Book Review

The Vaccine Guide: Risks and Benefits for Children and Adults
by Randall Neustaedter, OMD
Review by Jake Aryeh Marcus

Randall Neustaedter's The Vaccine Guide should be on the short list of books to give to every pregnant woman. Along with breastfeeding and circumcision, vaccination is a crucially important, irreversible decision that must be made prior to, or immediately after, a child's birth. In order to make the decision wisely, parents need to hunt for accurate and unbiased information, as these are topics about which our culture is largely ignorant and reflexive. Many U.S.-born babies will end up artificially fed, circumcised (if they are male), and fully vaccinated without their parents even knowing there was an alternative decision. Parents will do what their parents did, what their friend did, or, most often, what their doctors tell them to do, without engaging in any independent research and without questioning the wisdom or motives of their health care providers.

Article continues below

The beauty of the first edition of The Vaccine Guide was that Neustaedter managed to present this highly controversial topic in an unthreatening and accessible way. The second and larger part of the book was neatly divided into chapters, each of which covered a disease for which a commonly administered vaccine existed. The author explained what the disease was and the risks of acquiring the disease. He then quantified the chance the child would acquire the disease at all, considering the particular child's environment (e.g., a child in Africa, versus a child in the U.S. at home with a family member, versus a U.S. child in day care). He then detailed the risks of giving the child the vaccine. Dr. Neustaedter also reported on an element rarely discussed by your pediatrician or in magazine articles: the chance that the vaccine will actually prevent the child from getting the disease (perhaps the best kept secret concerning vaccines is that some do not work and many do not work well in preventing the targeted disease).

All of Dr. Neustaedter's medical assertions are backed by peer-reviewed studies conducted by researchers from the most prominent medical facilities in the world, as well as by the vaccine manufacturers themselves. Dr. Neustaedter provides parents with all the information they need to make an informed choice about whether or not to vaccinate thier child with a particular vaccine. The door was left open to balance the elements for each vaccine individually. In fact, the subtitle to the first edition was "Making An Informed Choice" and throughout the book, the author's tone is entirely nonjudgmental.

Part 2 of the revised edition is organized the same way. However, in the revised edition, not only has the subtitle changed (it is now, "Risks and Benefits for Children and Adults"), but so have the moderate tone and the lack of obvious bias. Vaccine administration has changed in the six years since the publication of the first edition. Many more vaccines have been added to the school child's entry regime. Many more vaccines are given in combination, thus increasing the risk of toxicity. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) finally banned the use of mercury in vaccines, and several vaccines have been pulled from the market because their dangers could no longer be ignored (at least one - the rotavirus vaccine - because it had been rushed to market without adequate testing and its administration quickly led to horribly unnecessary child deaths). The U.S. military openly and forcibly vaccinates its soldiers with inadequately tested substances and continues to avoid responsibility for the many illnesses these "guinea pigs" now suffer. Perhaps it is because of these events over past six years that in the revised edition of The Vaccine Guide (particularly in Part I in which he explains the history of vaccine manufacture and marketing), Dr. Neustaedter writes with great emotion and more than a hint of rage.

The revised edition is no less authoritative; in fact it contains much more information in part because of explanations of changes in the recent past. For example, in 1996 babies were not threatened with Hepatitis B vaccines (for a largely sexually transmitted disease of adolescence and adulthood); children were free to catch an itchy but largely harmless case of chicken pox from each other, thereby protecting themselves from a serious adult illness; and we were all safe from mandatory anthrax vaccines. In 1996, less research was available regarding the number of "unexplained" neurological disorders in vaccinated children. And in 1996 a child had three vaccines given simultaneously, not six or more. It seems that if Dr. Neustaedter is angrier in 2002, he has every reason to be. And if that has altered the tone of this important book, so be it.

I am sorry that I don't have more copies of this book to give to pregnant women who may be frightened off by criticism of established institutions like pharmaceutical companies, doctors, and hospitals, but The Vaccine Guide is the best book of its kind: well organized, clearly written, comprehensive, and authoritatively documented. Even owners of the first edition should read this revised edition.

Order The Vaccine Guide Now!

Jake Aryeh Marcus is a lawyer, freelance writer and editor, and work-at-home mom to unschooling sons Luca, Nicky, and Aidan. Jake's writing has appeared in The Compleat Mother, The Family Life Journal, and elsewhere. Jake and her family live in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

Sponsors: