Offit To Sears: The Current Vaccine Schedule Is Still The Best Vaccine Schedule

Off all the parents I counsel about immunizations, the fearful and resistant ones remain etched in my mind. They always seem to be very pleasant and well spoken. Usually highly educated and well read but somewhere along the line became deeply troubled about immunizations. Their over riding mission become one of over protection of their children and wanting assurances of safety that even the most sound of science will always fail to provide.

Some have vague fears of immunizations in general. Some have fears based on experiences of others or stories they have heard in the news. Some have autism fears. Some have mercury fears. Some have “toxin fears”. Some are just frozen by the fear of the unknown.

Regardless of the spark, it is fear in the end that drives their thinking and decision making about immunizations and fear never drives rational thought. Trying to communicate the truth and provide sound information against such well entrenched fears, continually fueled by mistruths propagated by celebrities and celebrity doctors, is one of the biggest public health challenges of pediatrics today.

For this reason, pediatrician Paul Offit’s deconstructing of Dr. Bill Sears’ Vaccine Book in this month's Pediatrics is particularly important to the vaccine debate and spot on. Dr. V on Parenting Solved has a great post that goes through Dr. Offit's reasoning in full detail that I completely support, as do many other reputable health experts.

The big issue for me is the vaccine schedule and the need for physicians to be unified in how we approach parents about the schedule. The CDC schedule represents an entire community of doctors. It is essential that we present a united voice and approach on this very important issue of public health and vaccination. To do any less will cause harm because we will see resurgence in vaccine preventable diseases. To do any less is to disrespect an entire body of science and an entire think tank of doctors and scientists who have worked tirelessly for decades to come up with the currently approved schedule and who continue to work tirelessly to refine and modify that schedule as new science and advances in science comes to light.

It concerns me greatly that Dr. Sears feels he can be the lone voice in offering an alternative that was never vetted nor approved by our current think tanks of infections disease and pediatric experts. If he is truly “provaccination”, why bypass the system? Why not present his schedule to the system via appropriate channels and let the chips fall where they may? The answer is really very simple – it doesn’t stand the test of current immunization science and is not in the best interest of today’s children.

Comparing the number of shots and visits between the CDC schedule and Dr. Sears' alternative schedule is very telling. Here are the numbers for teen girls for the schedule with HPV:

• Dr. Sears: 20 office visits between ages 2months and 13 years for a total of 37 shots
• CDC: 13 office visits between birth and 13 years for a total of 34 shots

For teen boys, for the schedule without HPV, the counts would be:

• Dr. Sears: 19 visits between ages 2months to 13 years for 34 shots
  
• CDC: 11 visits between birth and age 13 for 31 shots
  

In today's economy with co-pays and gas prices, the amount of office visits for Dr. Sears' alternative schedule is outrageous and unnecessary. Families are busy and strained enough with out the added burden of more shot visits. And, it must be remembered that children recall the number of shot visits at the doctor's office more than the number of shots per visit so Dr. Sears' is not sparing children any pain or harm by his schedule one iota.

Part of our job as pediatricians is to consider the big picture of their lives and respect their time in coming to the office. That is part of how we create trust. The other way we create trust is to assist each other in our own industry in ensuring the most accurate information is getting to all parents. If we do that, it will be much, much easier to immunize all children the proper way. We all too oaths to do no harm. To prove this to the families in crisis, we have to convince them that we are working as a team. Creating self-serving alternatives is not the solution.