Vaccines are very important, diseases can be severe, and
I’d say the benefits of the vaccines outweigh the risks,
but you need to be aware that there is a very
small risk of a severe vaccine reaction.

—dr. robert w. SeArS, Md

Above: dr. robert w. Sears,

near his home in Southern California

Above” category. 55 Merck & Co., which manufactures the MMR vaccine touted as life-saving medicine in the Private Practice episode that AAP doctors helped write, donated to the AAP in the “$350,000 to $499,999” category. 56 Paul Offit, who wrote an article excoriating Dr. Robert W. Sears’s alternative schedule that was published in Pediatrics, the AAP’s peer-reviewed journal, 57 himself has a clear financial conflict of interest: coinventor of the Rota Teq vaccine, he is also a coholder of the patent on it. 58

“Merck isn’t dumb,” Dr. John E. Trainer III, a family physician in Jacksonville, Florida, wrote me in an e-mail. Although Trainer describes himself as “very pro-vaccine,” he understands why parents have concerns: Two of his own four children have suffered vaccine-induced complications. “They aren’t doing this (solely) to be nice. And they are making enough money to hire a sales force. They visit us and other docs to try to sell more vaccines.” 59 In the last three years, three new Merck vaccines have been approved by the federal government for sale: Rota Teq, Zostavax, and Gardasil.

“What does it mean to force everybody to be vaccinated?” asks Dr. Howard Morningstar. “It’s a philosophical decision—it’s not based on rational scientific facts.” After reading everything we could about vaccines, calling the CDC, and talking to dozens of people in the health-care professions and other parents (most of whom had chosen to vaccinate), my husband and I chose not to vaccinate our children against hepatitis B or any of the other childhood illnesses. Making our choices vaccine by vaccine, we agonized over whether each was the right choice. We also did everything we could to help our children have healthy immune systems to fight any diseases their bodies might be exposed to.

55. American Academy of Pediatrics,
“Honor roll of Giving,” AAP News 29, no. 11
(November 2008): 23.
56. Ibid.
57. Paul A. offit and Charlotte A. Moser,
“the Problem with dr. bob’s Alternative
Vaccine Schedule,” Pediatrics 123, no. 1

(January 2009): e164–e169; http://pediatrics.
aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/123/1/
e164.
58. Ibid.
59. Personal communication ( 26 January
2009).