We believe vaccines are a necessary part of public health intervention to keep our children and adults healthy. Staying informed will help you separate myth from fact and help you make informed decisions about vaccines. The following information is intended to address potential questions from parents.
Immunizations have saved the lives of hundreds of millions of kids worldwide, and are the single most important public health intervention. They protect us against many serious and deadly illnesses like small pox, measles, polio, diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. Over the course of 12 years of intense vaccination campaign by the WHO (world health organization), Small Pox was eradicated. Through continued vaccination efforts, the incidence of many illnesses has decreased by 83% - 100%. We have not had a case of wild virus polio in the United States since 1979 due to the development of the Salk and Sabin vaccines in the 50's.
As a practice, we follow the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for vaccinating our patients. We do not recommend any alternate schedule for vaccination as there is no proven benefit to splitting vaccines. In an effort to keep our patients safe, we strongly recommend that all our patients be vaccinated against all the vaccine-preventable illnesses per the schedule recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. We would like to reassure you that most of the data so far points to no correlation between vaccines and autism.
We hope the following resources will help you in your quest for information pertaining to vaccinating your child.
Books
- Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine and the Search for a Cure by Dr. Paul Offit
- The Saturday Shot by Morgan Thomas
- Do Vaccines Cause That?!: A Guide for Evaluating Vaccine Safety Concerns by Martin G. Myers, MD. and Diego Pineda
- The Pink Book, a comprehensive vaccine guide by the CDC