Customer Reviews

Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective?: A Parents Guide to Childhood Shots

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I don't normally write reviews, but after reading the review listed first written by Evan K. Yeung, I had to correct a horrible injustice. Evan K. Yeung would have you believe that the author is trying to sway the reader against all vaccinations and do so based only on the author's opinion. This small book is filled with over 900 references that you can easily check for yourself. If you have a problem with the information given on polio, you can look up any of the dozens of references on that one subject. In fact, the last few pages of the book are devoted to trying to convince the reader to do just that... look up the information for themselves.

I find it interesting that Evan K. Yeung would accuse the author of having an agenda when there is nothing more than the sale of books to be had from such an agenda, while the good doctor could potentially lose thousands of dollars if his patients start deciding to think for themselves and begin to avoid some or all vaccinations. In my experience, Evan K. Yeung's reaction to this book is common among pediatricians, and medical professionals in general. Heaven forbid that a lay-person should question the medical status quo.

Evan K. Yeung gives the book the lowest star rating and dismisses the book as one sided and ill-informed, then neglects to touch on some of the points in the book that are practically without question. For example, there is no good reason to administer a chicken pox vaccination. Chicken pox is a non-life threatening disease (deaths almost always occur from chicken pox when the person contracting them is already deathly ill.) Furthermore, children are far less likely to suffer serious symptoms than adults. The chicken pox vaccine does NOT grant life-time immunity, as contracting the disease itself does. Rather, the vaccine only delays contraction for 10 to 20 years... making the victim older and more likely to suffer serious ill effects if chicken pox is contracted. Sure you can keep getting vaccinated, but there is a slight risk associated with each vaccine a person receives. Wouldn't it be better just to get chicken pox as a child and be done with it for the rest of your life?

What about Hepatitis B? Hospitals want to give your baby the Hep B vaccine before your baby goes home. What are the main ways of contracting Hep B? Drug needles and sexual promiscuity. Knowing that, does it really make sense to subject your one day old to the contents of a Hep B vaccine?

It's points like this that let you know that Evan K. Yeung is really the one with the agenda. If he were writing a fair and balanced review, he would have mentioned these facts and acknowledged that the book has, at the very least, some valuable information.

The bottom line is, even if you don't agree with everything in the book, you are given ample opportunity to research the sources from which the information came. I've read several books and web sites on this subject and this is the one I always return to when I have questions.

I love ths book because the author started out as a concerned parent about to have kids. So he went out to do research to find out what would be best for his kids regarding vaccines. The conlclusions he came up with now make him one of the biggest proponents against vaccines. He is not anit-medicine, or anti drugs (like me). He is a parent who wanted the best for his kids.

He shows you facts like most vaccines contain, mercury, formaldahyde and aluminum just to name a few. These chemicals and toxins are in there for the sole purpose of making the vaccine shelf life longer so not as much of the drug companies profits are eaten up by "spoiled" vaccines.

This book shows anyone who is willing to look at the facts (he sites all the articles, journals and exact location to find the hundreds of references he uses) how vaccines are causing more damage than good.

Many people think vaccines got rid of polio, measles and all the other diseases we have vaccines for. Using the National Institues of Health data the author shows you how this probably is not the case.

If you graph the number of people who had a disease against time you would get a bell curve graph for all diseases we have vaccines for. The interesting part of this graph is the date the vaccines were introduced for those diseases. One would think they were introduced near the top of the bell curve.

When in fact ALL of the vaccines were introduced at least half way down the bell curve, and most when the disease was almost gone by itself. By the time the vaccines were gone, the disease had already run it's course. The interesting part is also that past disease like most plagues that never had vaccines invented, has the exact same graph as those that have vaccines.

The list goes on and on and the author will help show you how if you truly want your kid to be healthy, vaccines will not do that. In fact, exactly the opposite will happen.

You might be thinking, but my kid won't be able to go to school. Or I cannot travel abroad. Yes you can. There are ways to easily have your kid go to school and travel with out being vaccinated. Most people just do not tell you about them.

If you want to know for youself and feel confident in your decision Not to vaccinate your kid this book will help.

There is also a website 909shot . com. It is the National Vaccine Information Center that gives all sorts great resources as well.

And if you want a great book that will really give your child total health, The Creator's Manual for Your Body is a great book to do exactly that.

I found this book along with five other books on vaccination at my local public library. I started with Miller's book because it seemed the most concise. It was an easy read and includes many heart wrenching accounts of parents whose children reacted to routine vaccinations - and how the doctors in these cases refused to report these deaths in any way attributable to the shots. Stories to bring out the radical in you!

While this book is a good start on the topic, it is one of the books that many people will find too emotional - particularly people who are pro-vaccination to begin with. To his credit, the author makes this emotional element clear at the beginning of his book. I am glad the public library had this book, but I am spending my money on a more thorough and well written one I borrowed at the time - Immunization the Reality Behind the Myth by Walene James. She gives a well rounded and intellegent presentation of much of the same research Miller glosses over. The result being the reader will understand the issue more deeply themselves and come away armed with the facts. This one is so good I want it in MY library!

I heard this author on the radio and was impressed with his knowledge of vaccine statistics. He is very convincing. I bought his book and could not put it down until I read every page. The information made me mad and it made me cry. I had read other books on immunizations but none of them affected me so deeply. This book is guaranteed to make you tremble, but it is supported with hundreds of studies. I checked some of the more important references and was pleased to discover that this book provided an accurate summary of the data. I strongly recommend this book and have already purchased more copies to give to my family and friends.

This is the only book I've found that was not written by a doctor. Amazingly, it seems to me to be the best information I've found.

Pro-vaccine books don't seem to make a very strong case for getting the shots. They tend to cling to the declining disease rates as the primary evidence of effectiveness. Neil Miller's two books debunk this argument rather well. Pro-vaccine books also focus more on the diseases as they existed during the height of their epidemics, rather than the reality today. They tend to gloss over (or ignore!) adverse side effects, both in frequency and severity.

The doctor written books against vaccines take a sort of willy nilly approach to this highly political and emotionally charged subject. One said avoid the MMR, but get the DPT. Another said avoid DPT but get the MMR. In all cases, when they recommended a particular shot they glossed over specifics of safety and effectiveness, and instead focused on the dangers of the underlying diseases.

But Neil Miller clearly explains what the dangers of these diseases vs. the dangers of the vaccines for each disease. He also clearly argues against the effectiveness of vaccinations generally, and the surpising lack of science behind vaccines.

He also touches on how the corporations that make money from them have manipulated public opinion and the government, and how the statistics have been manipulated to under report adverse effects of vaccines.

His books are excellent. I would recommend them to everyone, both for and against shots. Get as many books as you can find would also be my suggestion. Read and think for yourself.

FYI, it wasn't very hard for us to find several doctors that would support our decision not to vaccinate. One doctor only gave the shots to kids when parents insisted on them.

The case against vaccinations is presented in this book with clear and logical examples. After reading it, I was able to discern what a hard sell the medical establishment does on vaccinations. I was already sold on avoiding vaccinations when the only thing the pro-vaccination sites could do is insist that it was the right thing to do, use scare tactics about what will happen if you don't and the schedule for getting vaccinations (which is totally illogical if you take some time to think about it). This books shows me that the aforementioned tools are the only things the medical establishment can say in "favor" of vaccinating your child. I am indebted to Mr. Miller for making this information available to the public in such a concise and readable book.

The author has done extensive research into the effects of immunizations and presents much data that would be lead a person to believe that vaccinations do much harm and provide no benefit.

In the forward by George R. Schwartz, MD, he states that "a voice is seeking dialogue and requiring counterpoint" (page 8). Dr. Schwartz does not provide this counterpoint but only states that he "advocates the standard vaccinations" (page 7). But this is critical for the average reader to make an informed decision. Both sides of the issue should be presented in this book in order to help the reader make the best decision possible. Perhaps a format where the author presents his findings with an opposing view of from the medical establishment and rebuttals would serve the reader best.

The book presents some very convincing statistics, however I was very disappointed in the misleading manner some of the numbers were reported.

Many times the author points out that infection rates were falling before the vaccine was introduced and implies that the continued rate of decline was not due to the vaccine. Although the prior decline is relevant it doesn't prove that the vaccine is not effective. The infection rate might have stabilized at a higher rate without the vaccine. Even if the vaccine were effective this argument could be used to show that it wasn't. The data that needs to be compared to resolve this are infection rates for comparable populations of those vaccinated versus those not vaccinated.

Another example is on page 29 where it states that "In 1989, 89% of all school-aged children in the U.S. who contracted measles were adequately vaccinated". This is a misleading way to present the numbers. It makes it impossible to evaluate the effectiveness of the vaccine. To demonstrate this, suppose that million children were vaccinated and 22 were not. Also suppose that there were 89 cases of measles from the vaccinated group and 11 cases from those not vaccinated. In this scenario 89% of cases are from vaccinated persons. However what needs to be compared is the percent of cases in the vaccinated group versus the percent of cases in the non-vaccinated group. In this example 0.0089% of the vaccinated group became ill versus 50% of the non-vaccinated group. These numbers are fabricated and are only used to demonstrate that some of the statistics reported in this book can be misleading and are not the best data to using in determining the efficacy of the vaccination.

What I find more troublesome is that author "is a medical research journalist", has a degree with "an emphasis on statistical analysis", and is a member of Mensa (a society for those with a genius level I.Q.). With this background the author, Neil Miller, must realize that the data mentioned above is misleading and is not the relevant statistic to compare to judge the harm or benefit of the vaccination in question. What is needed is the rate of infection, death, or other complications, such as autism, in similar groups of vaccinated versus non-vaccinated populations. After seeing data presented in a purposely misleading fashion I came to question the author's sincerity when he states that "I merely try to present the facts in a clear and straightforward manner".

In conclusion I would like to point out that the author has done society a great service to gather a tremendous amount of information and raise very important issues regarding vaccinations. His conclusions might very well be correct! However the reader would greatly benefit if the author expanded the book and co-authored it with those of the medical establishment propounding alternate views and then include a series of rebuttals. With the tremendous amount of medical information available and contradicting positions the reader is generally left with doubts and concerns. Having an open dialog, as proposed in the forward of the book by Dr. George Schwartz, might help resolve and clarify many issues in the reader's mind.

I did not read this book, but felt compelled to respond to the reviews in opposition to this book. This is nonsense, and anyone who really wants to know the truth about vaccines (which are erroneously called immunizations) should check out mercola.com, the personal webpage of Dr Mercola, DO, and google search on Dr Tenpenny, DO and Dr Stephanie Cave, MD. The website, the doctorwithin.com is also wonderful.

The MD's who cannot accept the truth about vaccinations are living in denial and need to educate themselves, and we need to educate ourselves in order to protect ourselves from their ignorance...

The vaccination issue is a controversial one and it may be possible that your child and mine will be better off without specific vaccinations. To determine this, we need more information; relevant information. It's my opinion that Neil Miller's bias towards not vaccinating has led him to report and display information that only supports his view, regardless of its relevance to the issue. For example, as other reviewers mention, Mr. Miller shows graphs that indicate that since the early 1900's, the death rate due to polio, measles, and pertussis, has been dropping significantly, even before vaccinations were introduced. Death rates? True, if you contracted a serious disease in 1950, your chances of surviving it were significantly better than if you got the disease in 1900, thanks mainly to improved hospital hygiene and medical technology. Why doesn't Mr. Miller display the likelihood of contracting the diseases instead of dying from the diseases? Perhaps it is because these graphs seem to show that vaccinations are effective in reducing disease incidence rates, and therefore can be found on the Center for Disease Control web page. The purpose of a vaccination is to prevent a disease, not to prevent a death from a disease. Focusing only on the small number of people who died from a disease, and not on the much larger group who contracted the disease, is misleading and leaves me feeling that Mr. Miller was searching for the most persuasive and dramatic graphs. He also shows charts indicating that about half of all pertussis and measles cases in 1984 occurred in vaccinated kids. This argument seems common and is another misleading and persuasive tactic. Ask yourself this question, if the CDC is successful and 100% of kids are vaccinated and vaccinations are about 90% effective, what percent of those who get the diseases will have been vaccinated? 100% So far Neil Miller has effectively shown that less people die from diseases in modern times and that the CDC is very effective at promoting vaccinations. Though I fear that the remaining half of the graphs in this book were chosen with the same persuasive tactics in mind, they do represent important points: the live polio vaccine often causes polio; doctors may be less likely to diagnose a disease as polio if they gave you a polio vaccine; the pertussis vaccine (and others) caused and still may cause many side effects, some severe. This book contains important information and it contains irrelevant information. If you wish to relax your critical thinking skills and be persuaded not to vaccinate, read this book. If you wish to be better informed about all sides of this issue, look elsewhere. I recommend The Vaccine Guide by Randall Neustaedter. I have decided that the chances of my child getting a serious reaction to vaccines is about the same as having serious problems from the disease (chance of getting disease times chance of getting serious problem once they have the disease). I'm left not wanting to vaccinate until I get further information. Unfortunately, Neil Miller's book didn't help me much in this quest.

Are they really safe and effective? NO! This book is the answer to my prayers.I've researched vaccines extensivly on the internet.Mr.Miller puts the facts in this easy read book.I plan to buy copies for family & friends.This book has facts that made me cry.I went crazy with my highliter pen.I plan to take the book with me to our next pediatric visit.(maybe they wont mind me leaving a copy in the waiting room.)