No pediatric newsletter should be written without discussing the issue of childhood vaccines. By the time a child reaches his/hers teenage years they are required to receive 72 vaccine dose. This is significantly more than when their parents grew up.
The topic of vaccination is about as polarizing as American politics. Since most parents have heard the pro-vax position from their pediatrician I would like to present at least in part the counter position. Lets take a look at the following:
Vaccine safety facts:
– NO single childhood vaccine or combination of childhood vaccines has been tested against non-vaccinated controls in clinical trials, ever.
– NO vaccine adjuvants have been tested as single agents or in any combination against placebo controls to show that they’re safe to be injected into children, ever.
– In regards to adjuvants (added to vaccines to enhance immune response) the FDA has recommended aluminum not to exceed 5mcg/kg/day..
– Children get an estimate of 622mcg/kg of Aluminum following the CDC vaccination schedule.
Long term vaccine side effects:
– In 2022 pediatrician Dr. Paul Thomas published a retrospective analysis of over 11,000 children born into his practice. He had a statistically significant cohort of his patients who’s parents decided to forgo vaccination and those who vaccinated their children. This provided a unique situation where he had a treatment group and a control group to use
for comparison. This is what he found :
a. Those children which were vaccinated had twice as many health related visits to his office, and they experienced 4-5x more health issues than the unvaccinated children. These included allergic conditions, eczema, hives, asthma, behavioral issues, neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD, and infectious diseases (including those for which they were vaccinated against).
b. When parents decided to stop their child’s vaccinations it led to a reduction in many of the above conditions.
c. It should be noted that those children being vaccinated were using his friendly vaccine plan where the shots are given at longer intervals allowing for the body to detox naturally from the adjuvants. If the CDC recommended vaccine schedule had been used the incidence of long term side effects would most assuredly have been even greater.
Which side is correct, the pro-vaxxers or the anti-vaxxers? Or does the truth lie somewhere in between. My advice to all parents is to become educated about both sides of this issue and then make a decision that they will be comfortable with as either side has their risks and benefits.
Terry Pfau DO, HMD