Searching for a Vaccine flexible doctor for newborn

[cedbled]

Hello,
Long time member, but I post very rarely.
Anyway, my wife and I just had our first child a couple weeks ago....

I'm trying to gather info on doctors here in OKC that work with the parents to not be so aggressive on when vaccinations must occur.
I've heard rumors of some that will help the parents eliminate certain vaccines altogether, and puts total control in their hands.

our concerns about just blindly allowing any pre-packaged immunizations are real, especially in light of the recent Whooping Cough outbreak here in OKC.

I live in the NW OKC\Edmond area, and I would definitely appreciate any referrals; we could really use a point in the right direction.
If you feel more comfortable, please inbox me a PM with any info you may have.

Thanks in advance,

[betts]

Um, the recent whooping cough outbreak was related to unimmunized children and adults, not over-immunized children. I hope you are educating yourself by reading the medical literature, not the blogs of the uninformed who disseminate misinformation. There are some wackos out there who have generated a surprising following.

There is no risk of autism from mercury in vaccines. First of all, the mercury has been removed. Secondly, the "doctor" who published that data was shown to be a fraud and falsified his data.

No vaccine is perfectly safe. However, they are all far safer than the diseases they prevent.

I've been a pediatrician for 20+ years. When I trained, we saw so many cases of meningitis that the students would complain that they wanted a new and interesting case and didn't want to have to take "another meningitis". We had cases of septic arthritis, periorbital cellulitis, buccal cellulitis, osteomyelitis from hemophilus influenza. Now we have a vaccine and the incidence of these serious infections has plummeted. The only case of meningitis I've seen recently was a young boy who moved here from Africa and hadn't gotten all his immunizations. The rotavirus vaccine saves countless hospitalization days, not to mention the risk of death from dehydration. Have you ever seen a case of tetanus? I have. An unimmunized boy living outside of Stillwater got a cut. He developed tetanus. We had to paralyze him, sedate him, put him on the ventilator and feed him via hyperalimentation through an IV in one of the major arteries in his neck for four weeks. We woke him up and he still had tetany so we had to put him back to sleep for 2 more weeks. He survived, but he ran up a million dollar hospital bill, I'm sure, and it took months of physical therapy to get him back to where he'd been. Mumps can cause sterility and meningoencephalitis. Measles can kill you and rubella can severely damage unborn babies if their mother contracts the infection during pregnancy. Smallpox has been eradicated due to immunizations. Immunizations have allowed us to move forward as a society in ways only dreamed of several hundred years ago.

Sorry about the soapbox, but I don't want to have to tell you your child has pertussis or meningitis that could have been prevented. I especially don't want to tell you your child has died from a preventable disease. Please make sure you have information from factual, ethical sources before you make your decision.

[Pete]

I highly recommend watching this documentary, as it fairly presents both sides of this issue:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/vaccines/view/

[PennyQuilts]

Betts, I get what you are saying and would certainly vaccinate my kids without much concern because we just have to protect them but I have a question - Twice, I've had dogs come down with serious auto immune problems following a vaccination. The information I've been given, from vets, is that this sometimes happens and there is a connection. Do you ever see that with babies? Again, I'm not talking autism or any of the worries I read about - I just mean a serious auto-immune reaction.

[betts]

Autoimmune reactions are really rare in children and phenomenally rare in infants, when most vaccinations are given. Infants don't have a great immune system, which is why so many of the vaccines have to be given multiple times, but the upside is that you don't get autoimmune reactions. Even vaccines for viruses that are known to cause autoimmune problems aren't really associated with them like the actual virus is. Most of the pediatric autoimmune diseases are a reaction to a virus or unknown stimulus, but I've never known them to be related to vaccinations. We see, rarely, rheumatic fever, Kawasaki's disease, Henoch-Schoenlein purpura, juvenile diabetes and a few others, but most are presumed to have infectious triggers. You can see allergic reactions, especially with egg allergies, but even those are rare in children.

[PennyQuilts]

Autoimmune reactions are really rare in children and phenomenally rare in infants, when most vaccinations are given. Infants don't have a great immune system, which is why so many of the vaccines have to be given multiple times, but the upside is that you don't get autoimmune reactions. Even vaccines for viruses that are known to cause autoimmune problems aren't really associated with them like the actual virus is. Most of the pediatric autoimmune diseases are a reaction to a virus or unknown stimulus, but I've never known them to be related to vaccinations. We see, rarely, rheumatic fever, Kawasaki's disease, Henoch-Schoenlein purpura, juvenile diabetes and a few others, but most are presumed to have infectious triggers. You can see allergic reactions, especially with egg allergies, but even those are rare in children.

So, if I follow, an auto-immune reaction would be more likely in an adult (or a dog) with a fully functioning immune system because they have an immune system to spin up? Sorry to ask such an elementay question, just thinking through this from that angle. And thanks for the info.

[MikeOKC]

Um, the recent whooping cough outbreak was related to unimmunized children and adults, not over-immunized children. I hope you are educating yourself by reading the medical literature, not the blogs of the uninformed who disseminate misinformation. There are some wackos out there who have generated a surprising following.

There is no risk of autism from mercury in vaccines. First of all, the mercury has been removed. Secondly, the "doctor" who published that data was shown to be a fraud and falsified his data.

No vaccine is perfectly safe. However, they are all far safer than the diseases they prevent.

I've been a pediatrician for 20+ years. When I trained, we saw so many cases of meningitis that the students would complain that they wanted a new and interesting case and didn't want to have to take "another meningitis". We had cases of septic arthritis, periorbital cellulitis, buccal cellulitis, osteomyelitis from hemophilus influenza. Now we have a vaccine and the incidence of these serious infections has plummeted. The only case of meningitis I've seen recently was a young boy who moved here from Africa and hadn't gotten all his immunizations. The rotavirus vaccine saves countless hospitalization days, not to mention the risk of death from dehydration. Have you ever seen a case of tetanus? I have. An unimmunized boy living outside of Stillwater got a cut. He developed tetanus. We had to paralyze him, sedate him, put him on the ventilator and feed him via hyperalimentation through an IV in one of the major arteries in his neck for four weeks. We woke him up and he still had tetany so we had to put him back to sleep for 2 more weeks. He survived, but he ran up a million dollar hospital bill, I'm sure, and it took months of physical therapy to get him back to where he'd been. Mumps can cause sterility and meningoencephalitis. Measles can kill you and rubella can severely damage unborn babies if their mother contracts the infection during pregnancy. Smallpox has been eradicated due to immunizations. Immunizations have allowed us to move forward as a society in ways only dreamed of several hundred years ago.

Sorry about the soapbox, but I don't want to have to tell you your child has pertussis or meningitis that could have been prevented. I especially don't want to tell you your child has died from a preventable disease. Please make sure you have information from factual, ethical sources before you make your decision.

You said it very well. It's amazing how many people follow Alex Jones and think vaccines are a part of a conspiracy to kill off world population. It must be very hard for a committed pediatrician, like yourself, to see innocent children having to bear the brunt of bad decisions by parents. Especially about something so basic and horrible diseases so easily prevented. Thanks for speaking up.

[HewenttoJared]

Please vaccinate your children.
http://www.cdc.gov/VACCINEs/vpd-vac/...lor-office.pdf

[HewenttoJared]

So, if I follow, an auto-immune reaction would be more likely in an adult (or a dog) with a fully functioning immune system because they have an immune system to spin up? Sorry to ask such an elementay question, just thinking through this from that angle. And thanks for the info.

Yep

[okc_bel_air]

We use Dr. Kelly Stephens at the Mercy office at Eastern and Memorial for both our boys. He is very good and very honest when it comes to vacs. We have withheld some vacs until it was necessary to give them. We also make sure he gives mercury free shots. He is very understanding over my wife's obsession with the autism link and vacs.

[cedbled]

We use Dr. Kelly Stephens at the Mercy office at Eastern and Memorial for both our boys. He is very good and very honest when it comes to vacs. We have withheld some vacs until it was necessary to give them. We also make sure he gives mercury free shots. He is very understanding over my wife's obsession with the autism link and vacs.

i've heard this name before, lol
He would be very close, do you know if he might still be taking patients?

[Questor]

This kind of stuff is all a numbers game. I guess how I would look at it is like this: if giving a vaccine to my child involves a risk of less than 1% that he will have a serious reaction to it, and it will prevent him from contracting a disease that, if exposed, activates in 50% of people and kills or severely cripples over 90% of them, then I would say that is a very good trade-off in favor of getting the vaccines.

[Questor]

Also I wanted to point out there is no scientifically documented link between autism and vaccines. There was a doctor who suggested it in a publication a few years ago, and it was later found that his study contained manipulated data and that he violated conflict of interest laws that may have driven this. His findings to date have not been repeatable by the scientific community. His medical license was revoked as a result.

So just to clarify, vaccines have been scientifically proven to affect outcomes positively with respect to the diseases they are treating, and there has been no proof whatsoever (to date) that any vaccine has any link to autism. All vaccines have side-affects though, some serious, but in all cases the statics on them are that they are causing much less harm than the immunity they are creating.

[betts]

There are some vaccines that are given earlier than they need to be, because infants are a captive population. Hepatitis B shots can be delayed until pre-adolescence. Hepatitis A can be given a little later. Those are the only two I would withhold from a child or grandchild of mine. Kelly is a reasonable choice but I doubt he will advocate much that's different. No vaccines contain mercury now but mercury has never been demonstrated to cause autism regardless.

[wallbreaker]

I can't even believe this is a discussion...

[okc_bel_air]

My overall impression with Dr. Stephens is he is a great doctor and is very honest and does not sugar coat anything that is wrong with my boys.

As for vaccines, we have given all that are required for their ages. We are holding out on a couple until they are older.