I’ve been told that testifying before the California Legislature today, Robert “Dr. Bob” Sears, stated either exactly or words to the effect of, “On behalf of 79,000 children with autism in California schools I strongly oppose this bill”.
No Bob, you don’t speak on behalf of the autistics in California, be they students or adults. You don’t. Never have and never will. You are merely a second rate (to put it nicely) pediatrician who puts children like mine at risk by increasing the chances of outbreaks of infectious diseases. OK, not merely, you also promote faux medicine claiming to treat autism.
You know what keeps me up at night, Bob? The fear of my kid going through a state of constant seizures. You know what can cause that? Infections. The sort that you and I just brush off can cause that. I have no idea what a major disease like measles will do, but it won’t be pretty. There’s only one way for me to find out and that’s an outbreak in California. And, yep, not everyone mounts a response to the measles vaccine. Guess how I will find out for sure if my kid is one for whom the vaccine doesn’t take? That’s right, by an outbreak.
And the same goes for multiple other vaccine preventable diseases.
Your patient imported measles years back, because you encourage parents to avoid vaccinations. You can frame it however you want, about how you are giving parents “choice”, but the truth is you just give out bad advice. It’s one thing for the average internet troll to give out bad advice, but you are supposed to be a physician.
On that topic, I live in California, have family not far from your practice and could, if I chose to, visit your office for consultation and treatment. I never will. Not just is your stance on vaccines dangerous, but your approach to autism is as well. You are just another “defeat autism now” doctor who packages other people’s ideas into a book you can sell. Writing a book and attending conventions like AutismOne where others like you sell their faux medicine doesn’t give you the right to speak for my kid. Or any autistic kid in California.
You speak for yourself–a man who has left reason behind. Don’t claim to speak for my kid. Ever.
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By Matt Carey
Left Brain Right Brain 
“The fear of my kid going through a state of constant seizures. You know what can cause that? Infections.”
Yep, been there, done that. Ambulance trips with a child are no fun. Neither are emergency departments and seeing your kid hooked up to monitors, IV fluids with medication and extra oxygen. I keep wondering if folks who are testifying against that bill are shills for Big Hospital Supply.
I keep asking the fans of Sears, Gordon and Wakefield for citations showing that any vaccine on the American pediatric schedule cause more seizures than the diseases. So far no one has provided those cites.
Add to that what I mentioned elsewhere in this discussion: how many outbreaks have been caused by shedding from vaccines in the U.S.? I can’t think of one. I can think of one outbreak caused by an unvaccinated “Dr. Bob” patient. Dr. Bob is more dangerous to public health than vaccine shedding.
I agree, Matt. Sears and his ilk are responsible for many outbreaks; I used to live close to his practice (sic) and we had a number of students who missed school because of vaccine-preventable diseases.
I have always wondered about these parents who talk about seizures and regression after their kids are vaccinated.What happens months or years down the road when their kids get a wild infection? They never talk about this.This was one reason I spent years commenting at AoA.I had posed this question directly to a number of parents,and never got an answer.If your kid will have seizures or regression from a vaccine,they will have seizures or regression from a wild infection.
What’s more,seizures and autistic regression from infection or fever is not a one time thing.It happens over and over again,for the rest of your life,unless the underlying medical conditions are corrected.This was my life.From the time I was a baby up until the time I was 49 years old,when I had my first tests that found I had serious inborn errors of folate and B12 metabolism.Tests that eventually led to a diagnosis of mitochondrial disease.
I have nearly died more than once in emergency rooms from lack of treatment from metabolic crisis and organ failure,that went unrecognized,because nobody knew about mitochondrial disease back in in the 1970s and 80s.One of the worst,was during an acute bout of pneumonia,as a teenager,that started from a simple case of the flu,and led to my third major autistic regression.
I can only guess the anti-vaxers have been brainwashed by so many stories non existent “toxins”.This is why they can somehow see wild infections as a wonderful thing,and a minor inconvenience.that builds their child’s immunity.My guess is parents who have seen this happen more than once in their kids are now ex anti-vaxers.
Bob Sears is a presumptious pathetic excuse for a physician. How dare he think he can speak for the autistic population of California, the vast majority of who don’t subscribe to his brand of “autism advocacy”. How dare he use autistics as a shield and a stepping stone to endear him to his shitwit fan base. The man is a public health menace and money-grubbing attention-whore masquerading as a paeditrician.
You should go testify Matt, if the opportunity ever arises. You have a very powerful voice. You should also consider writing to the Orange County Register. I grew up exactly where Bob practices, like 2 miles away from his office. I still have many friends there. They need a powerful voice like yours to counter Bob’s nonsense.
I lived (and taught) in that area as well (2000-2002), Kathy. I was gobsmacked by the number of students we had who missed school because of VPD; diseases that I had in the 1960’s that I’d thought were eradicated.
These opinions are largely based on personal experience. You want everyone else vaccinated to protect your child from said disease. I get that. But your letter and response are void from the respect of those parents and individuals who have legitimately been damaged by vaccines or even died. Vaccines are NOT perfect, the package insert says so, government has already funded millions of dollars to those affected by them. Asserting that “Everyone” has to be vaccinated to protect the few with no immune system, selfishly ignores the fact that, some of those will also be negatively affected by the very vaccine you demand. It also is void of the logic that recently vaccinated individuals are at a higher risk of passing along infection than those who are not. Just my thoughts, based on my personal experience. Right, wrong or indifferent, we are all allowed our own opinions… at least… I think we still are. 🙂
You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts – recently vaccinated individuals are “not” at a higher risk of passing along an infection, because we don’t use “live” virus vaccines anymore – the worst that could happen is that someone could get an additional immunity boost by being exposed to vaccine antigens.
Everyone who can, legitimately, get vaccinated should do so – the chances of a serious reaction are so small, as to make it more likely that you will get struck by lightning than suffer one.
On the other hand, the chances of suffering a severe side effect from a vaccine-preventable disease is much, much higher.
It just makes sense, both from a public and private health perspective, that you get (and your children) vaccinated.
Actually, one component of the MMR is live, the measles component. That’s why there’s never been Thimerosal in it, because the ethylmercury in the preservative would have rendered the jab partially ineffective. Having said that, however, that live component is attenuated, which means that the virus has been treated in such a way as to render it incapable of entering the body’s cells, thus making replication impossible.
Titled, “Outbreak of Measles Among Persons With Prior Evidence of Immunity, New York City, 2011,” the groundbreaking study acknowledged that, “Measles may occur in vaccinated individuals, but secondary transmission from such individuals has not been documented.”
In order to find out if measles vaccine compliant individuals are capable of being infected and transmitting the infection to others, they evaluated suspected cases and contacts exposed during a 2011 measles outbreak in NYC. They focused on one patient who had received two doses of measles-containing vaccine and found that,
A twice-vaccinated individual, from a NYC measles outbreak, was found to have transmitted measles to four of her contacts, two of which themselves had received two doses of MMR vaccine and had prior presumably protective measles IgG antibody results.
This phenomenon — the MMR vaccine compliant infecting other MMR vaccine compliant cases – has been ignored by health agencies and the media. This data corroborates the possibility that, during the Disney measles outbreak the previously vaccinated (any of the 18% known to have become infected) may have become infected or already were shedding measles from a vaccine and transmitted measles to both the vaccinated and the non-vaccinated.
Wow you really are ignorant of basic facts. Or you are trying to lie, very badly.
A vaccinated person can catch measles and spread it. It’s called vaccine failure. Vaccines do not work 100% of the time. That is different from a recently vaccinated person spreading the vaccine strain.
The California/Disneyland outbreak was not vaccine strain. So clearly it wasn’t caused by a recently vaccinated person shedding.
Even groups like NVIC (who really don’t care much for sticking to facts) have stopped trying to suggest that the outbreak could be caused by the vaccine strain.
“These opinions are largely based on personal experience. You want everyone else vaccinated to protect your child from said disease.”
If you would read what I write instead of telling me what I think, it would help you from making the mistakes you do. I did not say what you claim I “want”.
I want “Dr. Bob” to stop acting like he is a part of my community. He isn’t. He is an outsider who is not speaking for 79,000 autistic students, he is speaking to tens of thousands of potential customers: the parents of those children.
“Dr. Bob” is entitled to his opinion, and I am entitled to speak out about his mistakes.
If telling a charlatan who sells fake medicine to families of disabled children that he doesn’t speak for my child is “void of respect”, I will be void of respect every day of my life.
No, everyone does not have to be vaccinated to protect the few with compromised immune systems. You should look up the idea of community immunity so you don’t make that obvious mistake again. Demonstrations of clear ignorance do not help your position. Claiming that I am “selfishly” ignoring a fake fact is basically a passive aggressive attack on me and my statement.
As to your assertion that recently vaccinated people pose a greater threat than unvaccinated people: how many outbreaks have been started by recently vaccinated people? Can you name even one? How many outbreaks have been started by unvaccinated patients of Dr. Bob? We know of at least one.
So, Dr. Bob himself is more of a threat than any vaccine shedding in the U.S.. Using data rather than handwavinng arguments.
Shaela: “But your letter and response are void from the respect of those parents and individuals who have legitimately been damaged by vaccines or even died.”
Please provide the verified statistics to support that statement.
“Vaccines are NOT perfect, …”
And the wild pathogens are? Please provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researcher that any vaccine on present American pediatric schedule causes more seizures than the disease.
“… government has already funded millions of dollars to those affected by them.”
Let’s look at those numbers from the NVICP compensation statistics:
Click to access statisticsreport.pdf
The first table shows the data from 2006 to about the present, a total of eight years. The grand total of the first column shows the number of vaccines give from 2006 to 2013, which is 2,236,678,735. That is seven years, so about 319525533 per year, so for eight years it is around 2556204270 vaccine doses. Now look at the total number of compensated claims:, 1,672.
Take note that the majority are settlements, which means there was no real proof the vaccines caused the injury.
Now what is the ratio of numbers of vaccines given versus compensated claims? Is it a big or small number?
“Just my thoughts, based on my personal experience.”
Which I am not interested in. I want you to answer my questions with real citations and do a wee math calculation. I want facts not unsupported opinions.
Shaela if your child was injured from a vaccine and has a medical exemption, I would think that you would be supportive of the pending legislation which eliminates non-medical exemptions…if only to protect your vulnerable child and others who have medical exemptions.
My son was born with a rare genetic disorder which caused multiple and profound physical, intellectual and medical impairment (pancytopenia, including leukopenia http://www.md-health.com/Leukopenia.html We depended on herd immunity to protect him…and parents who did not opt out of vaccines for their children
In addition, Sears’s “remedies” for autism therapy (sic) are ridiculous, costly, and ineffective. “The Autism Book” appears to be written to be a very long advertisement for his supplements, etc. It’s certainly not related to evidence-based science. The UC Davis MIND Institute has done some remarkable research and development concerning the etiology and treatment of autism.
Uh, you are correct that you have a legal right to *hold* a wrong opinion. But firstly, you are not allowed to act on every opinion. if your opinion is that your neighbor’s house is ugly and would be improved by fire, you can think it, you can say it, but you are still bound by laws regarding arson.
Secondly, does holding a wrong opinion make you feel good? If you thought 2+2=5, wouldn’t you be happier after you corrected your understanding and actually knew 2+2=4? Sure, there’s a little embarrassment in the moment of realizing you were wrong at first, but isn’t it better to be right than never be corrected?
@ Shaela: My opinions are based on scientific evidence. I would want my children (if I ever have any) to be vaccinated to protect everyone from devastating diseases, especially those who can’t receive vaccinations due to their age or other factors. That’s how herd immunity works. 🙂
I’m sure there are studies that disprove vaccine shedding,but I don’t want to wade through pages of anti-vaccine articles to find them.Could somebody post some?
Wonderful political cartoon from last year.
http://www.gocomics.com/mikeluckovich/2014/04/25
Share this list.
Six common misconceptions about immunization
http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/initiative/detection/immunization_misconceptions/en/
It is odd that these people do not apply their illogic to other public safety issues. Would they cease to require drivers obey pedestrian right of way laws, allowing it to be a personal choice, even though it puts their children and selves at risk?
Or seatbelts, prohibitions on texting while driving, etc.
Hey, ‘Dr.’ Bob, you know your ‘mild inconvenience’? It killed my friend’s six-month-old son during a febrile convulsion. So please excuse me when I say, “F### you and Andrew Snakefield as well as all your adherents.”