Why American Doctors Are Questioning Some Vaccines
Editor’s note
The American media tends to frame the vaccine debate as a black and white issue: rational scientists on the “pro-vaccine” side and irrational parents on the “anti-vaccine” side.
Yet tens of thousands of American doctors are now questioning the necessity, efficacy, and safety of the current childhood vaccination schedule. These are not “anti-vax” physicians. They are science-forward practitioners who are questioning some vaccines. And now that we’re fast-tracking a vaccine against COVID-19, even more doctors are voicing vaccine safety concerns.
Many of the doctors questioning some vaccines are choosing to follow a less aggressive vaccine schedule with their own children.
Some medical doctors forgo all vaccines for their children
Some of these doctors questioning some vaccines have decided, based on their research, their children’s genetic vulnerabilities, and their family’s risk of exposure to infectious disease, to forgo all childhood vaccines.
The most scientific doctors are questioning some vaccines. The question of how and when to vaccinate to optimize children’s health is anything but resolved.
Below is an edited excerpt from a memoir by Adrienne Carmack, M.D., who describes how she started questioning some vaccines and how her thinking about vaccines changed after she had her own children. Dr. Carmack has generously given us permission to reprint her thoughts in a web-edited format.
Why American Doctors Are Questioning Some Vaccines
By Adrienne Carmack, M.D.
The medical profession tells great tales of decades past when people died from, or were disabled by, diseases like polio and smallpox. According to my professors, the invention of vaccines stopped these epidemics.
So I believed that vaccines didn’t cause any diseases or problems and that they definitely saved lives.
I also believed that those who refused vaccines were the very reason these diseases still existed.
But when I entered the “natural” community by choosing a midwife and breastfeeding, I was exposed to medical theories that differed.
During my childbirth classes at the midwifery center, I was surprised when the student teaching the class brought up the subject of vaccines.
She suggested that not getting any vaccines was a reasonable choice.
I initially dismissed her words on vaccines, based on ideas I’d been taught to believe about vaccines—until it came time for my own daughter to be vaccinated.
Listening differently
About a week before she was due for her first shots, I couldn’t stop wondering whether there was some truth in what those speaking out about vaccination shared.
Because I was a mother now, everything had changed.
I listened differently.
I couldn’t ignore the people who talked about how traumatic it was for a baby to get six or seven shots at one time.
Like other mothers, I wanted nothing more than to protect my little baby and keep her safe and happy.
In the “routine” world that I had begun to question, I automatically made an appointment to take my baby to see a pediatrician at the recommended time.
I began doing some hardcore research on vaccines, and I became obsessed with the information I was discovering.
There was vivid evidence on both sides of the vaccine debate. What I found shocked me.
Questioning some vaccines
I had assumed the CDC’s vast research had led to make recommendations that were in our best interests.
I had assumed I could trust them.
The CDC recommends many vaccines today, and many pediatricians require them of their patients.
But after looking at the studies of the efficacy and safety of these vaccines, I learned the evidence did not unequivocally support all recommended vaccines.
The CDC recommended routine vaccination for hepatitis B, a disease that is transmitted through body fluids.
I had received hepatitis B vaccinations as a requirement for entry to medical school. My daughter would not be nursing from any other mother. Yet the doctor recommended this vaccine despite the fact that she had absolutely no risk of getting hepatitis B during infancy.
No longer could I pretend the CDC had our best interests in mind.
I’ve never been one for conspiracy theory. But the evidence that money was the big motivator here was undeniable. The guidelines for nationwide vaccination included situations in which vaccination made no medical sense.
The broad recommendations for vaccines that were not highly effective, incompletely studied before release, or completely irrelevant for a big section of the U.S. population, I concluded, were not appropriate for my family.
A personal choice
I ultimately chose to give my daughter those vaccines I felt were safe. For diseases that truly had the potential to harm her.
When I saw my pediatrician, however, I tried to share with her the information I had learned. My intention was to tell her the logic behind the choices I’d made. But instead of listening, she advised me that if I didn’t give my daughter every single recommended vaccine, she would no longer be our doctor.
To my astonishment, my pediatrician refused to hold any sort of educated discussion with me regarding the science of vaccinations—even knowing that I was a well-researched physician.
She had no interest or even ability to discuss the research with me, as she was just following CDC recommendations.
She was not familiar with, nor did she care about, the research I had found.
I wondered if she’d ever considered verifying the CDC’s recommendations by looking at the research herself.
If she’d been a mother herself would her stance have been different?
I felt certain that she, like too many doctors, was just blindly accepting the recommendations of major organizations without taking responsibility herself.
About Adrienne Carmack
Dr. Adrienne Carmack, M.D., is a board-certified urologist and mother of three, none of whom were circumcised and all of whom were born outside of the hospital and breastfed until age 2 or 3. Dr. Carmack is the author of Reclaiming My Birth Rights: A Mother’s Wisdom Triumphs Over the Harmful Practices of Her Medical Profession. She also wrote The Good Mommy’s Guide to Her Little Boy’s Penis. The above web-friendly article is from Dr. Adrienne Carmack’s book, Reclaiming My Birth Rights: A Mother’s Wisdom Triumphs Over the Harmful Practices of Her Medical Profession. Reprinted with permission from the author.
Are you starting to research vaccines? Do you find yourself questioning some vaccines? If so, you’ll want to read this post.
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Published: December 10, 2015
Last update: April 7, 2021
I did not research or question vaccines until one of my twins passed away after battling leukemia and the other developed fibromyalgia. I had been educated by the medical community–B.S.N. from the University of Michigan. I worked in hospital labor/delivery units and followed the protocols, until the use of piton became so aggressive and the rate of cesarean section was on a steady rise.
I was burned out and I did something that I never imagined doing. I began assisting with home births. My experiences with the home birth community was healing and gave me the strength to stay in nursing. My interaction with home birth physicians and midwives began to open my eyes to questions about vaccines. I discovered a new perspective on health and began researching the immune system as well as vaccines. My two oldest children received all the recommended vaccines. My youngest, born after the death of his brother, did not get every recommended vaccine and has had a better health record. I am pleased that I have been able to have influence on the health of my grandchildren. They have not been given all the vaccines on the schedule.
Can you give a list of vaccines that you gave your child and at what stage of child’s age?
Great article. Good for you for coming forward. IPAK is sending Statements of Concern to 40 major scientific journals, along with a copy of “Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak” and “Vaccine Whistleblower” (both courtesy Skyhorse Publishing). So far we have sent 20 care packages … 20 to go! Please visit ipaknowledge.org for more information and see how you can support this effort.
Hope to hear from you & your readers, thanks!
Thanks for the info!.We need every single physician and healthcare provider possible to get on this bandwagon and start holding Big Pharma and the government accountable! Will check out your site…
Hello,
It is good to hear other physicians who are speaking up against the hegemony of vaccines. Before I “entered” the natural world myself, I pressed parents towards vaccines by showing the scary pictures of different disease. Even then however, I know that parents had the right to choose, so I never kicked families out of my practice. Some of my med school friends did exactly that to others and it was really disappointing to see it happen
Now that I have my own practice in middle Tennessee, I can share what I have learned with parents and help them choose no vaccines, some vaccines, or all vaccines on whatever schedule we can agree on will work. I like to think that our clinic can provide a haven for parents who just love their children and want to do what is best for them.
Hopefully more physicians will stop drinking the vaccine koolaid.
Dr. Eric Potter Med-Peds
Sanctuary Medical Care
I require help as the australian government is trying to force me to vaccinate my children agains my will .
They have never been sick as i offer them healthy food an dier etc an built up there own imune system .
Any advice how i can fight these laws please tellme as i have had vaccinne amnesty before from my Dr as well , an now they denieing that as well
You could become a conscientious objector if you weren’t relying on benefits
I need to write my own story of the day I realized that something was wrong with the way medicine had come to treat vaccinations. I need to tell the story of the day my daughter called me crying from my grandson’s 6 week pediatrician visit.
Because she refused to “catch-up” her six week old son, my grandson, on the HepB vaccine that we refused in the hospital, the pediatrician bullied, harassed, and threatened to have her child taken by child protective services. Now, I hear these kinds of stories from parents all the time.
When did vaccines become an intervention of such unassailable certainty that their followers justify such zealotry and brutish demands for submission? When did simultaneously handing parents 12-14 pages of Vaccine Information Statements (VISs), asking if the parent had “any questions,” while a screaming infant has every limb painfully injected with a stew of ingredients, adjuvants, and incipients never tested for safety, come to constitute informed consent in American medicine?
What’s happening behind the closed exam room doors of pediatrician offices every day in America is intolerable. I’m glad to see so many, especially my physician colleagues, speaking up about the tragic betrayal of the principles we all once pledged to uphold.
We live in the State of NJ where Religious Exemptions are used. My son is entering Pharmacy school and the nurse is asking for titers to vaccines he had as a child until he had a reaction to the DPT and stopped. If I gave a religious exemption why not just accept it and not continue further. Need advice as to what to do. Thank you
Religious exemption should stop there no need for it I live in NJ too had to get tieters for school for externship they wanted me to get flu shot I declined just wore a mask for the entire flu season
Why does “A Mother’s Wisdom Triumphs Over the Harmful Practices of the Medical Profession” cost so much?
Reclaiming My Birth Rights Paperback – June 21, 2014
by Adrienne Carmack MD (Author)
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It’s a great book! I think it’s expensive because it’s hard to get now and temporarily out of print.
I came to the same conclusion independently regarding the HepB vaccine series. As a physician it’s initially difficult to go against that which we are so inculcated. However, when I became a parent things changed. I am going to follow an early 80’s vaccine schedule for my children. It’s amazing to me that the HPV vaccine is pushed to pre-teens rather that abstinence.
Thanks for stopping by and weighing in on this thorny question. I am hoping our country can go back to a more rational, science-forward vaccine schedule. We seem to have reached a tipping point where the synergistic effects of toxic exposures are causing more harm than good.
One day someone is going to answer this question for me without saying “That’s a stupid question – stop asking it”:
“If the germs of sick people are highly dangerous and contagious, then why would anybody visit (much less become) a doctor? On the other hand, if the germs of sick people are not highly dangerous and contagious, then why would anybody want to get any vaccine?
Fantastic story! Thankful to hear more docs questioning the current dogma. Science advances with open dialogue. We have to do better for our kids. God bless.
Thank you for being brave enough to speak out! When my daughter was born, I spent weeks researching vaccines. New parents research formula, cribs, car seats, play pens, bottles, diapers…but why do so few bother to research a product that will be injected right into their newborn’s body? Especially a product that has zero liability? Would a new parent buy a car seat if the box stated: manufacturer cannot be held responsible in cases where this product fails? Unfortunately, parents are too quick to take the word of their doctor, and doctors are too quick to take the CDC at their word. In truth, if you ask a pediatrician to name just two vaccine ingredients, chances are, they won’t be able to.
And despite my research, which included scientific journals, when I refused to get my daughter vaccinated at her first well-baby visit, the doctor treated me like I was an irresponsible, negligent, abusive mother. When I tried showing her the research, her response was “you can’t believe what you read on the internet”. I went through several pediatricians, all of whom refused to even listen to my findings. It’s a sad time, we live in.
I thank you, truly, for speaking out.
In America the pediatricians receive bonus compensation from insurance companies for each child that is fully immunized by the age of 2. The requirements for obtaining the bonus is that 60 percent of their eligible patient population reach that goal. They receive $400 per child that achieves this goal ONLY if the 60 percent goal is reached. This fully explains why the doctor would not be interested in keeping parents in their patient rolls who do not wish to comply with the schedule. Source: Physician Compensation Schedule Blue Cross Blue Shield