Then what ethical or moral reasons could you possibly have for endorsing vaccinations in any way at all? Knowing what you know about vaccine injuries and deaths?

Susan,
The suggestion that we are motivated by money is absolutely false and defamatory. I have never made a single penny in my work on autism and have spent millions of them researching the work and supporting autism advocacy. Dan has dedicated his career (and taken a massive pay cut) to support our kids. Honestly, if you don't like the content of our book, fine, don't buy it or read it (although how would you possibly know you don't like it if you don't read it?). If you are a fundamentalist who requires that every word ever said about a vaccine must be 100% completely negative, that's fine too. But don't cast false accusations against good people.

Honestly, I'm just sick and tired of people lying about good people doing good work. Andy Wakefield outed Thompson for the money? RFK Jr isn't anti-vaccine enough? Dan Olmsted is into the autism world for the money? What planet do these people live on?!!

Kim said it once and I'll say it again more emphatically. Unless you write a bestseller, BOOK AUTHORS DON'T MAKE MONEY FROM THEIR BOOKS. Publishers make money on "hits" and lose money on most books. The people who think there is some big money train need to have serious dose of reality.

So very sad that people who were once looked up to, have chosen to worship the almighty dollar instead of retaining their integrity. I don't plan on buying the book or reading it. This is where I get my information:

http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/components.htm

and also from here:

http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/package_inserts.htm

I have received and read the book. The discussions at the beginning and end were good, touching on many of the important points we have discussed over the years. I think, though, that the rating scale was a mistake, it seems to depend on the premise that it is possible to give each vaccine an objective risk or benefit rating on a scale of five, for four benefits and four risks, when in reality it is not possible to do this, making any awarding of points largely arbitrary. The pertussis vaccine gets the highest point allocation as of the greatest benefit, even factoring in the negative points of its risk: it got a 3. The disease was rated at 4, as being one of the most dangerous possible. I don't think this is an objective rating: it had become so much milder than it had been even in 1960 that Swedish Dr. Justus Strom said that the vaccine was much more dangerous than the disease, and there was no need to give it to all children, that the disease caused very few cases of death or permanent injury at that time. The book says that giving it to young infants will protect them, and after the first shot, titers should be drawn to see if the rest of the series is necessary. Most sources, however, agree that no protection is given by the first shot, and not much by the second: that in the case of that vaccine, immunity is only built after giving a number of the shots. Butler and Humphries are writing a book now on how it is not possible to protect young infants with vaccines, since their immune system is still so undeveloped (making it dangerous as well as fruitless to give them any vaccines). The disease is very rarely dangerous after three or four months of age, and even in the first months has a fatality rate of only one in 200. The book says that if you delay the shot by even a month you reduce the risk of asthma, as per the Manitoba study (which said you had to delay the first shot by three months to halve asthma risk). Beyond that, children who don't get the pertussis vaccine at all have less than a one percent chance of ever getting asthma. It is very likely that those who never get any shots have zero chance. So the effects of chronic asthma (and the large number of deaths caused by it) should be taken into consideration, but it would be hard to assign the respective risks a numerical value. The (immediate?) side effects of the pertussis vaccine are given a -3 rating, the risk of serious reactions or death a -4. Bearing in mind that in the decades Sweden just didn't give it at all, 60% of children got pertussis, and only an average of one a year died of it, it would seem that giving the disease a 4 on the badness scale is much too high. An average of ten children a year, mostly newborns, die of pertussis in the U.S., nearly all of them from economically deprived backgrounds, and I just don't think that that is enough to make pertussis a fearsome disease, especially since the vaccine, while very dangerous, is so ineffective, protecting less than half of the children who get it. My baby got the DTaP at 2, 4, and 6 months, and still got pertussis at 8 months, and gave it to me. It was alarming and uncomfortable to cough so long without being able to breathe until the fit was over, but not dangerous.

The hep-B vaccine gets a -2 on badness of the side effects, and is a little confusing since the risk of chronic disease or death is a -5. Since it causes vaccine encephalitis with such frequency, that would seem to be a very bad side effect. The rotavirus vaccine gets a -5 for badness of the side effects (intussuception) and a -4 for chronic disease and death, but that seems, again, arbitrary: Rotashield caused, according to a chart given, 100 deaths a year from intussusception, and was withdrawn. Rotarix, when it was approved in 2008, caused 350 deaths in 2009 from intussception. Yes, that's bad, and people should refuse the vaccine, but why would the hep-B vaccine get only a -2 on severity of side effects while rotavirus gets a -5? Vaccines are causing autism now in one in 36 American children (one in 31 Somali children in Minnesota): you have to divide that number up among the hep-B, MMR, flu, and DTaP vaccines, but we're talking about hundreds of thousands a year, and not just because of children getting many vaccines at one visit. Yes, everyone is against the hep-B vax at birth unless the mother is positive for hep-B (another point is that after having been exposed to the virus in the womb, the vaccine and hemoglobin are often completely ineffective in preventing the baby from having a chronic infection). But if you read Judy Converse's When Your Doctor is Wrong: the Hep-B Vaccine and Autism, you'll get a glimpse of how devastating the vaccine is for many thousands, completely dwarfing the negative effects of the rotavirus vaccine. The authors discuss such reactions, including the death of Michael Belkin's baby from it, but it's hard to see how the vaccine gets a relatively mild -2 rating for badness of the vaccine.

As mild as measles, mumps, and rubella nearly always are, and the high fever of measles doesn't in itself make the disease serious, I don't know why measles got a 3 for seriousness of the disease. Meningococcal meningitis also got a 3 for seriousness of the disease, when Dr. Sears called it the most serious of all the vaccine-preventable diseases, causing death in a high percentage of those who get it, like 10-20% (while measles only causes death in less than one in 10,000 cases).

The disease which Gardasil is meant to prevent, cervical cancer, only gets a one in seriousness of the disease, which is, again, hard to understand. I have known or had friends who knew a few women who got and died of cervical cancer, which is often extremely serious, although the vaccine is so dangerous that it certainly deserves the final -8 rating given by the book.

Several alternative vaccine schedules are given at the end of the book: Dr. Sears' is included, as well as his statement that he doesn't think vaccines cause autism except in extremely rare cases (certainly not in the many and increasing number of families in his practice that he has to read his autism talk to, as a result of his vaccine schedule). Dr. Mumper's schedule is given, which delays some vaccines, but eventually gives all of them demanded by schools: DTaP, polio, Hib, Prevnar, and MMR,only excluding chickenpox (which is demanded by most states for school now), hep-A, hep-B (also demanded), and flu vaccines. She says she loves the Hib vaccine, which she says is very safe, despite the fact that, as the book mentions, it causes peanut allergies in one in fifty, a much higher rate than ever got a clinical case of Hib meningitis.

The book says that the smallpox vaccine was very effective and eventually wiped out smallpox, but most modern alternative sources agree with the anti-vaccine movements of the time, that the smallpox vaccine was never effective and killed or actually caused often fatal smallpox in those it was given to, causing epidemics in which hundreds of thousands died.

There is no index or bibliography for easy reference, although the references are said to be available at an outside website.

There is a lot of interesting and valuable information given in the book, but it distresses me that hundreds of the commenters on AoA, describing our children's horrendous vaccine injuries and permanent disability caused by them, would not have avoided these injuries even if we had followed the advice given in this book, which means that the book would not have helped us to make safe vaccination choices for our family, as it says on the cover. Many alternative sources believe that the only vaccine which in most cases is worth the risk involved even with it, is the tetanus vaccine. Hilary Butler mentioned that it seems to cause fewer reactions when given as the dT, rather than the tetanus vaccine alone. Tetanus is a terrible disease, as the book mentions, and I really think parents should begin and end there in their vaccine decisions. It's impossible to know how common the disease would be if no one got the vaccine, since virtually everyone has gotten many tetanus shots in their lives, though not that many got it before the vaccine (a lot of soldiers in the Civil War died of it from all the horses and deep wounds). It is a terrible disease, though usually not fatal with modern medical care, and would be even more treatable if hospitals gave IV vitamin C to treat it (and all other diseases). The vaccine is not 100% effective, but very effective nonetheless, and lasts for at least forty years. It has its risks, which can be minimized now that it is usually made without mercury, or only "trace" amounts.

I enjoyed reading the book, and, again, it gives a lot of valuable information, but I think it would have benefited from a coherent central voice: giving a lot of conflicting opinions from many sources makes it hard for a novice parent to decide what to believe, and, if he decides to try to make decisions based on the numerical scales, I don't think he would have all the important, relevant information he would need to make the best decision.

@Greg,

I really thought long/hard about posting the comment I have, but in the end, I felt I had to.

I think, in part, because I do understand how enormously difficult it is to speak about this issue and not feel that irrestible urge to withhold from speaking the full truth because of the various (but very real) repercussions. It's walking that fine tightrope between wanting to speak up re what you've found out about this issue, and not wanting to piss certain powers that be off because you've decided to speak out.

I was able to speak up for our son because he's my SON. I love him dearly and would willingly die for him, if need be. I loved our two dogs and two cats, too, but for some darned reason I couldn't seem to muster up the courage to tell our vets we we were no longer going to vaccinate them. We didn't for the most part, but I stupidly thought that we HAD to vaccinate our dogs with the rabies vaccine, only to eventually find out, we didn't.

So through sheer laziness and a lack of courage or whatever you want to call it, I allowed our dogs to be vaccinated with a rabies vaccine neither one of them needed and the consequences to that were I helped cause detrimental health to each of them; ultimately, they paid the price with health issues which ultimately killed both of them. And as I've said, I will have to live with that.

I realize we are all - here - on various levels of awareness. We are all awakening to a certain level of awareness that perhaps not all is what we thought it was/is, in this world we live in.

I used to straddle the fence when it came to the issue of vaccines. I used to say I wasn't REALLY anti-vaccine, but was pro-choice, pro informed consent. I still feel that way about pro-choice/consent, but at the same time I have had to really struggle on a moral level to determine what felt right FOR ME when I discuss this vaccine issue with anyone.

I can no longer straddle that fence. The more research I've done on this vaccine issue, the more I realize just what a scam it is. Vaccines are literally destroying the human immune system, on so many levels. Vaccines are a DESTROYER of health. They do NOT confer robust health; they suppress the immune system. This is what I've discovered, but this is not what I knew at the time I allowed our four month son to receive six vaccines at once.

As I've discovered during these past several years, on another level altogether, fear can either TEACH you by helping you overcome it and grow in the process, or it can prevent you from learning what you need to learn.

I've made a vow to myself this New Year that I will never walk in fear again and that I will always be true to my heart, no matter what the cost.

So that's why I wrote that comment. I try to speak from my heart and let people know the mistakes I have made so, hopefully, those reading my words will think about what I've shared with them and they, then, will not make the same mistakes.

Those lovely dogs of ours meant everything to me. They were family. The vaccines they were given, however well meaning their vets were at the time, destroyed their health and ultimately, killed them both. We have a son who also suffered horrendous vaccine reactions and now still experiences residual health issues because of those vaccinations.

That wasn't a coincidence. Someone out there was trying to tell me something...and for a long while, I wasn't listening.

I am now! And I think we're all here, making an impact...a good one for those that are still researching this issue.

Bayareamom, All --

The veterinarian profession has long acknowledged how dangerous their vaccines are, but they mainly succumb to the gigantic profit motive. I will NEVER let my young, happy, trusting dog be given ANY vaccines other than perhaps the uselessly repeated rabies shot (as you brought up, and then only if I have to travel to Canada, Actually, getting a 'forged' rabies certificate is a top priority!).

In fact, many "regular" vets now have only the single-dose vials (without Thimerosal) for rabies shots, just ask or demand.

The human Pediatric World need only educate themselves, if they dare, as have many vets.

I concur with Kathy Blanco on this one. Sorry guys. I just cannot support you re your efforts with this book. There are no safe vaccines. Period.

Veterinarians have for some time acknowledged that vaccines are harming our animal friends. After a bit of haggling with our own vet, we had one of our dogs' blood titered for rabies. When the results came in, we found he (Barkley) had FIFTEEN TIMES THE NUMBER OF ANTIBODIES needed to prove so-called immunity (according to then current medical/vet literature).

I had titers testing done because I wanted to PROVE that our beloved pooch did not need repeated rabies boosters they insisted he have (safe to say I proved my point). When the vet called me with this news, she admitted that perhaps the human as well as the animal populous was being over-vaccinated.

We commenced with a lengthy conversation about vaccines in general and it blew me away as to how much she was willing to admit that vaccines were not the end all be all to health for either animal or human.

After this issue with our dog, I researched the rabies vaccine and found it can indeed cause chronic immune system disorders, including but not limited to, chronic arthritis...which Barkley suffered with. He suffered so much so that he had to have a surgical procedure to have his right hind leg joint replaced. His kidneys ended up failing as well, shortly after this surgery. Barkley should have lived a far longer life than he did and I realize I should have been more zealous in demanding he receive NO MORE VACCINES.

I have had to accept that I, as Barkley's owner, am responsible for what happened to him. I held that dog in my arms, as he trembled with fear, before my husband took him to our vet...for the very last time. They had to put him down; I honestly think that poor dog knew he was never going to see us again. It breaks my heart I wasn't able to be with him when he drew his last breath.

Sound a bit over the top or maudlin? Yeah, perhaps. But I've seen the damage vaccines CAN DO to not only our own son, but to both of our dogs. Our other dog, Oscar, reacted so violently to his rabies vaccine that one of his glands became swollen to the point they weren't able to quell the swelling. The vet explained to me that at that point, they did not know what to do for Oscar and recommended we see a holistic vet in Fremont, for help. This holistic vet took one look at Oscar and said, "You cannot vaccinate this dog any longer! This is a very sick animal."

I've had to live with the horror of what I'd allowed to happen to these two much loved pets. I had been able to take it on the chin when it came to our son, but for some damned reason I couldn't seem to muster enough courage at the time to tell these vets they were not going to vaccinate our dogs any longer. I will live with that guilt forever.

I am being honest (but not disrespectful) when I say how sorrowful I was to hear that you both had written this book.

Quite frankly, seeing this book/advertisement here really strikes a raw nerve. Yes, I believe in informed consent, but I fear that one more child, if not more, may be harmed when any parent reads a book that 'may' encourage vaccination and then ultimately cause that parent's child to become deathly ill and/or die as a result. Even if it's just one vaccine, that can be one vaccine too many for many of these kids (or adults for that matter).

Sorry...had to be said.

I agree with Susan, there is no way in Hades I will ever subject my kids who became very ill, autistic, seizures, mitochondrial damage and vaccinate them EVER again, let alone my progenity, which is already not autistic because they did or will not vaccinate. The politically correct crap has got to stop. There is NO SAFE VACCINE, no SAFE SCHEDULE, no ability to know who will be damaged by vaccines since we do not do pre tests for immune capability, mitochondrial quality or detox capacity. All of this is guinee pigs on a large herd...and the herd immunity joke is a joke. So quit fearmongering that they have ANY value. They do not, will not confer health in the long term. Nor are they efficascious nor are they even in the least bit, good for your body. I say, BS on the book. Sorry, I have to be bold.

"An essential guide for safely vaccinating your children"?? Are you kidding me with this? You're not seriously suggesting this to parents of vaccine-injured children?