I’ve been on the hunt for an even-handed book on vaccines that lays out pros and cons in a well reasoned manner. I’m reading The Vaccine Book by Dr. Sears, which recently came out, right now, and it is probably as close to that as I will find.

All in all, Dr. Sears has written a very useful book, which will help many people learn about vaccines, and at least help legitimize the inquiry into the safety and efficacy of vaccines by the mainstream. I think it is pretty well done, clear, concise, and relatively even-handed. I say relatively, because we all have biases on all kinds of issues, and when you read his book, you can pretty clearly see that he is, in general, pro-vaccine. That’s quite ok for one to be pro-vaccine. And he doesn’t use scare tactics or fear-based arguments, to his great credit. I do think, however, that he overplays the “objective” card, claiming this is an unbiased, unemotional look at the issues, when it seems pretty clear where he stands.

There is much I like about and agree with in the book, and I won’t spend time on all those points. Here are some issues I would raise with regard to some of the book’s treatment of vaccines:

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He repeatedly reminds readers that the “reported” cases of incidence of a disease are lower than the actual cases. E.g. “There may be more cases than are being reported, since it is a mild disease and the younger generation of doctors may not even recognize it when they see it.” P 85 However, you can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to explain that real incidence of the underlying disease is higher than reported, you also need to explain that adverse reactions in the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) are significantly underreported too. There are estimated to be about 10 times more adverse reactions than show up in the VAERS. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

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For nearly all the vaccines, Dr. Sears’ strongest argument for them rests most strongly on public policy grounds – i.e. the societal level – not the best interests of the child at hand. For instance, regarding the Polio vaccine, he says: “…it is safe to say we don’t give this vaccine to protect each individual child from catching polio. … When parents tell me they want to skip the polio shot for their child, I tell them ‘OK, your child is almost guaranteed not to catch polio. You better just pray that not too many of your neighbors make the same choice, or in ten years, we may all be in trouble.” p79 And that is understandable. Dr. Sears has a very public-health mindset, as witnessed by his family’s many (really quite good) books designed to help the general public. But it gets back to that fundamental distinction I’ve been talking about in this thread. Should the parent focus solely on what’s best for their child’s health, or should the parent take into consideration broader societal health implications? (And that is not a rhetorical question.)

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He gives short shrift to the issue of aborted human embryo tissues being incorporated into some of the vaccines. The only mention of it I found was “The rubella virus was originally taken from an infected aborted fetus in the 1960s.” p87. Dr. Tenpenny, on the other hand, notes that aborted human embryos are the source of many of our vaccines.

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To determine ingredients, he does not probe beyond what is in the product inserts. So for the MMR vaccine, he notes that it contains: “’Other buffer and media ingredients’ (details not listed in the product insert)” And he leaves it at that, not even mentioning that information gap in the very next paragraph titled “Are Any of These Ingredients Controversial?”. To me, it’s controversial if a product does not disclose what it contains. According to Dr. Tenpenny, the companies claim trade secrets prevent them from disclosing certain ingredients. It seems to me controversial to be asked to inject ourselves with unknown ingredients.

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As for mercury, he specifically states in the preface: “I am not going to discuss at length mercury or thimerosol, because, fortunately, these have been taken out of virtually all vaccines. … for those of you who are making the decision today, mercury needn’t be part of the equation. If you use the right vaccine brands and know in which vaccines mercury are still present, you can get the complete vaccine series 100 percent mercury free.” However, and he does acknowledge this later in the book, that in many places waivers have been granted to get around laws banning mercury use in vaccines. (p 133) For instance, in Illinois, the governor just signed a bill extending by several years the permitting of mercury use in vaccines (to use up existing stores).

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He has a great section where he goes vaccine by vaccine, with the best estimates he can, of the risk of developing the underlying disease without the vaccine and the risk of a severe reaction to the vaccine. That is a huge help in making an informed tradeoff (although the estimates are, he admits, murky at best). He then makes his own recommendations as to which represent the best risk vs benefit tradeoff. This is exactly the way vaccines should be considered, I think, and I give him great credit. He then proposes an “alternate schedule” for vaccines, to minimize reaction possibility and maximize underlying disease prevention. Again, very practical, even-headed, and the right way to think about it (even if one disagrees with the actual conclusions).

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He does later on mention that VAERS underreports vaccine reactions, but doesn’t incorporate that fact into his calculations: “We know that not all vaccine reactions are reported, but we don’t know exactly how many go unreported. Is the real number of reactions double what I’ve put here? Is it triple or more? If so, that would make the chance of a reaction occurring over the entire schedule about 1 in 1300 to 1 in 900. But we don’t actually know those numbers, so instead I must work with the numbers we do know.” (p 167)(Some researchers estimate actual reactions are 10x or more of VAERS reports.) So his calculations of vaccine risk, far from being conservative, are actually the opposite (very low) because he (understandably) is hesitant to make an estimate. But that’s important for parents to know.

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He has written an excellent section on aluminum in vaccines, which represent his primary worry about safety. (p 193) He digs into the research and numbers, and makes a good case that we are giving kids a lot of aluminum, without understanding how much impact this has on them. This alone makes the book worthwhile, and I recommend this section to everyone.

Really, this is exactly the book I’ve been looking for, in terms of a practical, data-driven approach to optimal vaccine use. That is not to say I agree with his conclusions, but even just the thoughtful and deliberative process he uses defuses the tensions in this debate and finds some middle ground. This is most important for parents who have an inkling that something is cause for concern with vaccines, but feel they don’t have an accessible way to think about it and approach their doctor with. Its best contribution is to legitimize at least the idea that we should be concerned about vaccine safety and that there is indeed a trade-off. He has updates and issues on www.TheVaccineBook.co

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