VACCINATION - A GUIDE FOR MAKING PERSONAL CHOICES: vaccination, vaccines, MMR vaccineGreen Health Watch

Vaccination - a guide for making personal choices by Dr Hans-Peter Studer is quite simply the best and most balanced introduction to the thorny issue of vaccination and vaccines we have ever read. And we have read many!

For most vaccinations offered in the UK, the time to decide whether or not to vaccinate your baby has to be taken during the pregnancy or shortly after they are born. Parents are encouraged to give baby a vitamin K injection at birth and then book in for the five-in-one Pediacell jab when baby is between one and two months old. Parents then have just over a year to make the second big decision - whether or not to give baby the controversial three-in-one measles-mumps-rubella MMR triple jab.

Hans-Peter starts by looking at the two interwoven and almost philosophical questions which are the basis of every parent’s decision-making process:

Should I use all the means known to medicine to protect my child from childhood infections? OR Is it better for my child’s long term health to catch childhood infections when a child?
To what extent am I prepared to expose my child to the risk of adverse effects from a given vaccination (e.g. measles) in order to try to reduce the risks of vulnerable people in my community for whom (e.g.) measles could be extremely serious, even fatal (the concept of ‘herd immunity’)?

Hans-Peter then discusses the many factors that need to be considered when answering the above, including:

Are vaccinations the best way of preventing illness?
At what age and how often should vaccinations be given?
How safe are the additives put into vaccines?
Are the true risks of damage from vaccinations known?

Finally, he takes all of the vaccinations recommended under the UK Childhood Vaccination Schedule 2004 one by one. Based on his experience as a doctor and exhaustive research into the findings of many studies, he describes:

the illness, its symptoms and how serious it is, and
which vaccine(s) are used, their effectiveness and side effects

He then gives his own recommendation based on all of the above.

We cannot recommend it highly enough.

Chapters
Vaccination in general
1. An historical overview
2. Unwelcome side effects
3. Vaccinations are not natural infections
4. Disrupting the ecological balance
5. Fundamental questions

Specific vaccinations
6. The UK Childhood Vaccination Schedule
7. Other vaccinations
8. General considerations before immunisations
9. Current UK vaccination schedule

References
Further reading
Index

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