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Home › Articles › General Health › Aluminum in Vaccines

Aluminum in Vaccines

Is This Something to Worry About?

By Lisa A. Goldstein

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What's a Parent to Do?

Dr. Sears expects doctors to choose aluminum-free brands as much as possible, and space out the shots to only give one aluminum vaccine at a time. He also expects vaccine manufacturers to begin looking for alternatives that are safer.

In the meantime, parents shouldn't worry. "It is not true at all that children should be limited to two shots at a time," says Dr. Sean Palfrey, professor of Clinical Pediatrics and Public Health at Boston University. "We give shots on the schedule recommended by the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics in order to protect (not risk) our children as soon as we can to prevent the illnesses that are most likely to be harmful at those ages. The number of 'antigens' we give via vaccines is tiny compared to the number that infants are challenged by normally at those ages through food and air and skin. The diseases we are protecting children against are truly awful – fatal, disfiguring, painful, destructive of brain and lungs and other organs."

It is better to give a child all the shots indicated at that one visit, be it one or six, then to wait and stagger the shots, because the child's body responds better, more effectively, to several shots given at once than individual vaccines given one after another in a daily or weekly series, Dr. Palfrey says. "And doing this is perfectly safe," he says. "We know. We've given 10 million of them and watched the results, scientifically, statistically."

Immunization Information Resources

For more information, check out these helpful links:

American Academy of Pediatrics' Childhood Immunization Support Program
www.cispimmunize.org

CDC's Instant childhood Immunization Scheduler
http://www2a.cdc.gov/nip/kidstuff/newscheduler_le


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