Pediatrician Pressuring Vaccination? He or She BETTER Know This



Vaccination is almost a given part of a newborns life. From the first few minutes, they are jabbed with a needle to protect them. But are there side effects?

Vaccination is always a hot topic and one that is not discussed lightly.  One thing is certain, however, it seems that most pediatricians have not read the available medical literature on vaccination.  I have heard stories from patients who have been pressured or even fired by their pediatricians for refusing or even questioning vaccination for his or her child.

Somewhere along the line medicine got it into its head that it could best Mother Nature.  The obsession with eradicating all communicable diseases began.  It started with Dr. Edward Jennings in the 1700’s and the first smallpox vaccines.  The arguably successful endeavors to use vaccination to eradicate some of the more devastating plague are laudible.  Smallpox and polio top the list (although there are some that argue that improved sanitation did far more than the vaccination).  But the attempt at cleaning out the list of childhood diseases may have gone too far.  Chicken pox, measles, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis A, influenza, rotavirus, pneumonia and ear infections are just a few of the targeted infections.

While each one of these are worthy of their own separate blog post, the bigger issue is what this is doing to our infant and children’s immune systems.  It is becoming increasingly clear that we are trading infectious childhood diseases, the vast majority of children recover from without mishap, for lifelong immune dysfunction.  Allergies, asthma and autoimmune conditions are showing up in increasing numbers and at younger and younger ages.

This particular article looks at an even scarier aspect of this attempt to thwart Mother Nature.

Increased hospitalization and death.  Here is what they found:

  1. Likelihood of being hospitalized was increased with vaccination.
  2. The more vaccines given, the greater the risk (11.0% @ 2 doses to 23.5% @ 8 doses) (Tweet this).
  3. The risk was greater the younger the infant.
  4. The risk of dying was 50% higher in infants getting 5–8 doses compared to 1–4 doses.

A few things to keep in mind from this study: 

  • Combination vaccines, like DPT, was considered as 3 doses, so the math adds up quick.
  • In 1990, infants received a total of 15 vaccine doses prior to their first year of life: 3 DPT injections (9 vaccine doses), 3 polio, and 3 Hib vaccines—5 vaccine doses at 2, 4, and 6 months of age.
  • By 2007, the CDC recommended 26 vaccine doses for infants: 3 DTaP, 3 polio, 3 Hib, 3 hepatitis B, 3 pneumococcal, 3 rotavirus, and 2 influenza vaccines.
  • A high number of hospitalizations were from the given-right-out-of-the-womb hepatitis B vaccination

26 doses.  Now consider that the risk in this review went up higher the more doses the infant received.

I have also commented in the past about how worthless I think the Hepatitis B vaccination is when a parent or family member who will be handling the child does not have Hep B.  And of course, this is in the context of the concern of the increased risk of multiple sclerosis from vaccination as well as the short (5-10 yrs) duration of effectiveness of the vaccine.

Overall, though, the point is that every parent should go into the vaccination decision educated and never take their pediatrician’s word and opinion for granted.  Many are, unfortunately, sadly detached from the medical literature and do not stay up to date on the current research.

Did you feel pressured to fully vaccinate your infant by your pediatrician?

James Bogash

For more than a decade, Dr. Bogash has stayed current with the medical literature as it relates to physiology, disease prevention and disease management. He uses his knowledge to educate patients, the community and cyberspace on the best way to avoid and / or manage chronic diseases using lifestyle and targeted supplementation.







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