Parent Savers
Baby Vaccine Basics

Please be advised, this transcription was performed from a company independent of New Mommy Media, LLC. As such, translation was required which may alter the accuracy of the transcription.

[00:00:00]
[Theme Music/Intro]

Bob Sears: From the moment our children are born and then every checkup thereafter, parents typically a vaccine schedule to protect them from the diseases of this world. What’s in them? What are the risks? And, what is the typical vaccine schedule for newborn and toddlers? I’m Dr. Bob Sears, Pediatrician and author of The Vaccine Book and today we’ll learn more about vaccines and their purpose to help you make an educated decision for your child. This is Parent Savers, Episode 3.

[Theme Song]

K.C. Wilt: Welcome to Parent Savers broadcasting from the birth education center of San Diego. I’m your host K.C Wilt. Parent savers is all about helping new parents preserve their sanity by providing expert information on raising newborns and toddlers. There are many ways to become a part of our show. Visit our website, https://www.parentsavers.com for more information. Feel free to send us comments or suggestions to the contact link on our website or you can call our parent savers hotline at 619-866-4775. I am a new parent myself. My son Carson is 15 months old.

K.C. Wilt: Before we start the stage show, here is the latest toy talk.

[Featured Segment: Toy Talk]

Brian Miller: Hello Parent Savers, I’m Brian Miller. I am the owner of Geppetto’s Toy store here in San Diego and I’m going to talk to you about toys for your 6 month old to about 1 year old. Toys for that age are so exciting. At that age, your children are just exploring everything with their fingers, with their toes, with their mouth. The more colorful, the better, things that are easy to grasp. But, at that 6 months age, your child is really learning about their pincer grasp, their forefinger and their thumbs. So things that are easy to pick up are great small motor skill for that age. Teething, part of expression is putting things in their mouth so you want to make sure that they are safe. You want to make sure there are no small parts. Don’t put any toys in the freezer because that will hurt their gums but cold toys sometimes feels good. Things that are made for teething are really important. Also, your child’s larger motor skills are working at that time, at about 6 months to 9 months or sitting up. So, things that can sit on the floor, they’re going to play with them, may be nesting blocks or soft stacking blocks, something they can stack and they can tumble over. That’s very fun. Also, time on their tummy, tummy times are really important. So, things with sound cause your child to turn and listen and see what’s going on. At the end of that stage, sort of, 9 months to a year, cause and effect gives you love seeing what you can do and make a toy change or make it make noise. So, this toy, telephone, by turning the knob and making it ring, that’s a cause and effect toy. Also, peek-a-boo, object permanence, when you see something thinking it’s gone and then it comes back. That’s why kids love peek-a-boo. That’s a skill they’re learning, object permanence. And then, as they are going toward a year, larger motor skills, they’re starting to walk, they’re starting to crawl. When they are crawling, something as simple as a ball can motivate a child to crawl and then, as they begin to walk, they’re going to be cruising. So, walking around a table or even a walker that’s very, very stable is great for a child at that age. You can visit our website, https://www.geppettostoys.com for more information or for future ideas, listen to Parent Savers for more toy tips in the future.

K.C.Wilt: Dr. Bob Sears is doing this in our studio tape for a special one-on-one interview. Dr. Sears is a well-known pediatrician and he has written several books including The Vaccine Book which we’ll talk about today and it’s been recently revised. You have a chance to win an autographed copy of his book and you’ll have details later in this show. So, Dr. Sears, I’m so excited having you here. Welcome to Parent Savers. Why do we vaccinate? What is the goal?

Bob Sears: Well, there are two primary goals. One is to protect each individual child from catching a potentially serious or fatal disease, essentially to save that child’s life or protect him from a hospitalization or from getting very sick, That’s the one reason and the second reason is to keep diseases low in our society, some fatal diseases or some not so fatal diseases. We just try to keep them at a low level or to completely try to eliminate them from our society.

K.C. Wilt: So, what are the current vaccines that are recommended for newborns and toddlers and what are the diseases that they are going to prevent?

Bob Sears: Well, the schedule really evolves and has expanded greatly over the years. Back in the 80’s, we gave about 3 different vaccines, it was about 8 total shots and it was to protect against five different or, six, seven different diseases. Alright, and it was DTP, it was Polio and it was MMR and that’s the kids got. This is a pretty limited schedule. Since then, now at 30 or 40 years later, we give infants 12 different vaccines protecting them from 16 or 17 different diseases. Babies get about 50 injections throughout their childhood as supposed to being about 8 and kids can get as many as 7 vaccines all at once instead of two, that used to be. So, it has really expanded. We give infants a large number of vaccines in each of their 2, 4, and 6 month checkups. As you know, one if the parent is in the middle of that right now. And then, we kind of, continue to vaccinate at most checkups, at these smaller scales throughout the rest of their childhood.

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K.C.Wilt: Isn’t it too much for our kids?

Bob Sears: Yeah, I think you raise up the whole question of the way our schedule is. Is it too overloaded? You are giving infants 6 to 7 vaccines at 2 months and a 4 months and a 6 months and is that a huge overload? Yeah, it’s a lot of, it’s a myriad of different chemicals in a big mix and these vaccines are really studied for safety individually and some of the grouping of that vaccines are studied for safety. But, there is actually very little research studying these large groups of vaccines together. But, more importantly the safety research is observational. We just give, you know, 10,000 babies the vaccines and then we do parent questioners and we check their health a month later to see how they’re doing. But, that’s where the safety research ends. We don’t call them up 5 years later. We don’t do blood testing on them. We don’t do physical exam testing. We don’t do mental testing to see. So, I’m not saying that they giving 7 or 6 vaccines together is dangerous. What I would say though is that we haven’t adequately proven that it’s safe. So, my vaccine approach is a little bit different than the regular schedule.

K.C.Wilt: You talk about spilling at the vaccine schedule in your book. So, what is your recommendation for new parents?

Bob Sears: Here in my office and what I’ve discussed in the book is basically a way to vaccinate to give your child every single vaccine but, in a way you can spread them out. Instead of giving 6 or 7 at once, you can give 2 at a time. And, they might give 2 vaccines in two months, bring the baby back at 3 months and give 2 other vaccines I didn’t give before. It’s stagger in that way. Instead of giving 6 or 7, 2 for six months and give 2 at a time, at 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 months, so just kind of, spread out. So, limiting the amount of chemicals the baby gets at one time, letting the baby handle each chemical in vaccine better, I believe. And then, I delay some of the vaccines that aren’t needed. So, I’m not having to overload my patients. So, I’m only giving the vaccines I consider most important during infancy.

K.C.Wilt: Let’s talk little bit more specifically about some of the vaccines and the viruses that are associated with them.

Bob Sears: So, the vaccines we give only just to rabble off the diseases, I mean we basically protect against infant meningitis, whooping cough, Diphtheria, which doesn’t in US anymore, tetanus, which doesn’t exist in young children but, the vaccine is there nonetheless, polio which has been eradicated from the US. We vaccinate against hepatitis B, which doesn’t happen to be a infant disease anyway. We vaccinate against measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, rotavirus which is an infant vomiting and diarrhea disease. We vaccinate against Hepatitis A which is a food poisoning type of illness. And then, I think I touched all the infant and young child vaccines there. We vaccinate some of the teenagers against HPV and typical kind of teenage meningitis called, Meningococcal disease.

K.C.Wilt: What about the Hep B vaccine? So, I didn’t get that until I was like, 15. But, I guess that’s the first question they ask when you are in a hospital and I mean, I just find it ironic that we’re giving our babies vaccines that we didn’t get until we were 15. So, what do you think about that?

Bob Sears: The babies are sexually active and sharing IV drug needles so, yeah, Hepatitis B, it’s a perfect example of a vaccine that is not needed for 99% of American babies.

K.C. Wilt: Would you recommend postponing this vaccine until later in life?

Bob Sears: Yes, in my practice, I do postpone that vaccine. It’s really needed prior to sexual activities or I V Drug use, but then, yeah, no one does that, right? But, it’s not needed for babies so, I encourage all my parents to lay that vaccine during the early years because babies in United States just don’t catch Hepatitis B.

K.C. Wilt: And what is the purpose of this vaccine?

[00:10:10]
Bob Sears: Well, the purpose is about 1% of American moms are Hep B positive. They caught it as a teenager or younger, they’re positive for the rest of their lives. So, those 1% of the moms can’t pass the disease to their babies or their children either at birth or throughout childhood by accidental blood exposure. And so, babies born in a family with the mom or the dad with Hep B+, I do think should get the vaccine. That’s a very small percent in this vast population.

K.C.Wilt: Are there other vaccines that you would recommend delaying?

Bob Sears: Yeah, you know, one of the ones I delay is Polio not because I don’t think it’s important but, I don’t think it’s critical for newborns or for young babies. We haven’t had polio in the US for 30 years. No immigrant has brought it in, not even a single case. So, there has been some vaccine created polio cases in the United States caused by oral polio vaccine that we don’t use anymore. But, the actual life disease hasn’t occurred in 30 years. So, I think it’s perfectly safe to delay polio vaccine and start giving it outside of infancy so you don’t have to group it in with other important vaccines. You do it at the time when the baby isn’t needing as many other vaccines, in the 2nd or 3rd year of life. Well, I do, I hope I note I do focus on the important vaccines for infants such as infant meningitis, rotavirus, the whooping cough vaccine. Those are the 4 vaccines that cover those diseases that I concentrate first and then I move on to what I consider the, you know, also important vaccines throughout the rest of childhood.

K.C. Wilt: Okay, Dr. Sears, I’ve been totally freaked out because when my baby was born, it was winter time. We were all in closed conditions because of Christmas parties and everything else. So, protect us from whooping cough that was going around so, what do you think about that? There’s been research that show that kids that have received the vaccines are the ones that are seen more susceptible to the virus. What are your thoughts on this?

Bob Sears: Yeah, there’s kind of a myth that the whooping cough vaccine doesn’t work very well. And then yeah, lot of people will point out the fact that some people or even many people in an outbreak were fully vaccinated for whooping cough. So the people use that to claim that the vaccine doesn’t work. The problem with the protestor’s vaccine is that it doesn’t work for very many years. So, it wears off. So the people catching the disease could have been fully vaccinated and as an infant or a toddler, they could have got a 5 year booster but, by the time they are 8 or 10 years old, the vaccine is worn off in some degree. So, those kids are catching whooping cough. Now, even some of the young kids were vaccinated even during infancy, the vaccine is only 85 to 90% effective. So, 10 to 15 to 20% of kids even fully and recently vaccinated could still catch whooping cough. That’s probably one of the least effective vaccines we have. But, it doesn’t mean it’s not important because while 20 kids are catching whooping cough, 80 kids might not be catching it because 80% of the kids, their vaccine is effective.

K.C. Wilt: Also, again with more vaccines, I go to my doctor and he has things up all the time about recent outbreaks in the area and there was another outbreak of measles. My mom, she had the measles like, 3 times and it wasn’t a big deal in her generation. However, my generation, no one has had the measles. So, we’ve been a little bit more freaked out about them. But, there has been some outbreaks recently and they’ve been attributed to parents that are not vaccinating their kids. How do you feel about it? Is it serious? Is it not serious? What do you think?

Bob Sears: I support and understand measles outbreaks. Every year we have outbreaks. So, there’s no such thing as a recent outbreak. It’s occurring all the time. A couple years ago, we had an increase in the total number of cases in United States and that has happened before where we get a temporarily high, you know, higher level, say, 200 or 300 cases in a given year. Most years, we have about 50 to 100 cases. We have them every year and these outbreaks are very small and isolated. It’s usually anywhere between 5 and 10 kids in any given county. So the outbreaks are very well contained. And so, I don’t consider it very risky to have a child not vaccinated against measles because the chance of your child catching it in a whole county outbreak is very low given that the low numbers of cases that we see. Now, if too many people don’t vaccinate, we could run into a higher problem with measles. But, as it is right now, there has been no sustained increase in measles. The increase we had two years ago has died down again back to really low levels and we have not seen much measles at all this year yet. So, it’s a pretty effective vaccine and we have good vaccination rights with measles at least enough to keep the disease contained and from spreading. And then for whooping cough, you asked me, as you mentioned, whooping cough outbreaks, yeah, in my practice, most cases of whooping cough are in completely unvaccinated kids. I think I rarely see it in a vaccinated child. That’s just my personal experience. It’s always the unvaccinated kids. So, going unvaccinated for whooping cough or measles might play some role in an increase in the disease. But, it’s not a major role.
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K.C. Wilt: What about the chicken pox vaccine? That wasn’t around when we were kids. So we all got the chicken pox. But, if you get the vaccine, would that stop you from getting it as an adult? Do you need to keep getting the booster like, every time it wears out?

Bob Sears: Chicken Pox, yeah, it’s a pretty harmless disease for most cases. It’s fatal in about 1 in 65,000 cases. So, back when everyone was catching it, it used to kill about 50 people a year in the United States. Now that we’ve almost eliminated it, it’s kills between 2 and 5 people every year. Some of these are normal healthy people. Some of these are people with immune problems already. But, it has a potential to kill a perfectly healthy child or an adult in anytime. But, it’s extremely rare that that happens. So, overall I don’t think it’s a dangerous disease to catch. I think it’s okay to catch chicken pox. Now, what the vaccine does, the reason we came out with the vaccine is not so much to save lives because it wasn’t killing that many people but, really to try to eliminate very uncomfortable disease from our population that was causing a lot of missed school, missed work, parents would have to take a week off of work to stay home with her child and then in another week, three weeks later with their next child when they caught it. And so, it’s a really, I think it’s kind of a financial decision to really eliminate the disease that was costing our nation a lot of money. And then, yeah, then we’re saving a few lives along on the way. Now there’s another promise, the vaccine doesn’t last very long. It lasts 10 to 15 years. So whenever you’re getting a chicken pox vaccine, it’s going to wear off by the time you are 15 or 20 and you’re going to susceptible to the disease as an adult.

K.C. Wilt: So, is chicken pox gonna be worse if you got it as an adult rather than a child?

Bob Sears: Yeah, it’s worse if you catch it as an adult. It’s worse with complications. It’s worse with discomfort. The fatality rate is a little bit higher. The problem for people that are catching chicken pox now is yes, you get better immunity, you get much longer immunity and you may never catch the disease again. So, getting the disease definitely is better than the vaccine as far as how long your immunity is going to last. The problem is, what gives you lifetime immunity is repeated exposure to the disease. You catch it when you’re 5, then you’re exposed as a teenager, then you’re exposed as a parent, when your kids catch the disease, you’re exposed when you’re 40, when you’re 60. Periodical exposure keeps boosting you. If this disease is eliminated or at low levels in our population, all these adults who used to, who caught the disease are going to be re-exposed. So, we might loose our immunity. So, you can’t bank on life long immunity from the disease anymore because we’re eradicating it. So, I mean, some of my patients get the vaccine. I’d say, most of them don’t get the vaccine because they don’t fear the disease. You know, my three kids had chicken pox disease and they did fine with it and but, my wife, she didn’t want to purposely give them the disease. She was sort of waiting to see what happened.

K.C. Wilt: The latest trend I’ve been hearing lately is Chicken Pox parties and it’s where parents get their kids together for a play date and 1 child or many has the chicken pox and then they try to expose it to the other kids or there are things like lolly pops or whatever. I mean, is that just crazy that we’re trying to expose our kids to the chicken pox or is it actually like genius because we’re trying to get them exposed to it so that they have immunity rather than a vaccine? What do you think?

Bob Sears: You know, I have patients that ask me that and we didn’t do chicken pox parties for our kids and we weren’t going to do them. Like, my wife, as a mom couldn’t bring herself to purposely inflict a miserable week on our children and so, we’re glad they got it. You know, we were kind of hoping they would get it, they caught it, it’s cool. You know, one kid got at school, he gave it to his brothers and we were like, great, they get it over and they did fine with it. But, parents have to realize that if you don’t vaccinate, you can’t freak out when your kids get exposed to the disease. You almost have to realize I’m willing or almost hoping they catch and then you have to realize you are taking risks of complications.

[00:20:09]

K.C. Wilt: Thanks Dr. Sears, when we come back, we’ll talk about the options parents have when it comes to delaying or refusing vaccines for their children. Plus, you may soon need to sign a waiver from your doctor to have your child go to school if you refuse to recommended vaccines. We’ll be right back.

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K.C. Wilt: Welcome back, we have Dr. Sears joining me in my studio today for a special one-on-one interview talking about his vaccine book which has been recently revised. Before we decide whether or not to give our kids vaccines, we have to know what’s in it. Generally speaking, Dr. Sears, what’s in the shots that we’re giving our children? Should we be concerned about the ingredients?

Bob Sears: Most kids seem to handle vaccines very well and I think there are a lot of strange ingredients and some of them concern me. Most of them don’t but basically, vaccines either have the whole living germ or portions of the germ, or in some cases, just a single sugar or protein from the germ and sometime the protein from the germ is actually artificially manufactured, it’s mimicked. So, it doesn’t actually come from the original germ itself at all. So, there’s a lot of different types of vaccines and the book definitely specifies how each vaccine is made and what portions of the germ are in there. And then, there are some animal tissues, there’s some cows blood, some human products or some animal cells that are all used to grow the germs to nourish the germs, help the germs grow so we have lots of batches of germs to put into the vaccines. And, there are some human embryo cells that are used to make vaccines. So, it sounds unusual when you read the process how these are manufactured but, in the end they are filtered. They are purified and they process it and try to take out anything harmful that might be there from all these animals and human tissues. Then, they add some chemicals, there’s this whole chemical component formaldehyde, there’s some MSG, there’s aluminum, there used to be a lot of mercury. Now, there’s not except for flu vaccines and so there’s a variety of chemicals, have we, you know, researched each chemical to prove they are completely safe? No, we haven’t. Experts feel that these are pretty safe but, there’s no individual research on every little animal and human and chemical ingredient to prove it. So, and it’s worthwhile for parents to educate themselves to know how these are made. I think that should play into how comfortable they would feel with vaccines.

K.C. Wilt: And is it true, this is what I’ve heard which has kind of made me go back and forth of vaccines, especially how people feel about pro-life pro-choice. Is it true that some of them are made with fetuses or feti or whatever the plural of that word is?

Bob Sears: Right, some of these are from babies that were from terminated pregnancies decades ago and they use these fetal cells, fetal cells are very good for medical research and then medical production and so, they use these cells to help to immerse the vaccines. And I know they use them in MMR vaccine, Chicken pox vaccine, Hepatitis A vaccine and you know, I don’t know whether it’s harmful or harmless, I mean, you know, there’s some research that shows when you’re using animal tissues to make vaccines that you can cause auto immune reactions when you are injecting human products into another human and there’s you know, some research out of some very good medical institutions show that can cause some inflammation, some auto immune reactions. Now, those reactions are very rare as far as you know, when we actually see it happen in real life is most babies don’t show these auto immune or inflammatory reactions but, those reactions can occur nonetheless.

K.C. Wilt: Okay so, as parents we want to be so, oh gosh, we want to do the right thing. I mean, that’s why we’re here and that’s why we’re listening to you. Should we or should we not? It’s a constant battle I think, we’re all wrestling with. If we omit vaccines from our kid’s schedule, are we going to negative, impact the public’s health? I mean, are we gonna see polio come back? Are we going to see all these big viruses come back? If we just vaccinate our kids we’ll all be healthy?

Bob Sears: Yeah, I mean, every parent has their way, you know, how much does the public health, you know, disease protections weigh on your minds and how important is that? And, in my experience, most patients only consider their own child’s health in situations when they decide to vaccine, a very few consider the public health. I’m not going to say whether that’s right or wrong. That’s a parent’s individual decision.

[00:25:11]

K.C. Wilt: As there is a question about parents being able to decline vaccines and the governments have been emendating this. So, tell me about it. What’s your take on this debate?

Bob Sears: Yeah, in California where we live in practice, vaccines are optional. I mean, in about 20 states, vaccines are optional. In 28 states, they’re optional or they’re mandatory unless you provide a religious reason. And then, in 2 states, Mississippi and West Virginia, vaccines are mandatory. There are no waivers unless your child has a medical reason. It’s a legal issue. It’s a tough issue, I mean, in my opinion, parents should have the right to not vaccinate. Right, they, it’s a medical decision. They are given the authorization or refusing medical treatment and parents have their right.

K.C. Wilt: So, lets talk about the bill being proposed in California. So, parents who don’t vaccinate their kids, they would need a waiver from their pediatrician for their child to attend school. So, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea. So, why is there a debate? Can you tell me more about it?

Bob Sears: Yeah, it’s AB2109 and it’s just in the initial processes and it hasn’t been approved yet and we’re just starting with it. But, what’s it’s going to do is it’s going to be quite parent to who don’t immunize for children or even if they skip only one vaccine, they’re going to need a doctor’s signature saying that the doctor has provided them with information on the pros and cons of vaccines. Every parent should have a doctor discussion absolutely. I mean, there’s no argument about the importance of having a doctor patient relationship and the fact that you should understand the pros and cons. But, what the bill is requiring is it’s requiring an MD to sign the form and some parents don’t use MDs. Some parents use naturopaths as their health care practitioners or rather alternative or complimentary or we call it integrated health care practitioners. And so, parents who don’t typically use an MD will have to go find an MD to sign the form. My biggest worry is that some doctors don’t feel vaccine should be optional. They feel they should be mandatory and some doctors actually kick patients out of their office if they don’t vaccinate. A fair number of doctors do that and so these families who want to enroll the kids in public school, their doctor is going to refuse to sign their form. So then, they go to another doctor and ask that doctor. Well, that doctor is going to say, “I don’t know you. I’ve never met you before. This is our first meeting. I’m not sure I’m comfortable signing your forms.” So, what is our school system going to do when every year, 10, 20 or 100 kids are trying to enroll but they can’t find a doctor to sign their form? If this bill goes into the law and makes it mandatory that your child will not be allowed in school without an MD’s signature, some kids are going to be able to be enrolled and so there’s this huge problem with this law. But, the kids are required to attend school. There’s this one law but now they’re forced to break another law by not enrolling in school. So, you know, we’re working on fighting this bill. It’s AB2109 and I would like to say, parents, you can go to, there’s an advocacy group that’s really fighting this bill. Parents can go to their website, we may be able to put up a link on your website. It’s https://www.nvicadvocacy.org and you can contact your legislatures in your state and we’re really fighting this because California falls to this bill. The rest of the country could be not far behind.

[Featured Segment: From Our Listeners]

K.C. Wilt: Here is a message from one of our listeners.

Gina Wood: Hi my name is Gina Wood from Moorestown, New Jersey. If my child is sick, should I still get my child vaccinated and what’s too sick to get my child vaccinated? Thank you.

Bob Sears: It’s a very important question because I see a lot of doctors will give babies vaccines even when they’re sick. Now, the official medical word on this is if you’re sick but you don’t have a fever and it’s not a severe illness then it’s okay to vaccinate. Personally, I disagree. I like my patients to be at the peek of health and so even if it’s a cold, I might delay vaccines. Now, there’s a lingering cold that’s been going on for a few weeks and the child, baby has a little left over, minor running nose and an occasional cough, I might vaccinate in that situation. But, I won’t do it at the beginning of the cold. Things can potentially get worse. If you’ve had antibiotics recently, I think you should wait a couple weeks till you’ve been off to antibiotics before you vaccinate. Any sort if illness, you should wait a week or two till you’re, after you’re well. Any intestinal problems, chronic diarrhea, recent any stomach for intestinal infections, you want to delay a couple weeks as well. If your child is at recent allergies, severe allergy outbreak or flair-up, bad skin, you have allergic skin rashes, I don’t like to vaccinate in the midst of that. I like the immune system to be healthy. So, because I think if you vaccinate, it might distract your immune system working as the vaccine so, your illness could get worse or if you have a vaccine reaction and you get a fever or the baby is really fussy, you don’t know if the illness is getting worse or it’s the vaccine reaction. And so, I like to isolate the two as best as I can.

[00:30:56]

Heidi Hi this is Heidi calling from Montreal, Canada. I love the show and I have a question for Dr. Sears. I am going on a trip to Belize and I’ve actually only given my daughter a couple of shots. I’ve given her Dtap and PCBs. So, I’m wondering if there are any other shots that I need to give her if I’m going somewhere like Belize and there might be other trips in the future as well. Thanks so much.

Bob Sears: Yes, a good question, Heidi. Thanks for asking. I get a lot of patients that ask me about travelling with an unvaccinated child or partially vaccinated child. Overall, it’s safe to take any vacation travel that you want anywhere in the world for the most part with an unvaccinated child and not worry because as a tourist, you’re spending a week or two anywhere in the world, you’re very unlikely to come across a disease that your child wasn’t vaccinated against. So, I do think it’s okay as an unvaccinating family to travel, go on vacation anywhere. Now, the one exception I would say would be a polio country. Now, people don’t vacation in polio countries anyway. You’re looking at Pakistan, Afghanistan, certain parts of India, northern India, and one country in Africa I think, I’m blanking, I think it’s Nigeria but, polio exists not in vacation destinations. So, having said that, I think it’s safe to travel anywhere on vacation. Now, if you are going to travel and live somewhere, you’re going to go live with family for a month, you’re going to do some humanitarian or missionary work for a few months, you might come across diseases with your unvaccinated child that could put your child at risk. There could be Polio, there could be Diphtheria, there could be certain forms of meningitis, certain countries have higher rates of measles. So, there is some risks there you need to understand and that’s why in my book, I have a very good section on travel and what all the destinations might be where you might go live or work for a while and so what vaccine information you need to be aware of.

K.C. Wilt: Well, thank you so much Dr. Sears. I’ve really, really appreciated your book, I feel like there’s a lot of haters out there in the world for Dr. Sears and the second you question vaccines, you’re labeled “anti-vaccines” which I don’t feel is necessarily the case with you. I felt like, I got your book and I felt like sometimes I wish you kind of said yes or no, on some of the shots but, it really was just kind of like- down the line-this is the shot, this is the disease it prevents, this is the effects of the shot and here’s your information and now make your choice and I really appreciated that. So, I wanted to say thank you so much for being here with us today, for talking with us and for actually doing the research and finding all those stuff out for parents like me who don’t know which way to turn when it comes to this. So, if you want to learn more about Dr. Sears, simply visit the episode page on our website and look for today’s topic. You can also win a free autographed copy of his latest book so, the vaccine book. Simply visit our Facebook page or the contest page on our website, https://www.parentsavers.com for more information. We also include the vaccine book in our online store so you can go and purchase it there.

[Music]

K.C Wilt: That wraps up today’s episode. If you have a parenting topic you’d like to suggest, we’ll love to hear it. Visit our website, https://www.parentsavers.com and send us an email to the contact link. If you have questions for Dr. Sears about today’s show or the topics we discussed, call our parent savers Hotline at 619-866-4775 and we’ll answer your question in an upcoming episode. Coming up next week, we’ll talk about the Terrible Twos and how you can effectively discipline your child by using their redirecting children’s behavior method. Thanks for listening to Parent Savers, empowering new parents everywhere.

[Disclaimer]

This has been a New Mommy Media production. Information and Material contained in this episode are presented for educational purposes only. Suggestions and opinions expressed in this episode are not necessarily those of New Mommy Media and should not be considered facts. Both information and materials are related to be accurate. It is not intended to replace or substitute for professional, medical and advisor care. And it should not be used for diagnosing or treating house care problems or disease or prescribing any medication. If you have questions or concerns regarding your physical or mental health or the health of your baby, please receive assistance from a qualified health care provider.

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