Childhood Immunizations: Minimizing the Risks

By Guest Blogger Dale Peterson, M.D.

The question I am asked by parents more often than any other is, “Should my child be immunized?”  It is a question they should be asking given the conflicting reports and recommendations they are reading and receiving.  The deepest desire of any parent should be to protect his or her child from harm.

As a child I lived through the polio epidemic of 1952.  I can still recall the concern in my parent’s voices and the anxiety on their faces each time they learned that another neighboring child had contracted polio.  I saw other children in braces and saw pictures of people lying helplessly in “iron lungs” and tried not to think of the possibility that I too could succumb to the disease.

One summer my classmates and I met at our country schoolhouse where we were loaded into cars and taken to the big school in town.  There we stood in line to receive shots.  We didn’t appreciate the injections, but from that point forward no child in our community came down with polio and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.

That experience, coupled with my unpleasant memories of days spent in bed with measles, German measles, and other childhood illnesses kept me from questioning the wisdom of immunizing my daughters.  Times change, however, and questions about the wisdom of immunizing children and adults against disease are being raised in many quarters.

The childhood immunization schedule when my daughters were born was far different from that in place today.  In the 1970s and early 1980s children were routinely given ten doses of vaccine prior to school entry, which protected them from seven different diseases.  Today’s children are expected to take 36 vaccine doses covering 14 different diseases by their sixth birthday!

Concerns exist today that were not present prior to 1980.  Over the past three decades there has been a twenty-fold increase in the incidence of autistic disorders.  Children following the recommended vaccines are injected with an enormous amount of aluminum, a toxic metal.  Early vaccination has been linked to an increased risk of childhood diabetes and asthma.

Rotavirus vaccines, meant to address a common form of diarrhea, have been found to contain fragments of a virus that causes piglets to waste away.  The long-term effect of giving this virus to babies will not be known for at least a decade.

A 1997 study showing that infants who received 450 mcg or more of aluminum in IV feedings had lower mental development scores prompted the FDA to place a limit on the aluminum content of those products.  There is, however, no such limit on the aluminum content of vaccines.  Following the recommended schedule an infant receives 250 mcg within a few days of birth and 225 – 976 mcg (depending upon the brand of vaccine) at 2 months of age.  An additional 225 – 976 mcg is injected at 4 months and 6 months of age.

Elimination of heavy metals and brain development are both dependent upon a chemical processes called methylation and sulfation.  Detoxification of acetaminophen, which is commonly given at the time of vaccination to prevent fever, is also dependent upon sulfation.  Autistic disorders began to rise as acetaminophen replaced aspirin as the fever reducer of choice in infants and children.  Rates dipped during the Tylenol scares of 1982 and 1986.  Studies have shown mothers of children born with autism are more likely to have taken a fever reducer during pregnancy.  Children who develop autism are 6 times more likely than other children to have taken acetaminophen after an immunization and those who regress after an MMR immunization are 17 times more likely than others to have received acetaminophen.

Based on these concerns I recommend that parents consider the following:

• Delay immunizations until age 2 or later, if possible.  (It is not reasonable to take this step if a child is in daycare, but the measures below can and should be taken.)
• No more than 2 vaccines/session
• Decline vaccines of dubious value or with a questionable benefit/risk ratio
• Avoid acetaminophen (Tylenol and other brands)
• No immunization if an illness is present
• Supplements that support sulfation and metylation should be started a week before and continued for a week after vaccines are administered.  Important nutrients are B6, B12, folic acid, magnesium, zinc, N,N-dimethylgycine, and N-acetyl cysteine.  These can be found in a single product, HCY Formula, which I formulated several years ago to support methylation.  One capsule is given daily and the contents may be sprinkled into foods or beverages.

Dale Peterson, M.D. is the founder of the Wellness Clubs of America and the author of Building Health by Design: Adding Life to Your Years and Years to Your Life.  He is a past president of the Oklahoma Academy of Family Physicians and a former Clinical Professor of Family Medicine at the OUHSC.  His website is http://www.drdalepeterson.com