Ally remembers the heated debate with her mother-in-law, an attorney, over vaccinating her only child.
“He’s already 18-months old,” cautioned her mother-in-law, adding a potentially ominous: “If you wait any longer your behavior could be tantamount to child neglect.” Not even this would dissuade Ally from her decision not to vaccinate her baby until he was two. And she did have a strong advantage in this argument: She’d been a pediatrician in private practice for 15 years, putting her judgment on the line for hundreds of children.
It’s one thing to fend off your mother-in-law, and quite another to risk your livelihood advising parents to ignore government regulations. Going out on a limb, Ally and hundreds of her colleagues are doing just that. They are part of a grassroots movement that advises parents to consider what they call “safer and saner” vaccine policies.
“Doctors do not like to draw controversy to themselves” on such a combustible topic, says Dr. Jay Gordon, a well-respected Santa Monica pediatrician who is at the vanguard of this movement by virtue of saying things most pediatricians would never dream of publicly disclosing. “The risks of vaccinating the way we do outweigh the benefits. The problem is there isn’t conclusive proof, and in the absence of proof we keep over-vaccinating.”
The need to protect children, Gordon says, does not have to leave parents feeling as if they’re playing a game of Russian roulette, taking a high-stakes gamble with their child’s health and well-being. The new, more user-friendly vaccine protocols may fly in the face of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines, but, “It doesn’t make sense to assume you can give six vaccines, with [a total of] 20 to 25 separate components, to a 10-pound, two-month old baby, and not have (possibly harmful) side effects,” says Gordon.
Quietly among themselves, some pediatricians go so far as to refer to the official CDC schedule as “dangerous,” “reckless” and a “vaccine explosion.” With these sentiments spilling over onto thousands of pages of medical literature and hundreds of physician websites, parents are left to wonder about the best course of action in what could, in extreme cases, be life-and-death decisions for their children. Even parents in the medical field can find themselves at a well-baby visit confused by the sheer volume of vaccines containing not just active ingredients, but also multiple excipients—carrier substances, preservatives et al, such as the highly controversial thimerasol.
Innocent Victims
“That was just too many vaccines,” said Terry Poling, a nurse and attorney, regarding the nine vaccines injected into her daughter Hannah in one visit. “I didn’t find out for several months afterward that the [vaccines] had thimerosal, which contains mercury, a powerful neurotoxin. Had I known, I never would have allowed it to be injected into my child,” she said in media interviews at the conclusion of the trial. Hannah Poling set a heartbreaking precedent in 2008 as the first child awarded compensation—linking autism to vaccines—in a federally funded vaccine injury court.
The then-toddler’s pediatrician, noticing she had missed her last round of vaccines, decided to piggyback inoculations in a conscientious attempt to get back in step with standard care guidelines. At the present time, the CDC—known for its revolving door of experts from the pharmaceutical industry—recommends an unprecedented number of up to 32 vaccines for children up to age six (see graph).
But no amount of money can make up for damage inflicted on a perfectly healthy child, and progressive pediatricians are pursuing whatever it takes to protect parents from becoming the next injured party to a lifetime of heartache. Going on sheer determination, pediatrician Robert Sears, author of The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child, is stepping up to launch the nation’s first pediatric guide, drawing colleagues from 29 states who are willing to publicly identify themselves as doctors thinking outside of the vaccine box. Their three basic tenets for helping children to remain as healthy and functional as possible are: Delay many vaccines until age two or three, space inoculations further apart, and eliminate vaccines for diseases for which children are not at risk. Above all, Sears and his colleagues are working to “individualize treatment,” taking a scrupulous history, uncovering unusual risks, and noting red flags of previous cases of autism or 
learning disorders in the family.
“I can’t ever remember a patient having a serious [adverse] reaction to vaccines” in my practice, says Sears, who practices what he preaches via a thriving clinic in Orange County. For example, he continues, “We know aluminum is toxic to the brain when injected into the bloodstream. When babies are getting four vaccines simultaneously that all contain aluminum, and the same thing is repeated at two, four and six months, that is a big aluminum overload.” Sears preference is to never exceed two vaccines per visit.
Some parents are going even further, consulting homeopaths and integrative medicine practitioners in search of plant-based alternatives.
Birth of a Movement
The Poling case represents the heart of the burgeoning grassroots movement. In the aftermath of Hannah’s lawsuit, her father, Dr. Jon Poling, a neurologist trained at Johns Hopkins Hospital, urged his colleagues to start a “grassroots movement” to individualize treatment, stressing one protocol doesn’t fit millions of children. Still, parents in search of such practitioners will be disappointed to learn a scant 153 doctors can be found on Sears’ web listing (askdrsears.com).
For doctors engaged in non-standard care, “The intimidation factor is immense,” Ally explains. “I know a pediatrician who was asked to leave her group practice” for this sort of advocacy work. The numbers of pediatricians, sympathetic or practicing similar clinical protocols, are simply not available.
In the meantime, childhood epidemics are reaching terrifying proportions. One in 110 children today is diagnosed with autism, as compared to estimates of one in 10,000 in the 1980s; and a May 2011 study showed one in six children has a developmental disability, which was not charted 30 years ago because it wasn’t considered a public health problem.
Gathering Evidence
Although the progression of pediatric diseases appears to continue unabated, doctors in the forefront of this movement are making progress in amassing clinical evidence to support their case. A pediatrician in Sears database, Dr. Mary Anne Morelli Haskell, reports she’s witnessed a dramatic drop in children’s vitality in the past two decades while in private practice in the San Diego area.
“We’ve altered the outside environment, and we’ve impaired the inside [bodily] environment,” she worries. “What we are seeing is a breakdown in a child’s immune system, the inability of the body to cope with all these foreign substances.” Simply put, a vaccine overload may be the final bodily insult, the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
As the controversy mounts, parents find the pendulum is swinging in their favor. The potentially harmful effects of childhood immunizations have been acknowledged, and nearly 2,500 families have been awarded a total of $1.8 billion in vaccine injury courts since 1989. Thousands more await trial dates.
Most importantly, parents are tackling the problem themselves, exploring their options to ensure their worst fears are not realized. The last thing any parents want is to see their child become another tragic statistic.
Read more: Homeopathic Alternatives to Standard Vaccines
