarely does it invade further into the body, but it can on occasion and has been know to cause serious illness such as meningitis, blood infections, bone infections and pneumonia. There are only about 25 serious cases a year today, although in the `80s there were about 200,000 cases per year. Of the serious cases there is about a 5% fatality rate and in 25% of the cases there is residual brain damage. A serious infection is rare beyond age 3. It is treated with intravenous antibiotics.

In vaccine trials more babies who received the vaccine caught a serious infection than the unvaccinated.

Dr. Sears also points out that a breastfed baby that does not go to day care is at particularly low risk of contracting this illness.

He says on page 11 that to be get protection from a vaccine, for instance in the case of travel, you need to have it 3 months prior to the event.

Some versions of the HIB have aluminum as high as 1500 micrograms. He discusses aluminum in great detail later. He points out on page 195 that a toxic dose of aluminum for a newborn can be as low as 10 to 20 micrograms.

Unfortunately, even given all this information, he still recommends this particular vaccine, which I disagree with.

This is just a synopsis of 2 chapters, there are 17 others, most of them with loads of good information. There are several vaccines that he does not think are necessary and he provides detailed insight into why. I do recommend you read this book, but don't just blindly follow his advice. Look at the facts yourself before you decide if the risk is worth it.

If you are interested in the vaccine debate, I also recommend Vaccines: What CDC Documents and Science Reveal. It is an excellent DVD created by a mainstream ER doctor who stumbled across the vaccine debate, and became obsessed with it. I like it because there are some people who simply won't take the time to read a book on vaccines, but they will watch a DVD. Hopefully, you will do both.

This book is well written, well organized, and useful to a degree. Unfortunately all the well organized information comes from the product literature by the pharmaceutical companies and rather depth-lacking governmental data.

If you want regurgitated information in an easy to understand format, this is your book.

I was hoping for more discussion about the more controversial issues, but in the end he generally goes with "conventional wisdom". He often states that there is no research to support some of the concerns parents have, but I believe this lack of research is the root of much concern. His delayed schedule still requires 11 vaccinations before 1 year and most are multiple vaccines per visit at one month intervals.

I will keep looking for a resource that balances up-to-date research with a healthy level of skepticism. Wish me luck.

I am a holistic health practitioner specializing in children's care. I like to provide reference books for parents who are looking at taking back control of their family's health by learning about alternatives to the Western medical model. A lot of parents have concerns about vaccinations these days, and since I fully support the Attachment Parenting model that Dr. Sears espouses, I was looking forward to the views presented in this book on childhood vaccinations. What I found in this book was a very middle of the road and cautionary view on limiting vaccinations. Dr. Sears simply restates the information found on the vaccine packages, inserts, and governmental information already out there. While he does state his personal opinions as to how effective or dangerous these vaccinations are, most of his opinions are still in favor of the recommended vaccination schedule of the CDC. There was very little information included in the book from independent researchers on the efficacy and dangers of vaccines. However, he does include some good information, such as an ingredient list of each vaccine, vaccination schedules, sides effects, and travel considerations. This book took the tone of a doctor trying to not stir the waters within his own profession, but also trying to be compassionate to the concerns of his patients. Overall, it came out feeling a little flat. I would recommend The Vaccine Guide by Randall Neustaedter OMD in addition to this book if people are looking for more information from the holistic side of the fence.

I have read many books on the dangers of vaccines, but this is the only one that presents the info in an objective, non-judgemental way.

The first part of the book goes through each vaccine, in the order that your child will receive them, and gives a brief history on the vaccine, the danger of the actual disease that the vaccination is for, how the vaccine is made (very useful if your child has any allergies) and of course the controversial ingredients.

The second part of the book covers vaccine safety research, and sometimes lack thereof. He also goes through all of the diseases for which we are vaccinated, and the statistics of contracting each disease in our general population.

The third part of the book covers vaccine side effects, what to do if your child has a reaction, and what to do to minimize the chances that your child will have a negative reaction.

The last part of the book goes through all of the questionable and sometimes unnecessary ingredients that are added to vaccines, and has a great chapter on the myths and questions that people have about vaccines.

The most useful part of this book, and the reason it is a must have for every parent, regardless of your beliefs in vaccinations, is that Dr. Sears includes a completely non-judgemental chapter on parents who delay or decline vaccinations along with 2 alternate vaccine schedules...one he thinks are 'must have' vaccines if you don't want to do the full vaccine schedule, and the other is the full vaccine schedule, but spaced out in such a way that it will help reduce negative effects.

I would recommend buying this book before you have your child, but as long as your child is still receiving vaccinations you can switch to the modified schedule at any time. It sounds like tedious information, but it is presented in a way that made me read this book from cover to cover effortlessly.

I decided to read this book after hearing several other not-entirely-pro-vaccine moms mention it. It is really easy to read and understand, but it left me thinking that perhaps Dr. Sears doesn't understand as much as he thinks he does, and he's giving parents some dangerous misinformation.

My main beef with the book is his obsession with aluminum adjuvants. He presents his case by citing studies about aluminum toxicity from IV nutrition in premature babies and patients with kidney problems. It boggles my mind that he would even use this completely unrelated issue to make his case against using aluminum salts in vaccines (which are not administered intravenously, but intramuscularly, which is a distinction that he fails to make). He clearly didn't look very hard for information specifically about vaccines. If he had bothered to even do a Google Scholar search, he would have come across a number of scholarly articles addressing the safety of vaccine ingredients.

I was also very disappointed to see him cite Andrew Wakefield's retracted 1998 paper on MMR and autism. If I recall correctly, this book was published in 2007, and by that time Wakefield's research was already discredited (in fact, the GMC hearing, which would find him guilty of fraud, had begun), and other studies had been conducted which showed no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. It's really a shame that Dr. Bob chose to continue to propagate this myth.

My third complaint is with his alternate vaccine schedule, which he justifies mostly by reiterating his unsubstantiated concerns about aluminum. This is one issue that I go back and forth on. On the one hand, I like to see babies being protected from diseases. If parents are so worried about the potential risks of vaccines, it's better to see them vaccinate on a delayed schedule than not vaccinate at all. On the other hand, Dr. Bob spends his whole book confirming unfounded worries about vaccine safety, rather than presenting scientific evidence. Had he spent the book reassuring parents that vaccines are safe, and addressing legitimate concerns (like who specifically shouldn't receive vaccines, and how to deal with real adverse reactions), then there would be no need for his alternative schedule.

Even worse than his alternative schedule is his selective vaccine schedule, in which he recommends delaying the Hepatitis B vaccine until 12 years. He explains that Hep B is a "sexually transmitted disease" and so children don't need to be vaccinated. I hear this from parents as well. They say that their kid doesn't need the vaccine because he's not going to be promiscuous or use IV drugs. What they don't seem to realize is that Hep B can be transmitted through casual contact, and most carriers are asymptomatic. That means that your kid could be bitten on the playground or share a toothbrush at a sleepover with another kid who has Hep B and contract the virus, without even knowing it. Hep B is also way more likely to become a chronic infection (leading to liver disease and cancer) in children under 10. So please, if you are going to ignore Dr. Bob on just one point, make it this one.

Dr. Robert Sears is an MD (in pediatric practice for over 10 years), the son of Martha Sears, RN, and the famous William Sears, MD (both in pediatric practice for over 30 years and the parents of 8 children, including Dr. Bob). He is not a radical guy. He is pro-vaccine, for the most part. He wrote this book because vaccine questions are the number one kind of question he gets from parents in his pediatric practice, and there are two kinds of information out there: biased/scary stuff from the medical/pharma industry, and biased/scary stuff from anti-vaxers.

(Just to make my personal position clear, my Jan 2000 baby has had very few vaccines based on the research I did in 1999/2000/2001. The baby I'm expecting in April 2008 will probably have more vaccines than she did because the mercury's mostly gone, but I will still be delaying the schedule a great deal.)

This book is the result of 13 years of researching ALL the sources of information out there. He goes through the 16 major diseases vaccinated against in the US using 12 vaccines (and references the 2007 AAP schedule for the vaccines). For each disease/vaccine pair (or vaccine/disease set), he discusses:

What is the disease?
Is the disease common?
Is the disease serious?
Is the disease treatable?
When is the vaccine given?
How is the vaccine made? (including ingredients lists, with controversial ingredients identified)
Should you give your child the vaccine?
The way Dr. Sears sees it (includes recommendation for delayed/reduced vaccinations for parents who don't want to undertake the risks of this particular vaccine)

I've found that I have a few quibbles with some of the judgments in the book (for example, he makes it sound like HPV is the fault of sexually-active women, but of course, the men do in fact SPREAD it to us), but mostly, the information is well-researched and thorough but it's expressed in language that most parents will easily understand.

IF you have questions about vaccines at all, or IF you want to understand what you're signing up for when you sign your baby up for the standard American Academy of Pediatrics US vaccine schedule, this book lays it out very neatly.

If you decide not to vaccinate at all, you'll have clear information about the risks of the diseases and even some idea of how to prevent your child from being exposed (he said that the biggest preventatives he recommends to non-vaccinating parents in his practice are breastfeeding for at least two years and no day care for at least a year).

If you decide to reduce the number of vaccinations at any given time or overall, his information will help you come up with a rational schedule that will best protect your child from disease while minimizing their exposure to certain ingredients.

Even with all the research I've done, it's been very helpful to me to see more statistics gathered about how common the various diseases really are and what the real risk of death from them has historically and recently been (information that is VERY hard to find and understand, in my experience). Dr. Sears promises that he will be updating the information in the book with periodic print updates (in the form of new editions) and that he will be updating the website http://www.TheVaccineBook.com whenever he gets substantial new information.

I honestly think this book is a great way to invest less than $15 in the health of your new baby.

Finally, some trustworthy information about vaccinations. I just got this book in the mail yesterday, but once I started reading, I was so excited to hear a doctor acknowledge that it is reasonable for parents to be wary of vaccinations and to decide against some of them, that I have read most of it already. The information about flu shots was especially valuable to me, because I didn't know most of it. I was delighted to read that Dr. Sears believes it is a good idea to space out vaccinations for infants and as a mother my instincts told me that from the get go. I feel very vindicated after a very long struggle with our Pediatricians. I also really appreciate the recommended vaccine list that Dr. Sears puts in this book and I think it is the best guide a parent can have. I am so thankful that Dr. Sears decided to write this book and I couldn't be happier with it's contents. It's not pro-vaccine and it's not anti-vaccine. It really takes into account all of the information that is out there about vaccines and definitely takes into account the things that scare many parents away from vaccines. Thank you, Dr. Sears. I have been waiting for a book like this for a very long time.

I was searching for an alternative vaccination schedule for my child and one that excluded unnecessary vaccines. This book gave me that plus very detailed information about each vaccine and a balanced approach to the subject. I thought the information regarding aluminum and other ingredients was priceless. I searched for a long time to find a book that explained this frightening process in a very reasonable and sound manner. I would recommend this book to every parent.