As a mother, I sometimes feel overwhelmed with all of the decisions I make as a parent on a daily basis. It is so hard to make the best decisions for your children and you just want them to be happy and healthy. Choosing whether/and how to vaccinate your kids is no easy decision. There is so much biased literature out there and the debate can be very heated. The possible (unproven) risk of autism connected to vaccinating is scary to me. So I chose to read this book because it is written by a well-known doctor, Dr. Sears, and he is neither anti- or pro-vaccination. He describes each vaccine, what it's made of, how it's made, the risks and side effects of it, and much more. He lays out all of the options in a clear, way that any parent could understand. The book also includes 2 alternative vaccination schedules. After reading the book, I have a good idea of which vaccines I want to have administered to my children and when. I now understand which vaccines should not be given together also. This is a book I would recommend to any parent who is struggling with decisions regarding vaccinations. ( )

I haven't read any other books on vaccines, and after reading this one I really don't feel like I need to. Every other vaccine book I had thumbed through was painfully one-sided--either they would say that if you didn't vaccinate your child on the same schedule as everyone else, you were putting the health of everyone else in the country at risk, or they would say that vaccines are always bad and aren't worth it compared to the diseases they protect against. My feelings on the issue were definitely not at those extremes, and this book presented the issue in a much more balanced way than any other vaccine book I've seen.

The author is a doctor, so he definitely has a bias towards vaccines and their use from a public health standpoint, but he's up-front about that. And he recognizes that some parents aren't going to agree with him. Rather than making you feel like a bad parent for making up your own mind, he offers you tools and information so that you can come up with a vaccine decision that's right for your family.

He raises some very good questions about aluminum in our vaccines and whether they're at toxic levels--I hope researchers read this book and start studying the issue soon. He also includes an alternative vaccination schedule so you can spread out the vaccines that contain aluminum. And if you're more on the no-vaccine side of the fence, he includes a very selective vaccination schedule that he feels protects against the most serious diseases for young infants, such as pertussis and some diseases that cause meningitis. ( )