Dr. Mercola
November 14 2009 | 99,745 views
Dr. Larry Palevsky is a board-certified
pediatrician trained at the New York School of
Medicine, and one of the leading physicians in
the country who, from my view, is actually able
to compellingly and convincingly provide sound,
rational, scientific justification as to why you
need to seriously reconsider the wisdom of
choosing vaccines as an option to prevent against most diseases.
The Difference Between What You Learn in School and What Works
Dr. Palevsky says:
“When I went through medical school, I was taught
that vaccines were completely safe and completely
effective, and I had no reason to believe
otherwise. All the information that I was taught
was pretty standard in all the medical schools
and the teachings and scientific literature
throughout the country. I had no reason to disbelieve it.
Over the years, I kept practicing medicine and
using vaccines and thinking that my approach to
vaccines was completely onboard with everything else I was taught.
But more and more, I kept seeing that my
experience of the world, my experience in using
and reading about vaccines, and hearing what
parents were saying about vaccines were very
different from what I was taught in medical school and my residency training.
… and it became clearer to me as I read the
research, listened to more and more parents, and
found other practitioners who also shared the
same concern that vaccines had not been
completely proven safe or even completely
effective, based on the literature that we have today.
… It didn’t appear that the scientific studies
that we were given were actually appropriately
designed to prove and test the safety and efficacy.
It also came to my attention that there were
ingredients in there that were not properly
tested, that the comparison groups were not
appropriately set up, and that conclusions made
about vaccine safety and efficacy just did not
fit the scientific standards that I was trained
to uphold in my medical school training.”
Were Vaccines Really the ‘Savior’ Against Past Diseases?
Conventional medicine teaches that the polio and
the smallpox epidemics went away because of the
vaccines, and that most of the diseases that we
faced in the 20th century in the United States
were brought down because of the power, strength
and the implementation of the vaccine policy.
Meanwhile, there are a significant number of
studies in the medical literature that actually
show there were many other reasons that these infectious diseases went away.
For example, one article published in 2000 in the
Pediatrics Journal describes how, before the
World War II, the majority of the infectious
diseases the US was faced with – such as
diphtheria, tetanus, polio, pertussis, measles,
influenza, parapertussis, tuberculosis and
scarlet fever – were all reduced before World War
II and BEFORE there were antibiotics and
vaccinations available to treat or to vaccinate against these diseases.
The reasons for the reductions in incidence rates
and mortality of these diseases were
predominantly due to the implementation of public
health strategies, including:
Clean water
Better living conditions
Improved sanitation
Improved nutrition
There are many such examples.
Have the Proper Safety Studies Actually Been Done?
So, why is there such a vast difference among
intelligent, scientifically oriented, committed
and objective scientists and physicians about the
safety and efficacy of vaccines?
Dr. Palevsky says:
“I think that if you ask most of my colleagues
where they get their information, they will say
that they read it from the American Academy of
Pediatrics, from the AMA, from the CDC, and in their journals.
But I would like to challenge most of my
colleagues to look through the studies themselves
to actually see if the proper scientific studies
were done using a proper study group and a proper control group.
Were the ingredients in vaccines properly studied?
Is there a difference between being exposed to a
virus, bacteria, heavy metal or toxin through the
air, food, your intestines and your skin, versus
when it’s injected into your body?
Have we really looked at what happens to vaccine
materials once injected into a child? Is an
antibody sufficient to provide protection for a child against disease?
More and more studies are coming out to show that:
The proper studies haven’t been done
Antibodies are not the final way in which your body is protected
There is a difference between how children
process material through air and food versus through injection
There are particles in vaccines that do
accumulate in your body and cause impairments in your immune system
There are particles in the vaccines that get into your brain, and
There are foreign DNA particles that get into your body
For many health professionals it is a shock to
discover that there is such a lack of information
on the safety and efficacy, and a mounting degree
of information that actually raises suspicions
about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines,
and whether or not they have been properly studied.”
What we currently have is a one-sided policy; a
one way of thinking that is impossible to really
allow for the appropriate debate. Science is
truly a field where you ask a question, you find
an answer, and you don’t have the biases or the
influences that change the way an answer or a
conclusion is made. We are not seeing that with vaccines.
On a personal note, I recently received the
Visionary Award at the NVIC conference in
Washington DC. In my acceptance speech, I
basically broke down in tears when I told the
audience how I felt when I came to realize that
by routinely vaccinating thousands of innocent
children at my clinic, I’d probably caused damage
to many of them. It was a very difficult thing
for me to accept intellectually and emotionally.
How a Conventionally Trained Physician Accepts that Vaccines Can Cause Harm
Dr. Palevsky began his investigation in earnest
about 10 years ago because parents came to him
with complaints, worries, and concerns that
something had happened to their children after they were vaccinated.
Interestingly, this is the same way that I became
enlightened about vaccines -- through the concern
of a very patient mother whose family I was
taking care of. She gently persisted in showing
me the evidence and thank God I listened!
Tragically, most doctors are far too arrogant to
even consider that there is any possibility that
there might be something wrong with vaccines.
Most pediatricians are indoctrinated to simply
tell parents that anything related to a bad
outcome from a vaccine is a mere coincidence. But
how come there are so many of these “coincidences”?
Says Palevsky,
“It is heartbreaking, because I see many of these
kids who were developmentally normal, who were
doing well, who were speaking, then whose voices
and eye contacts were lost, who went into
seizures, who developed asthma and allergies, and
they had nowhere to go because they’re doctors
told them that they don’t know what they’re
talking about. These kids are real.
The literature is showing that there are changes
in the immune system of children who are
vaccinated, especially if we vaccinate them
before one year of age or even at one day of age.
The literature is there. It’s good scientific
literature, and it shows that more and more of
these kids who are suffering from chronic illness
are suffering from impairments of their immune system.
Whether vaccines are causative or contributory,
the literature is showing that there is a role
that vaccines are playing in creating the
groundwork for these children’s immune systems to
start to show signs of impairment and destruction.
… When I look at the studies that the American
Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC put out, saying
that there’s no correlation between vaccination
and autism or vaccinations and asthma, I have to
say that the studies just don’t hold up to the scientific standards.
You can’t have 25 children in a study and then
report that this proves that no children who get
autism have any correlation to being injured by
vaccines. This is what the media does: they take
these conclusions, put it right out in front of
the newspapers and say, “Vaccines don’t cause autism.”
When you really look at the studies – and there’s
not a proper control group and there’s only 25
people – you can’t make a grand, generalized
statement about a general population because you’ve studied 25 children.”
The NVIC Set to Create Groundbreaking Vaccine Safety Research
The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC)
just raised $100,000 and continues to look for
donations and sponsors to allow proper safety
studies to be done by independent researchers,
who aren’t going to influence the outcomes.
One study that looked at the health outcomes of
vaccinated versus unvaccinated children does exist.
Published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical
Immunology in April 2005, that looked at the
health outcomes of children who are fully
vaccinated, who are partially vaccinated, and who are not vaccinated at all.
All the investigators asked the parents to do was
to report atopic illness. Atopic illness means
allergies, asthma, eczema, hay fever. The
investigators were blinded, meaning they didn’t
know which category the participants belonged to.
When they assessed the data, they found that the
largest number of reports by parents of children
with atopic illness were in the kids who were
fully vaccinated. The second highest reports were
in the families who are partially vaccinated. And
the lowest number of reports was in the children who were unvaccinated…
The investigators performed a statistical
analysis to see if the data was based on chance
or on real statistical differences, and found
there were statistically significant differences
between these groups. They couldn’t understand
how this was possible, because the generally
accepted consensus is that vaccines are
completely safe, and completely effective.
Based on this initial finding, we clearly need to
do follow-up studies to ask the same question
over and over again; repeat this kind of
investigation with different populations across
different parts of the country, to unearth the truth!
Dr. Palevsky says:
“Certainly, the issue has been raised about the
special interests, the money that’s tied, the
policies, how much money the vaccine
manufacturers stand to make, the doctors who make
decisions on vaccines, and how much money they
stand to make. But we need the science and not this conspiracy theory...
If we just stay with the science, and really
start to address the need for the science, and
look at the fact that there is a lack of science,
we will definitely see that more needs to be done.
We have not done due diligence.”
Are Some Vaccines Safer Than Others?
Many may be surprised by Dr. Palevsky’s answer:
“… in my research of the vaccines, and of the
basic microbiology and virology that we’re
trained to know in our medical training, I cannot
understand how a vaccine with a virus can be safe.”
What most people don’t know is that a virus is not “alive,” per se.
It is simply a piece or strand of either RNA or
DNA. And even of itself, a virus can’t “do” anything.
In addition it is so tiny that it can only be
seen under an electron microscope. It is much
smaller than bacteria, which can only be seen in
the regular microscope. So viruses cannot be
isolated when you make a viral vaccine. All that
can be isolated is the tissue, whether it’s human
tissue or animal tissue that is believed to have
been infected by that specific virus that you’re trying to isolate.
So when a viral culture or a set of cultures are
made including the specific virus, you’re going
to have the DNA of people or animals who were
already infected. Those cells are then taken and
grown on animal cells, whether it's monkey kidney
cells or chicken embryo cells.
When mixed together, these cells will splice and
recombine, which means that DNA from animal cells
are going to mix with DNA from the known infected cells with the virus.
So by definition, a viral vaccine contains
foreign animal and, even possibly, foreign human
DNA. That’s why if you have an egg allergy, you
shouldn’t get certain vaccines because it is
known that there’s going to be egg protein in the vaccine.
So the question is, how safe is it to inject
viral material that is embedded into the DNA of foreign DNA cells?
What studies have been done to actually test
whether foreign DNA is getting into your body;
whether it stays in your DNA; whether it gets
into your brain; and whether there are foreign
animal viruses that are inherently present in animal DNA to begin with?
The Dangers of Adjuvants
Adjuvants are used in vaccines in order to create
a sufficiently strong immunological response.
Adjuvants augment your immunological response.
But there is clear evidence that adjuvants, like
aluminum and squalene impair your immune system.
So while you may be getting the antibodies
desired, you are, at the same time, damaging your
immune system. Particularly in children, this can
set them up to develop chronic illness.
Pushing for Informed Consent
So, does that mean you should never vaccinate against anything?
Dr. Palevsky says:
“That’s something that needs to be left up to the
individual parent. I am truly a proponent of
informed consent, and I’m truly supportive of
families who have done their homework and who
have been able to make the choice.
What is the possible risk of the illness? What is
the possible health outcome if your child gets one of those illnesses?
And how much do you know about those risks versus
how much do you know about the risks of the
vaccines and the health outcomes of what may
happen when children are vaccinated against
single, or even multiple, vaccines?
And when parents are given both sides, it is up
to them to make that informed choice.
It is no longer my role to tell them that they
must do this vaccine but not that vaccine,
because each parent has to make an informed
choice based on their understanding of how
diseases occur or don’t occur, what science we
have available, and whether they feel comfortable
with the devil that they know (the science and
the outcomes of disease) versus the devil that
they don’t know (science and the outcomes of the vaccine).”
What about the Swine Flu Vaccine?
Echoing many other health professionals,
including myself, Dr. Palevsky’s concern is that
there haven’t been sufficient amounts of
scientific investigation to actually be able to
say that the vaccines are safe, or even effective.
He says:
“Now if you read the packaging first of the swine
flu vaccine, it specifically states that the
swine flu or the H1N1 flu vaccine was
manufactured in the same manufacturing process as
the flu vaccine. Therefore since we believe that
the flu vaccine has been sufficiently tested to
be safe, we can then conclude that the H1N1 vaccine is safe.
But the public should know that even though our
authorities are standing there and saying that
the H1N1 vaccine is safe, the proper studies have not been done.
… And it’s unfair to say to parents or to the
public that if you come down with a flu-like
illness, it must be H1N1. In studies that have
been done, people who did get the flu had their
noses swabbed, and they were found to have H1N1.
What’s missing in these data is a population of
healthy people who have not had any flu symptoms
– to actually see if their noses contained H1N1 –
because if someone is sick and has the presence
of an H1N1 virus in the nose, it doesn’t mean
that the H1N1 is causing the illness.
You really have to take an appropriate control
group to see if people are colonized with that
virus even when they’re not sick.
So we don’t have that data; we really don’t know.
I don’t think we can say with good scientific
certainty that people who are getting sick from
the flu and who are being diagnosed with H1N1 are
actually having H1N1 as the cause.”
Other Ways to Protect Yourself Against the Flu
Again, there’s clear evidence in the medical
literature that shows proper hygiene, proper
sleep, proper diet, proper supplementation with
things like vitamin D (making sure that you get
your vitamin D level done first), and perhaps
vitamin C, can actually prevent you from getting the flu.
Many insist that vaccinated individuals “protect”
the unvaccinated against the flu virus – in
essence, reaping the benefit of the protection
they refuse for themselves, while at the same time putting others in danger.
But how does that make sense?
Says Dr. Palevsky:
“How does vaccinating against the flu virus stop
you from carrying the flu virus in your nasal passages?”
And yet, this is what many believe.
The Concept of Herd Immunity – BUSTED!
One of the primary arguments that is being used
to justify this insane behavior is “herd immunity.”
The fact is that vaccination does NOT stop you
from carrying bacteria or viruses in your nose,
in your throat, in your intestines, in your
airway, on your skin, or in your body.
But many do not understand the significance of
this fact, and have been made to believe that if
you’re vaccinated, you won’t carry viruses, and
therefore, others will be protected because you’re vaccinated.
As it turns out, this belief is NOT based on scientific fact.
Dr. Palevsky explains:
“This whole concept of herd immunity is very
interesting, because we were taught that herd
immunity occurs because a certain percentage of a
population gets an active illness. Therefore by a
certain percentage of getting the active illness,
they impart a protection onto the remaining part
of the population that has not gotten the illness yet.
And so the herd that is getting the illness is
shedding the illness and protecting those who have not gotten it.
In vaccine science, we are extrapolating or
concluding that if we vaccinate a certain
percentage of people, we are imparting protection
on those who have not been vaccinated. And that
has NOT been shown to be true, because the true
herd immunity in theory is based on an ACTIVE
DISEASE, and we know that despite what we’re
taught, vaccination does not mimic the natural disease.
So we cannot use the same model of herd immunity
in a natural disease in the vaccination policy.
But unfortunately, we do use it even though it
cannot be used because it doesn’t have scientific backing.
What’s most interesting to me is that the entire
concept of herd immunity fails to acknowledge
that there is a life cycle of the viruses and the
bacteria all on their own, and that what turns
them on and off may have nothing to do with the
percentage of people who have been infected.
All you have to do is look at the SARS outbreak.
That virus that we were supposed to fear didn’t
infect 70 or 80 percent of the population, which
would then impart herd immunity on the 20 or 30
percent that didn’t get the disease.
This is because the virus itself had a life cycle
of its own. And so it came and went without any
percentage of the population being protected.
There wasn’t herd immunity, and yet the virus died out on its own.
We fail to include that viruses have a life
cycle, and that they are in relationship to other
organisms and to us. Something activates them and
something actually stops them, and it has nothing
necessarily to do with the percentage of people
who would have the illness or who have been vaccinated.
… It is preposterous to think that a child who is
vaccinated no longer carries the bacteria or the
viruses that they have been vaccinated against.
If, in fact, children are vaccinated, then why
are parents and public health authorities afraid
that non-vaccinated children are somehow carrying
something that their children are not, when they
should feel comfortable that their children are vaccinated?
You can’t have it both ways.
You can’t vaccinate believing that your children
are protected and then feel that your children
are not protected because somehow, some
non-vaccinated child is carrying some secret
organism that no one else is carrying.
It just doesn’t make any sense.”
The Difference between Natural Immunity and Vaccine-lnduced Immunity
It’s important to understand that the natural
illness has greater influence on the health of your body. Says Dr. Palevsky:
“In medical school, the mentors that I had saw
children in their practices in the 40s, 50s and
all the way up to the 80s getting these flu-like
illnesses who were properly treated with rest,
fluids and proper supplementation.
Those kids had developmental growth spurts after the illnesses were over.
There is something to say for these viral
illnesses that impart a certain boosting of the
immune system of your children. And if we’re not
letting them have these illnesses, what are we
doing to their immune systems? Aren’t we actually
hampering their overall health?”
You need to understand that there’s a significant
difference between natural immunity and vaccination immunity.
When children are born, they develop natural
immunity to hundreds, thousands, millions, and
even trillions of microorganisms that they
breathe in, eat, and touch through their skin.
Their immune systems at the lining of their
airways, at the lining of their intestines, and
on their skin are actively protecting their body from the outside world.
Those immune systems that are intricately and
specifically located in the linings are very
important to create memory and protection to the
organisms that they continue to breathe, eat, and touch.
That immune system response then has a domino
effect on creating other memory and immune
responses that give your body antibodies and protection.
That’s a very important step for how the immune
system matures in our children. From the linings,
the immune system receives information, sends out
signals to all other parts of the immune system,
and creates an immune response, memory, and antibodies.
On the other hand, when you inject materials into
your body, you are bypassing that crucial first
step called the primary line of defense.
With vaccination you are just creating an
antibody. That does NOT impart long-term immunity
because it does not create the kind of memory
that occurs when you breathe it in, eat it, or
are exposed through the skin, and then go through
the course of the natural disease.
Some people will argue that this is why we have nasal spray vaccines.
However, again, you’re making the assumption that
you have not already been exposed to the virus at
some point, and you’re also making the assumption
that exposure automatically leads to infection.
Exposure does not necessarily lead to infection.
A lot of it has to do with the overall status of your immune system.
The Dangers of Combining Vaccines
One issue that is frequently ignored is the
potential harm from the synergy of combinations
of vaccines, which have never been studied.
No one knows whether there’s interaction between
the bacteria and the viruses in the vaccines
administered as part of the childhood vaccination
schedule, or if there is interaction in the trace
thimerosal (which is still in some of the
multi-vials of certain vaccines), or the large
amount of aluminum that is in many of them.
Dr. Palevsky says:
“There is a scientist named Boyd Haley, who has
actually looked into some of the vaccine
ingredients and (1) what happens to nerve cells
when you inject them in the lab to specific
vaccine ingredients, and (2) what happens to the
nerve cells when you keep adding another vaccine ingredient.
He specifically showed that in the presence of
thimerosal, there’s a lot of damage to nerve
cells. When you add aluminum to the thimerosal,
you need less thimerosal to create the damage to
the immune and nerve cells in the presence of aluminum.
Then when you add neomycin – an antibiotic in
some of the vaccines – it potentiates the potency
of nerve cell damage with aluminum and mercury together.
And when you culture the nerve cells and
testosterone, versus estrogen, and you expose
them to some of the vaccine ingredients like
thimerosal, you actually see that the nerve cells
that are exposed to testosterone are more damaged
in greater amounts than the nerve cells that are bathed in estrogen.
That raises some concern because we do see that
children with neurodevelopmental disorders are 4:1, boys to girls.
So you have to question whether testosterone
actually makes children more vulnerable to
exposure to toxins like mercury, aluminum or their combination?
None of these studies have been done in humans.
People say, “We can’t do those studies.” And I
say, “Why not?” They say, “It’s unethical.”
I say, “Well, if it’s unethical to do those
studies on vaccine ingredients and combining them
together, then it’s unethical to give the vaccines in general.”
So we’re missing a lot of important data that we
won’t believe, and we’re also missing a lot of
important data that we won’t accumulate because
most of the studies that are done are by the
manufacturers of the vaccines themselves.”
About Dr. Lawrence B. Palevsky, M.D., F.A.A.P.
Dr. Palevsky is a board certified pediatrician
who utilizes a holistic approach to children’s
wellness and illness. Dr. Palevsky received his
medical degree from the NYU School of Medicine in
1987, completed a three-year pediatric residency
at The Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC in 1990, and
served as a pediatric fellow in the ambulatory
care out-patient department at Bellevue Hospital, NYC, from 1990-1991.
Since 1991, his clinical experience includes
working in pediatric emergency and intensive care
medicine, in-patient and out-patient pediatric
medicine, neonatal intensive care medicine,
newborn and delivery room medicine, and
conventional, holistic and integrative pediatric
private practice at the Center for Health &
Healing- an integrative and complementary care
medical facility affiliated with the Beth Israel
Medical Center in NYC. Dr. Palevsky is a Fellow
of the American Academy of Pediatrics, co-founder
and President of the Holistic Pediatric
Association (
www.hpakids.org) and Past–President
of the American Holistic Medical Association (
www.holisticmedicine.org).
In his current practice in Northport, Long Island
and Manhattan, NYC, Dr. Palevsky offers
consultations and educational programs to
families and practitioners in the areas of
preventive and holistic health; childhood
development; lifestyle changes; nutrition for
adults, infants and children; safe, alternative
treatments for common and difficult to treat
acute and chronic pediatric and adult conditions;
vaccination controversies; mindful parenting; and
rethinking the medical paradigm.
Additionally, he teaches holistic integrative
pediatric & adolescent medicine to parents, and
medical and allied health professionals, both
nationally & internationally, and is available
for speaking engagements worldwide.
For more information or to contact Dr. Palevsky,
please visit
http://www.drpalevsky.com 
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