M and I decided to follow Dr. Sears’ alternative vaccine schedule, after reading his book The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child .

Dr. Robert Sears’ The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child goes through all the 12 standard vaccines in 12 chapters. Each chapter discusses one vaccine/disease pair and answers the same questions:

• What is this vaccine-preventable disease?
• Is this disease common?
• Is this disease serious?
• Is this disease treatable?
• When is this vaccine given?
• How is this vaccine made?
• What ingredients are in the final vaccine solution? (Including “Are any of these ingredients controversial?”)
• What are the side effects of this vaccine?
• 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.)
• The way I see it, a summary from Doctor Sear to cover key factors.

Additional chapters illuminate more aspects of this controversial issue, including vaccine safety research, side effects, ingredients, myths and questions. The last two chapters offer his options and guidance for parents who are against or indecisive about vaccination.

However, this book doesn’t answer the fundamental question that hangs in many parents’ mind: should I vaccine my child? This book, as Dr. Sears claims in his preface, aims at providing information, open, honest, complete and accurate information about vaccines.

Based on the information, parents can have a balanced look at the pros and cons of vaccination and make an educated health care decision for their children. Although most of the information can be found from publicly published medical journal and textbooks and vaccine product inserts, this book saves parents time and headache to search for it.

Although Dr. Sears doesn’t offer a solution to parents’ vaccination dilemma, he does provide an alternative vaccine schedule. This schedule suggests only one aluminum-containing vaccine at a time in the infant years, limits baby’s exposure to the numerous chemicals and side effects at one time, and delays shots for disease that are either usually fairly mild for infants or extremely unlikely to catch during the first few years of life. It also denies using any mercury-containing flu vaccines in infants and combination shots.

The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child is delight to read. Dr. Sears writes in language that is simple, conversational, and contains a touch of humor. His relaxing tone puts readers at ease as he clearly explains medical terms and elucidates debates.

Tags: | First Year, From Lina | Lina | September 5, 2008 11:01 am | Comments (0)