What is the Alternative Vaccine Schedule?

This article was originally published by WebMD.

By Katherine Karn
WebMD Feature

Experts debate the pros and cons of the alternative vaccine schedule and what it means for parents.

When pediatrician Robert W. Sears, MD, FAAP, wrote The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child, he envisioned giving parents more choices on how to vaccinate their children if they were concerned about a vaccine’s side effects or ingredients or the large number of shots that kids receive today.

 “A lot of parents don’t really trust the vaccine system,” Sears says. “I felt that if I could give parents a better understanding of vaccines -- as well as an alternative way to approach giving vaccines -- then these families who otherwise might not vaccinate could go ahead and feel comfortable with vaccinating.”

Sears, who practices in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., says that he isn't against vaccinations. Instead, his book suggests an untraditional “alternative” schedule that delays shots or spaces them further apart. If parents are skittish about any shots at all, he offers a separate “selective” schedule to encourage them to give their kids at least the "bare minimum" of vaccinations.

But public health officials say that those approaches leave too many kids unprotected for too long and aren’t backed up by science.

“These altered schedules have not been studied at all,” says Meg Fisher, MD, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and medical director of the Children’s Hospital at Monmouth Medical Center in New Jersey and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' section on infectious diseases. "I would rather stay with what we know is the most likely to protect the most people."

Regular, Alternative, Selective Vaccine Schedules

The regular vaccine schedule for children aged 0-6 is approved by the CDC, American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

It recommends 25 shots in the first 15 months of life. The shots immunize against whooping cough (pertussis), diphtheria, tetanus, mumps, measles, rubella, rotavirus, polio, hepatitis B, and other diseases.

The alternative and selective vaccination schedules aren't reviewed or approved by the CDC or other public health group. They come solely from Sears.

Sears’ alternative vaccine schedule spreads the shots out over a longer period of time, up to age 5-6 years. For instance, he recommends not giving kids more than two vaccines at a time. It also changes the order of vaccines, prioritizing what Sears believes are the most crucial vaccines to get, based on how common and severe the diseases are.

As Sears writes, “If some of the theoretical problems with vaccines are real, this schedule circumvents most of them. If the problems aren’t real, then the only drawback is the extra time, effort, and cost for the additional doctor’s office visits.”

For parents who are the most reluctant to vaccinate, his selective vaccination schedule includes what he calls the "bare minimum" vaccinations against serious and common diseases, such as whooping cough and rotavirus. It also omits some vaccines, including the one for polio.

Vaccine Watch encourages parents considering the alternative vaccine schedule to consult their pediatrician.

A Positive Spin on Vaccines

Negative stories about vaccines dominate the news, as activist groups continue to spread misinformation. But, vaccines are important to our health and safety, and many are speaking out about their positive effects.

NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon joined the Sounds of Pertussis campaign with the March of Dimes and Sanofi Pasteur. The campaign is a national education program educating adults about the importance of getting an adult Tdap (tetanus, diptheria and acellular pertussis) vaccination. The booster vaccine prevents adults from contracting pertussis and passing it along to unvaccinated infants, who will receive the vaccine at two months of age.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported there were more than 41,000 cases and 18 deaths reported in 2012 for pertussis, the largest outbreak in fifty years.

“Eighty percent of the time…these young infants are getting it from family members so it’s really about prevention (efforts),” Gordon states. “Prior to the baby being born, family members, when they come to the hospital, when they come to the home to visit, you know they need to make sure they’re protected.”

Gordon is not the only person speaking in favor of vaccines.  Jeanne Sager wrote an impassioned blog post for The Stir about the importance of vaccines. She asks parents to also consider all of the diseases that vaccines prevent, rather than just focusing on vaccine safety.

Sager references Amy Parker’s story on Voices for Vaccines. Parker grew up un-vaccinated in a “health nut” family. Parker states:

As healthy as my lifestyle seemed, I contracted measles, mumps, rubella, a type of viral meningitis, scarlatina, whooping cough, yearly tonsillitis, and chickenpox, some of which are vaccine preventable. In my twenties I got precancerous HPV and spent 6 months of my life wondering how I was going to tell my two children under the age of 7 that mummy might have cancer before it was safely removed...

If you’ve never had these illnesses you don’t know how awful they are -- I do. Pain, discomfort, the inability to breathe or to eat or to swallow, fever and nightmares, itching all over your body so much that you can’t stand lying on bed sheets, losing so much weight you can’t walk properly, diarrhea that leaves you lying prostrate on the bathroom floor, the unpaid time off work for parents (and if you’re self employed that means NO INCOME), the quarantine, missing school, missing parties, the worry, the sleepless nights, the sweat, the tears and the blood, the midnight visits to A and E, sitting in a doctor’s waiting room on your own because no one will sit near you because they’re rightfully scared of those spots all over your kid's face.

Dr. Daniel Gilstrap of Durham, North Carolina notes that, “The list of vaccines for adults has expanded quite a lot in the last few years. Not only that, the knowledge of the safety of these vaccines has increased.”

Vaccination efforts have enabled entire generations to grow up without knowledge of the severity of

polio, measles, whooping cough, and others. Gilstrap and other physicians are working to educate people on the importance of vaccines because they don’t know how bad the diseases can be.

Finally, Lisa Murakami wrote a blog post last September, Vaccination: A Layperson’s Perspective. Her post generated 482 comments and tackles all of the vaccination myths.  Her husband is a medical resident at Dana Farber.

She notes, “That means, he has 14.5 years of grueling medical training that I don’t have. And – conservatively estimated – 28,160 hours. My father has infinitely more; he’s seen tens of thousands of patients over the course of his forty-year career as a pediatrician. Clearly, I can’t run a Google search on a complex medical topic and eventually cobble together a better answer on it than these two can.”

Murakami concludes by noting that she can’t link to many of the sources she used when debunking vaccine myths because you have to pay for a subscription to major medical journals and other legitimate scientific sources. She has subscriptions to these sources, but the average person does not. The best information on vaccines isn’t available by Googling the Internet, however the worst information is available.

Those with questions about vaccines should consult their pediatrician. The Internet and other sources is not a substitute for years of medical training, and the diseases are much worse than the vaccines.

Anti-Vaxxer Appointed to FDA Vaccine Committee

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently appointed Stephanie Christner, Doctor of Osteopathy, to the Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC). Dr. Christner is serving as the voting consumer representative on the twelve-member committee. FDA has charged this committee with reviewing and evaluating vaccine safety and effectiveness. The committee also reviews appropriate use of vaccines and biological products intended for public use, including clinical trial and other data submitted by drug companies seeking licensure of new vaccines.

Vaccine Watch and many other organizations are concerned by the FDA’s choice of Dr. Christner because she is an active advocate against vaccines. She currently serves as a board member for the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), which is an anti-vaccine organization that regularly spreads vaccine misinformation. In 2010 she co-founded a company that specializes in allergy, GMO and preservative-free foods. She also has a clinical practice in psychiatry and neurofeedback.

In 2009, Dr. Christener’s infant daughter died and she blamed vaccines. Vaccine Watch and others are sympathetic in the matchless and devastating loss of a child. However, she appears unmovable in her belief that vaccines caused the death of the child, despite a lack of data to support her belief. Dr. Christener described her ordeal in the anti-vaccination film “The Greater Good;” a movie that has been thoroughly dismantled for being deceptive and misleading. “The Greater Good” is an anti-vaccine propaganda piece and passed on blatant misinformation.

The FDA states that it recruits qualified experts with minimal conflicts of interest but they made a mistake in appointing Dr. Christner to the VRBPAC committee. The FDA further states:

            Members and the chair are selected by the Commissioner or the designee

            from among authorities knowledgeable in the fields of immunology,

molecular biology, rDNA, virology, bacteriology, epidemiology or biostatistics, allergy, preventative medicine, infectious diseases, pediatrics,

microbiology and biochemistry.

Dr. Christner’s appointment to the VRBPAC committee has given false legitimacy to the anti-vaccination position and the long-term effects could be detrimental. As we struggle against the outbreak of preventable disease and blatant propaganda against vaccines, FDA should be even more scrupulous in ensuring the objectivity of their appointees.

Who are the Anti-Vaccine People?

A recent article in the Chicago-Sun Times with the title, “Why do rich people hate vaccines?” brought the anti-vaccination movement back to the forefront of media discussion. The author noted that anti-vaccination was picking up steam in many of the country’s wealthier, educated enclaves where parents are interested in living “natural” lifestyles.

For instance, a public elementary school in Malibu reported that only 58 percent of their students are immunized, which is well below the recommended 90 percent. Even worse, at some of Los Angeles’ private schools, only 20 percent of kids are vaccinated.

“Yes, that’s right,” Nina Shapiro, a professor at UCLA medical school and mother of two states. “Parents are willingly paying up to $25,000 a year to schools at which fewer than 1 in 5 kindergartners has been immunized against the pathogens causing such life-threatening illnesses as measles, polio, meningitis and pertussis (whooping cough).”

The situation is not unique to California. In Boulder, Colorado close to 30 percent of children are exempted from at least one vaccine. Ashland, Oregon has some schools where two-thirds of students have exemptions. Michigan, Vermont, Idaho and Oregon all now have more than 5 percent of people choosing not to get vaccines. Illinois is close with 4.8 percent. The national median is 1.8 percent.

Paul Offit is a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and notes that a high education level can enhance anti-vax beliefs. “They’re people who believe that they can know anything and know as much as their doctor – if not more – by simply studying it, reading about it,” he said.

This is a well-known problem in Australia. “These are parents who have good information available and yet they are not vaccinating their children,” states Steve Hambleton, president of the Austalian Medical Association. “People have forgotten about the devastating effects of diseases like mumps and measles. That’s probably one reason they are willing to take chances.”

Vaccine Watch encourages people to look for more sources of information about vaccines than information available on the Internet. Doctors and pediatricians have years of education and first-hand knowledge of the dangers of disease and safety and benefits of vaccines. Parents should consult their pediatrician when making vaccine choices for their children.

When Measles Strikes

The media has been full of reports on the Texas mega-church with a measles outbreak because their pastor preaches against vaccination. The irony and coincidence of the situation has caused national news outlets, blogs and others to comment.

The Eagle Mountain International Church in Newark is a division TV evangelist Kenneth Copeland, who advocates faith healing and has talked of his belief in the vaccine-autism link. His daughter Terri Pearsons is the senior pastor at Eagle Mountain. The measles outbreak at the church has infected 21 people ranging in age from 4-months to 44-years old. The majority of the infected people were never vaccinated. Health officials expect the outbreak to grow.

A person who contracted measles in Indonesia visited the church and caused the outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) notes that measles is spread by coughing, sneezing and close personal contact. It is recommended that children get two doses of the MMR vaccine, which covers measles, mumps and rubella.

Measles is a highly contagious disease, 90% of people who aren’t vaccinated or immune to it will get sick if exposed to the disease. Symptoms of measles include a fever, cough and rash. The outbreak has led the church to hold vaccination clinics and encourage those who won’t be vaccinated to self-quarantine.

Health officials across the country have taken note and urge precaution. “We don’t take chances with our kids when we have them in a car, we should not take chances with our kids when they’re out in the world,” Dr. Ken Haller of Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center in Missouri states. “Kids need to be vaccinated. I feel so sorry for these people who got measles down in Texas and I hope none of them end up dying as a result of it.”

“It is really important, as parents, if you have fears for your kid’s safety, for those fears to be rational; the fear of the diseases we’re trying to prevent and not the best means of preventing it,” Dr. Haller adds.

Vaccine Watch encourages everyone to get vaccinated. Diseases like measles are serious and can lead to death – but vaccination is a simple and safe preventative action. Ask your doctor if you have questions about vaccines, don’t depend on the wisdom of the non-medical community or the Internet. 

Voices for Vaccines

A group of parents has created an organization that advocates for vaccinating children. Voices for Vaccines provide information through a community of parents who are supportive of vaccination and discuss the benefits of on-time vaccination. Although the organization is parent driven, scientists, healthcare professionals and public health officials also support it.

One of the most compelling pages on the Voices for Vaccines website is the “Parents Who Vax” section, where parents explain why they chose to vaccinate their infants. Dr. Torre McGowan, MD is a practicing emergency physician in California and the mother of two little boys. She wrote an essay on the consequences of not vaccinating.  She states:

“I fully support parents’ rights to choose not to vaccinate, but there are consequences to that decision. I have had many conversations with parents in the middle of the night when their child has a fever and had to explain to them that because of their decision to not vaccinate, research indicates that their child is at a significantly increased risk for life-threatening diseases, and so will need invasive testing in the ER. It will take hours, and it will hurt their child. I tell them that the diseases we vaccinate against aren’t just nuisances; they kill and maim children every day, and they are almost completely preventable by vaccination.

I tell parents that I have worked in several developing countries, and I have seen children disfigured by diseases that we only read about in history books. I’ve seen babies die of diseases that in the U.S. we don’t even think about as a cause of illness because vaccination has nearly eliminated the illness. However, these illnesses are starting to make a comeback because of the anti-vaccine movement.

I also tell them that as a parent of two boys, I carefully research every vaccine and medicine that my children are given. I read the medical journals on the topic; examine the evidence for myself about all of the controversies about thimerosal and autism and invasive disease. Then I tell them that after many hours of studying the best research available, I am first in line to have my children vaccinated every time they are due.”

The parents at Voices for Vaccines aren’t alone. Nurses Who Vaccinate is a blog that advocates the safety and reliability of vaccines. Families Fighting Flu is a website that advocates for the flu shot to protect children from the flu.  Pfizer Australia created the smart phone app VaxiMate to help parents keep children’s immunization records organized and on time. The app is free and also includes the Australian immunization schedule and details on the diseases the child is being vaccinated against.

While there are numerous resources available on the Internet in favor and against vaccines, one of the best resources parents have is their child’s pediatrician. Vaccine Watch encourages parents to study all of the information, ask questions and make an informed decision for their child’s health and wellbeing.

Jenny McCarthy and The View

ABC News made headlines this week when they announced that anti-vaccine advocate Jenny McCarthy is joining the popular daytime show the View as a host in September. McCarthy has been linked to the anti-vaccine movement for over ten years, claiming a vaccine caused her son’s autism. 

McCarthy has been so outspoken on the topic that a website tracking the number of illnesses and deaths caused by the anti-vaccine movement has the domain name www.jennymccarthybodycount.com. With 1,170 preventable deaths between June 3, 2007 and June 22, 2013 and over 118,000 preventable illnesses, vaccine advocates are concerned about McCarthy’s new platform to spread her views.

The View caters to mothers and the credibility of host Barbara Walters and others influences the decisions many people make.  Over twenty studies have proven that there is no link between vaccines and autism. On the contrary, vaccines are the most effective instruments of public health. However, talented speakers like McCarthy can spread their scientific illiteracy through media quickly; McCarthy already has a book and will now regularly have television as another venue.

Michael Specter of The New Yorker states, “It is understandable that people would suspect vaccines are a cause of autism; parents often first notice developmental problems when their children are about eighteen months old, the same time they often receive several vaccinations. Causation and correlation are often confused, however as many studies have demonstrated. (Assuming that events that happen at the same time are connected can lead to serious misconceptions: over the last decade, for example the rise in the sales of organic food in the United States has mirrored the growth in autism rates almost exactly. No sane person would suggest that those facts are related.)”

“By preaching her (McCarthy’s) message of scientific illiteracy from one end of this country to the other, she has helped make it possible for people to turn away from rational thought. And that is deadly,” Specter concludes.

The anti-vaccine movement has been blamed for recent outbreaks of measles and whooping cough. Communities across the world are working to increase education and vaccination rates. Wendy Sue Swanson is a pediatrician in Seattle and believes it will take decades to recover from the anti-vaccine movement. “In the medical community, we’ll work to undo myths around vaccine safety for the rest of our lives, in part because of Ms. McCarthy,” she states.

Vaccine Watch encourages parents to make their decisions about vaccines with the help of pediatricians and sound science, not Hollywood.

Vaccines and Social Media

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have far-reaching positive and negative effects on people’s lives. The influence of social media has extended to vaccines.

Dr. Emily Brunson, formerly of Texas State University in San Marcos, conducted a study that found parents make decisions about whether to vaccinate fully, vaccinate over a period of time or not to vaccinate their children at all based on their social networks. Pediatrics magazine published the results of the study.

Of the first-time parents surveyed, 126 conformed to vaccination recommendations while 70 didn’t. Twenty-eight of the seventy delayed vaccines, while thirty-seven partially vaccinated and five didn’t vaccinate at all. 95% of all participants surveyed stated that they got their advice from people they go to for information.

Parents who conformed to guidelines were more likely to get their information from friends, family, and healthcare providers. “Having those conversations with your sister, your parent, with your friends matter a lot more than we thought. If we want to improve vaccination rates, communication needs to be directed to the public at large,” Brunson says.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin conducted research on vaccine-related Twitter posts. 9,510 vaccination-related tweets during one week in January 2012 were analyzed and found to be mostly positive and reliable. The American Journal of Infection Control published the results of the study.

The original tweets were narrowed down to 2,580 that had been re-posted or shared. Of this smaller sample of tweets, 33 percent had a positive tone about vaccines, 54 percent were neutral and 13 percent were negative. 14 percent of the tweets contained medical information, and 66 percent of those were backed by scientific research.

Tweets covered many vaccine topics including: a potential children’s malaria vaccine, development of the NeuVax E-75 vaccine for breast cancer, the effectiveness of a herpes vaccine in women, a blog post discrediting the link between vaccines and autism, and many other topics.

Sources shared through twitter included: health specific sites like WebMD, national media like The New York Times, and medical organizations like American Medical Association. News and health organizations received more positive attention than political or advocacy groups.

Authors at The University of Texas stated: “In this sample, it appears that Twitter users share mostly reputable information and sources while actively mobilizing others to seek reliable health information. Results of the snapshot can help explain what social media content parents consume and respond to, as well as help determine directions for educational campaigns.”

While social media sites like Facebook and Twitter can be a great place to learn new information, it’s important to remember that your social network may not be providing you with all of the information you need. Vaccine Watch urges readers to consider a diversity of opinions and note the sources of information. It’s also important to maintain your general practitioner or child’s pediatrician as one of your sources.

Whooping Cough Vaccine Stirs Debate

New research has shown that protection from whooping cough (pertussis) weakens a few years after preschool children get their final diptheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP) shot. The current recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is that children receive a booster between ages 11 and 12.

It’s likely that the trend is linked to a change in the vaccine in the 1990s. An acellular pertussis vaccine with fewer side effects was introduced and replaced the original whole-cell vaccine. The new research notes that children may be at risk of developing whooping cough before age 11 because their immunity is declining from a weaker vaccine.

Dr. H. Cody Meissner is a pediatrician at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston and notes, “There’s a fairly dramatic and startling increase in pertussis [whooping cough] in children in the seven to ten-year old age group.”

Sara Tartof from the Southern California Permanente Medical Group in Pasadena led the group of researchers on the new study. Immunization records of 400,000 Minnesota and Oregon children who received the recommended series of five DTaP shots were analyzed.

“An important thing to remember is the kids who do receive all five doses on time generally have milder [whooping cough] than those who are under-vaccinated or unvaccinated,” Tartof said. “Even though there is waning immunity…getting the five doses on time is still the best protection you can give your kid.” Parents should continue to follow the CDC’s vaccine schedule.

The CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has decided not to recommend an alternative revaccination schedule despite the waning pertussis protection. The group cited that the risks of pertussis decrease with age.

“It is so important that people do not interpret this as the vaccine doesn’t work, and then not get vaccinated at all,” Meissner concludes. “Because then we would really have a problem.”

In New York, this is already becoming a problem as the rise in religious exemptions for children is paralleling a rise in whooping cough cases. “It’s troubling from an ethical standpoint,” Dr. Jana Shaw, a professor of pediatrics at SUNY Upstate Medical University states. “If you have gotten an exemption for your child, not only are they at high risk of [whooping cough], but you’re putting other children at risk – even those who have been vaccinated.”

Clay County in Missouri is having a vaccination campaign for childcare workers, parents and grandparents in July. The Public Health Center believes that vaccinating those who come into contact with infants will decrease the cases of whooping cough in the county. Whooping cough is often unknowingly spread from unvaccinated adults to children who don’t have full immunity until they are 12-15 months of age.

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ actress Sarah Michelle Gellar is also supporting the pertussis vaccine. Gellar, who has two small children, has partnered with March of Dimes to increase awareness about the importance of childhood vaccines. She also recommends adults be vaccinated for whooping cough.

Vaccines are one of the best forms of protection for children. Parents should consult their child’s pediatrician if they have questions or concerns about the vaccine schedule or a particular vaccine.

Get Vaccinated: It's the Law

A growing number of parents in Oregon aren’t vaccinating their children against deadly diseases because they believe vaccines can have irreversible adverse health effects. Oregon leads the national exemption list, with 5.8 percent of kindergartners (or more than 2,600 children) being exempt from vaccines last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

However, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in April that eight young children who were taken into state custody last year could be vaccinated. Their parents have claimed that religious beliefs exempt the children from vaccination. The Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) has argued and carried the point that because the state has custody of the children, the state can also make medical decisions for the children.

DHS had checked with a doctor to make sure the children didn’t have allergies or other medical conditions. The doctor recommended immunizations, and DHS turned to a judge for permission when the parents refused. The Oregon appeals court noted that North Carolina and Georgia courts have also denied parents without custody of their kids a say in immunizations. Conversely, Arizona ruled in favor of a mother who didn’t want her child vaccinated.

Oregon continues to represent ground zero in the childhood vaccine debate with the state Senate voting in May on a bill that would require parents to be educated about vaccines before they can exempt their children from them. The number of unvaccinated kindergarteners increased to 6.4% this year and officials fear a public safety disaster similar to the recent measles outbreak in Wales.

The bill stipulates that parents enrolling unvaccinated children in school would have to prove they consulted a physician for information, or show a certificate verifying they watched an online educational video about the risks and benefits of immunization. In 2011, Washington passed similar legislation. Although Oregon has debated both sides of this bill, it was passed by the Oregon Senate on Thursday, June 6th and is now in the Oregon House.

“The more people you have that are unvaccinated, the more likely you are to have those diseases spread,” Dr. Jay Rosenbloom, a spokesman for Oregonians for Healthy Children stated. “The percentage of Oregon parents signing personal-beliefs vaccine exemptions has been rising steadily since 2001, but declining a vaccination doesn’t just affect the individual.”

The vaccine debate will continue, both with parents of young children and in other areas. Vaccine Watch urges those concerned about vaccines to speak with a doctor about the risks and benefits before making a decision.

New Study: Autism and Vaccines Not Linked

Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a new study in March that proves there is no connection between the number of vaccines a child received and his or her risk of autism spectrum disorder. The study also showed that even though more vaccines are administered, today’s vaccines contain fewer substances that provoke an immune response.

Frank DeStefano is the director of the Immunization Safety Office of the CDC and led the study. The CDC researchers compared the vaccine histories of 250 children who had autism spectrum disorder with those of 750 typical kids, looking at antigens. Antigens are substances in vaccines (also naturally found in bacteria or viruses) that cause the body to produce antibodies, proteins that help fight off infections.

DeStefano noted that the antigens from vaccines received during the first two years of life weren’t related to the development of autism spectrum disorder. It was also proved that there are fewer antigens in today’s vaccines. In the late-1990s there were several thousand antigens in vaccines, but today’s vaccine schedule only contains 315, because vaccines have become much more precise.

“The sad part is, by focusing on whether vaccines cause autism spectrum disorders, they’re missing the opportunity to look at what the real causes [of autism] are. It’s not vaccines,” states Ellen Wright Clayton, a pediatrics professor at Vanderbilt University who works with the Institute of Medicine.

Geraldine Dawson, the top scientist for Autism Speaks, an advocacy and research group, noted that the study results should clear the way for research on other potential causes of autism. Other causes of autism may include: nutrition (which can affect a baby’s brain development in the womb), medications and infections during pregnancy, or an infant’s exposure to pesticides or pollution.

Dawson concludes: “As we hone in on what is causing autism, I think we are going to have fewer and fewer questions about some of these things that don’t appear to be causing autism.”

Vaccine Watch encourages parents to carefully review the CDC study and consult with their child’s pediatrician to make informed choices.

Review of Vaccines and Autism

In February, the Liberty Beacon posted about a scientific review on the theoretical causes of abortion. Citing the 2011 article in the Journal of Immunotoxicology entitled “Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes—A review” written by Helen Ratajczak, the post claims that vaccines and autism are related.

Ratajczak is a retired senior scientist from a pharmaceutical firm who reviewed the body of published science since autism was first described in 1943. She states that autism is the result of genetic defects and/or inflammation of the brain, and discusses vaccine-related culprits. One culprit, she claims, is that the immune system is tricked into associating harmful viruses with human DNA.

“Because it’s human DNA and recipients are humans, there’s homologous recombinaltion tiniker. That DNA is incorporated into the host DNA. Now it’s changed, altered self and body kills it. Where is this most expressed? The neurons of the brain. Now you have body killing the brain cells and it’s an ongoing inflammation. It doesn’t stop, it continues through the life of that individual,” Ratajczak states.

The article in the Journal of Immunotoxicology continues that 92% of children have been given vaccines made using aborted fetal cell lines. According to Liberty Beacon, the polio, measles, mumps and rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis A and rabies vaccines all contain aborted fetal tissue.

Dr. Jay L. Wile counters this argument: “…it is impossible for vaccines (or any other injected medicine) to contain human tissue. The reason is simple: if you are injected with anything containing tissue from another person, your body will immediately recognize it as an invader and begin attacking it. The immune response is often quite radical and can easily lead to death! That is why blood from a donor to a recipient must be carefully matched before the recipient can receive it. Thus, there is no human tissue of any kind in vaccines.”

Dr. Wile continues to point out that the vaccines listed above are grown in human cells and the anti-vaccine movement has latched onto that and created a lie. The cells used to grow the vaccines have been used for 35 years, as they are continually reproducing and creating more cells.

“This (the article in the Journal of Immunotoxicology) is a review of theories. Science is based on facts. To draw conclusions on effects of an exposure on people, you need data on people. The data on people do not support that there is a relationship. As such, any speculation about an explanation for a (non-existing) relationship is irrelevant,” states Dr. Brian Strom of the University of Pennsylvania.

Anti-Vaccination Messages Targeted To Children

Stephanie Messenger is an Australian anti-vaccine activist and self-published author.  She recently published a children’s book, the title is Melanie’s Marvelous Measles.

According to Messenger’s website, she wrote the book to:  “Educate children on the benefits of having measles and how you can heal from them naturally and successfully. Often today, we are being bombarded with messages from vested interests to fear all diseases in order for someone to sell some potion or vaccine, when, in fact, history shows that in industrialized countries, these diseases are quite benign and, according to natural health sources, beneficial to the body.”

Unfortunately, the message that Messenger missed was that measles is responsible for thousands of tragic deaths each year.  These deaths could be prevented through vaccination.  According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2011 there were 158,000 deaths from measles, or 18 deaths per hour. 

WHO also states that measles vaccination resulted in a 71% drop in measles deaths worldwide between 2000 and 2011.  However, 158,000 deaths a year for a disease we have a vaccination for is unacceptable.  Measles is a highly contagious virus and most of those who died were children under the age of five.  There is nothing marvelous about measles.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the game company Tiltfactor has been using games to educate people about vaccinations.  Previously, Tiltfactor had developed a game called Pox to address misinformation about vaccines and recently introduced zombie-themed games. 

In addition to Pox, Tiltfactor now has a zombie invasion board game, an iPad app and a card game.  In each of the games, players figure out which people need to be vaccinated to slow the spread of the zombies.  To date the board game and card game have been the most popular, and the most effective at raising awareness about vaccinations.

Children's books and games have the potential to educate parents and kids about the value of vaccination. These opportunities should be capitalized on to answer questions and relieve unnecessary fears. Anti-vaccination messages delivered in children's books are a whole new face of the Anti-Vaccine movement that should not go unanswered.