U.S. News & World Report - Flexible Approach to Vaccinations Comes Under Fire

The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued it's new immunization schedule published in The journal Pediatrics. The journal also includes a series of articles, one of which that criticizes vaccination through an alternative schedule.

Journalist, Deborah Kotz says the following in yesterday's US News and World Report article,

Along with this policy statement and numerous research papers, the journal contains a "special article" that quite frankly shocked me for its one-sided treatment of a very important issue with regard to vaccinations. The article is an attack on doctors who take a flexible approach to vaccinations, working with parents who, say, don't want their 2-month-old to get vaccinated against eight different diseases at once, which is what's recommended on the AAP schedule.

It targets one particular pediatrician, Robert Sears, who described several alternative approaches to vaccination in a popular consumer book called The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Y our Child. Sears calls for spacing out some vaccinations by adding office visits and delaying some shots until a child is older. More controversially, he also has a plan for those who may want to skip some immunizations, such as the chickenpox vaccine. I spoke with Sears for this parents' guide to managing vaccinations.

Unfortunately, instead of allowing a pro-and-con debate about the benefits and drawbacks of pediatricians working with parents who wish to have some flexibility, the Pediatrics journal editors chose to feature just one side of this debate. The authors of the special article take a firm stand against allowing any deviation from the current vaccine schedule, arguing that in offering a middle ground, Sears is sending "antivaccine messages."

What's worse, the lead author, Paul Offit, who heads the vaccine education center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, clearly has a conflict of interest. He's one of the patent holders of RotaTeq, a vaccine against rotavirus that's on the AAP's vaccine schedule. That means he stands to lose money if parents shun RotaTeq.

Read the full text here

Dr. Bernadine Healy, former Dir. of the NIH and American Red Cross is currently the Health Editor for US News & World Report. Here's what she said earlier this year about the research that supposedly disproves any link between vaccines and autism. Click to see the interview

The DoD/CDC Saga Continues...Autism “Under Revision”:

DTaP = Autism “Under Revision”: Something is Rotten at the DoD and CDC

by: Angela Warner

The Vaccine Healthcare Center’s Network (VHCN), a collaboration of the Department of Defense (DoD) and Center’s for Disease Control (CDC), decided on December 5, 2008 between 5:35pm and 6:21pm (EST), that the original VHCN webpage (now a cached version) HERE listing autism as an adverse event associated with the DTaP vaccine needed some revision (HERE). Following is the continuation of “Evidence of Harm”.

Read the full story HERE at Autism Salutes

Angela Warner is an Air Force spouse, and mom to four beautiful children (two with autism), and an advocate for children with autism to help our children and stop the autism epidemic.

The Pentagon -- A Voice of Reason on Vaccines and Autism? by: David Kirby

David writes, "Meanwhile, regardless of the Pentagon's positions on the above questions, we know for certain that DOD is concerned about the risk of injury from multiple vaccines."

Read the full story HERE.

DOD and CDC: Studies Suggest a Possible Link Between Multiple Vaccines and Injury - by:David Kirby

Dr. J.M. Engler, Director of the Vaccine Healthcare Centers Network (VHCN), a collaboration between the Department of Defense and the CDC, says “We have preliminary findings from one of our many on-going research studies that suggest a relationship between adverse events and multiple vaccinations exist. These findings will require validation, but heighten our concern for the current clinical practice of multiple vaccinations.”

Read the story HERE.

The VHCN, again a collaboration between the DOD and the CDC, lists autism as an adverse event of the DTaP vaccine. This vaccine is given at 2, 4 and 6 months, between 15 & 18 months and again between 4 and 6 years. HERE's the link to the table. Scroll down the list of events and you will see "autism".

From NPR - The Human Gut is a Real Melting Pot - How antibiotics can harm the gut

You've probably heard a lot over the past couple years about taking Probiotics following a round of antibiotics to restore a healthy balance in your digestive tract. This NPR interview, of Dr. David Relman of Stamford University, discusses fascinating new research regarding the role healthy bacteria plays in supporting our overall health (to include digestion and our immune system)and how antibiotics can negatively impact the balance of good and bad flora in the gut.

Listen here

Two of the most well researched Probiotics include:

1) Read about Culturelle (available at WalGreens and WalMart)
2) Read about Saccaromyces boulardi(available at many health food stores and online)

Read what The Mayo Clinic says regarding Probiotics


David Relman, M.D., is associate professor of medicine, and of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University. He is also chief, infectious diseases section, at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System in Palo Alto, California.

Deidra Imus - A Forum on Vaccines - View the Webcast

View the Webcast by scrolling down to "Replay Webcast"

This webcast took place on October 23, 2008. It was the first time that two representatives from the American Academy of Pediatrics appeared to debate concerns regarding our current vaccination program.

My overview: The AAP representatives came to the table showing very little sign that they understand the basis for the concern shared by so many parents and at very minimum they certainly had no real answers addressing the concerns that were so very well defined by author David Kirby, Dr.Lawrence Rosen and Environmental Activist Deidra Imus.

I was particularly disappointed with the Dr. Margaret Fisher, chair, Section of Infectious Diseases, American Academy of Pediatrics, and medical director, The Children’s Hospital at Monmouth Medical Center. It seemed that she truly believed that we didn't understand that all vaccines go through a standard protocol of research and trial before licensing and that we don't understand the need for public health policy concerning infectious disease.

I look forward to a day when most pediatric physicians do understand that we want true studies in causation, not just for autism and increased chronic disease, but also for the widely accepted injuries that vaccines can cause some children, like encephalitis and seizures. Also, to a day when physicians understand the concerns we have regarding the ingredients in vaccines and the lack of safety studies around those ingredients. Even if physicians don't agree with us it would be nice to see them come to the table understanding what the actual concerns are and able to have a discussion based on those specific concerns.

Dr. Fisher is obviously a physician who is very passionate about her desire to protect children from dangerous and occasionally deadly disease. It would be nice if she, and the medical community, were as passionate about learning how to identify children who might be susceptible to injury for the sake of protecting them from that injury and vaccinating them in an individually appropriate way.

I wish that we could understand what mechanism's caused Amelia's injury and that we knew how to test Joseph for the same. If I had that answer, I could probably vaccinate Joseph in some modified way to protect him from harm and protect him from infectious disease at the same time...but unfortunately that is not possible right now. I've certainly read too many stories exactly like ours for there to be any convincing me that vaccines do not play a role in the increase rate of autism and chronic immune related disease that we see in today's children.

"Vaccines : It's Your Child, Your Choice"

From Age of Autism - June 1, 2008

This is an excellent article about vaccine choice.