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 I generally know what’s coming next when a parent asks about altering their child’s vaccine schedule: “I was reading Dr. Sears….”
Dr. Sears is a genius. No, not in an Albert Einstein or Pablo Picasso kind of way. He’s more of an Oprah or a Madonna kind of genius. He’s a genius because he has written a book that capitalizes on the vaccine-fearing, anti-establishment mood of the zeitgeist. The book tells parents what they desperately want to hear, and that has made it an overnight success. Dr. Robert Sears is perhaps one of the best-known pediatricians in the country. The youngest son of Dr. Bill Sears, the prolific parent book writer and creator of AskDrSears.com, Dr. Bob has become the bane of many a pediatrician’s existence. He has contributed to his family dynasty by co-authoring several books, adding content to the family website, and making myriad TV appearances to offer his sage advice. But Dr. Bob is best known for his best-selling The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for your Child. This book, or at least notes from it, now accompanies many confused and concerned parents to the pediatrician’s office. Parents who have been misled by the onslaught of vaccine misinformation and fear-mongering feel comforted and supported by the advice of Dr. Sears, who assures parents that there is a safer, more sensible way to vaccinate. He wants parents to make their own “informed” decisions about whether or how to proceed with vaccinating their children, making sure to let them know that if they do choose to vaccinate, he knows the safest way to do it. And for $13.99 (paperback), he’ll share it with them.
In the final chapter of his book (entitled “What should you do now?”), after reinforcing the common vaccine myths of the day, Dr. Sears presents his readers with “Dr. Bob’s Alternative Vaccine Schedule.” He places this side-by-side with the schedule recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. He then explains why his schedule is a safer choice for parents who chose to vaccinate their children. Without a doubt, the alternative vaccine schedule is among the more damaging aspects of this book. It’s the part that gets brought along to the pediatrician’s office and presented as the the plan going forward for many parents today. But the book is also dangerous in the way in which it validates the pervasive myths that are currently scaring parents into making ill-informed decisions for their children. Dr. Sears discusses these now common parental concerns, but instead of countering them with sound science, he lets them stand on their own as valid. He points out that most doctors are ill-equipped to discuss vaccines with parents, being poorly trained in the science of vaccine risks and benefits. He then claims to be a newly self-taught vaccine expert, a laughable conceit given the degree to which he misunderstands the science he purports to have read, and in the way he downplays the true dangers of the vaccine-preventable diseases he discusses in his book. He then provides parents with what he views as rational alternatives to the recommended vaccination schedule, a schedule designed by the country’s true authorities on vaccinology, childhood infectious disease, and epidemiology. So what does Dr. Sears have to say, exactly, about the risks of vaccines, and just how out of touch is he with medical science and epidemiology? VALIDATING THE UNTRUTHS Public versus individual health It is not uncommon for people to be confused about how public health measures relate to personal or individual health. With regard to vaccines, some feel that recommendations made “for the good of the public ” may not necessarily be for the good of the individual. Some feel that while they may understand the rationale for vaccinating on a societal level, they are unwilling or afraid to place the burden of potential vaccine risks on their child. Dr. Sears falls for this line of thinking, and leads parents to believe that certain vaccines protect the community but not the individual child. He gives polio as an example, stating that the risk of polio is zero, and that therefore the vaccine does not protect the individual child from disease. This, of course, is untrue. While new cases of polio no longer arise in the United States (thanks to the success of the polio vaccine) they still do in other areas of the world. As is true for many infectious diseases, imported cases and potential outbreaks are a quick airplane flight away. The more unvaccinated children we have, the more likely an imported case will lead to larger outbreaks of disease. So yes, vaccinating protects the individual child as well as the community at large. Ironically, polio would likely have been eradicated from the earth by 2002 had it not been for the propagation of a vaccine myth. In the impoverished Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (which, in the year 2000, accounted for 68% of all polio cases in the world), a myth that the polio vaccination campaign was really a government conspiracy to sterilize children prevented that campaign from accomplishing its true mission of ridding the world of this horrible disease. Of course herd immunity, an epidemiological concept, is of vital importance to public health. We know that Dr. Sears understands at least this much, because he advises parents who fear giving their children the MMR vaccine not to tell their neighbors, lest too many parents develop similar fears. He warns that an increasing number of unvaccinated children will result in a resurgence of the disease. He couldn’t be more correct. Enlarging pockets of unimmunized and underimmunized children around the country have already resulted in outbreaks of disease. These vaccine-preventable outbreaks are just harbingers of worse outbreaks yet to come, should this trend continue. Throughout his book Dr. Sears highlights common parental concerns about vaccines. He follows these not with fact-based discussions, but with subtle (and often not so subtle) words of reinforcement. For example, Dr. Sears often downplays the potential danger of vaccine preventable diseases, or the risk of infection for the unimmunized child. Although the book is rife with such misinformation, I will limit my discussion to just a few examples to give a sense of the distortions involved. Click here to read the full article
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