The Circumcision Debate, Vaccines & Parental Rights | Dr. Bob Sears, MD

Summary

Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Episode: The Circumcision Debate, Vaccines & Parental Rights | Dr. Bob Sears, MD
Date: June 23, 2026
Host: Alex Clark
Guest: Dr. Bob Sears, MD

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Episode Overview

In this highly detailed and wide-ranging episode, host Alex Clark sits down with Dr. Bob Sears—a pediatrician, vaccine educator, and author of "The Vaccine Book"—to dissect hot-button topics including changes in the childhood vaccination schedule, parental rights in medical decision-making, vaccine safety, circumcision trends, and strategies for parents seeking autonomy amidst mainstream medical practices. Dr. Sears brings his signature blend of candor, skepticism about vaccine orthodoxy, and support for parental informed consent, while Alex guides the conversation with pointed audience questions and her own personal reflections.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Changes to the Vaccine Schedule (00:00, 05:26, 05:30)

• Dr. Sears emphasizes the dramatic rise in vaccine doses:
  • “We give over 80 vaccine doses to kids. Back in the late 80s, early 90s, we gave about 24 vaccine doses.” (00:04, 05:30)
  • Many are now grouped into combo shots, leading parents to underestimate total doses.
  • Older generations compare their experiences without realizing today's children face a vastly different schedule:
    “People in their 50s, 60s, 70s… what you’re asking of young people today… [is] nothing like… 30, 40, 50 years ago.” (06:01)

Evaluating Risks and Benefits of Vaccines (04:12, 05:08, 07:47)

• Dr. Sears reflects that, based on his interpretation, kids raised vaccine-free may be healthier:
  • “I feel like your kid is likely to be healthier and safer… happier and have a healthier life with fewer medical problems if you raise them vaccine free.” (05:20)
• He clarifies that most vaccine-targeted infections are now rare or mild—serious harm almost unheard of in his practice:
  • “Guess how many patients I’ve seen harmed by a vaccine targeted infection? Zero. Zero in 30 years.” (08:26)

Are "Cleaner" Vaccines Available? (09:45)

• Dr. Sears debunks the concept of “clean” vaccines at the pediatrician’s office:
  • “There’s no such thing as clean vaccines. You can make some wiser aluminum choices with the brands you buy, but that’s it.” (10:56)
• He explains homeopathic vaccines but does not recommend them due to lack of research.

Do Vaccines Work? (12:11)

• Dr. Sears acknowledges scientific evidence of efficacy (e.g., reducing severity), but emphasizes the difference between symptom prevention and true immunity:
  • “Vaccines work in a certain way, but they’re absolutely not like the godsend that people claim they are.” (13:39)
  • Most do not prevent infection or contagion:
    “Most vaccines don’t stop you from getting infected and becoming contagious and spreading the disease.” (13:52)

Vaccine Safety Trials & Conflicts of Interest (16:04)

• Raises concerns about small-scale safety studies and lack of placebo-controlled trials once FDA approval is granted:
  • “Some vaccines they’ve only studied like 29 babies… The vaccine safety trials are done by the companies that made the vaccine and that should tell you something.” (16:19, 16:57)
• Points to conflicts of interest between regulators and vaccine manufacturers.

Pediatrician Incentives for Vaccination (18:00)

• Insurance companies, Sears claims, offer financial incentives (kickbacks) to pediatricians for vaccinating/delivering catch-up vaccine doses:
  • “There’s a very popular insurance company that incentivizes pediatricians with $2,500 bonus for every kid who falls behind in vaccines and they get them caught up.” (18:21)

Pregnant Women and Vaccines (20:07)

• Increase in recommendations for pregnant women:
  • “The mindset of the medical community is disease prevention first. Health and safety comes second.” (22:04)
• Tdap in every pregnancy is recommended due to waning immunity:
  • “It doesn’t work very well. It doesn’t create very good immunity.” (27:35)
• Admits lack of comprehensive safety data on pregnancy vaccines.

Vaccine Ingredients (29:16)

• Dr. Sears details vaccine ingredients for pregnancy (e.g., mRNA, formaldehyde, aluminum, polyethylene glycol, and even mercury in some flu vaccines).

Vitamin K at Birth (33:40)

• Clarifies it's not a vaccine, but many refer to it that way due to injection.
• Advocates oral vitamin K over injection, though acknowledges there’s no research confirming complete safety:
  • “I feel like giving vitamin K at birth seems like a good idea, but I like to give it by mouth instead of injecting it.” (34:02)

The “Cocooning” Myth (38:04)

• Dr. Sears firmly debunks the strategy of vaccinating family/friends to protect newborns (“cocooning”):
  • “None of those four vaccines… provide any sort of cocoon for the new baby at all. They do nothing.” (39:04)

Guidance for Unvaccinated Families & Daycare (40:18)

• Once cautious about unvaccinated infants in public, Dr. Sears now reassures parents the risks are “acceptably low.”
• Advises practical steps for exposure reduction, like babywearing to limit close contact (41:30).

Vaccine Injury Reporting (43:16)

• VAERS system is complex and underutilized:
  • “The government made the reporting system so complicated for doctors… They don’t want to take the time…” (43:49)

Disease Comebacks & Chickenpox (44:52, 47:09)

• Only some diseases, like measles and chickenpox, might resurge if vaccination drops.
• Endorses chickenpox parties cautiously:
  • “If you can get your kids infected with chickenpox, that’ll provide them with that lifelong immunity.” (47:37)

The Circumcision Debate (55:27–59:20)

• Noting rapid trend reversal, especially on the coasts:
  • “On the west coast...and the east coast...only about 25% of people now circumcise.” (56:12)
• No significant medical benefit; most benefits are cultural or religious.
• Describes circumcision risks and potential reduction in sexual sensitivity:
  • “There’s all risk and no benefit.” (59:20)
  • “The foreskin is incredibly sensitive sexually… you’re cutting this off and kind of preventing extra pleasure that a grown man could experience one day…” (59:37–59:51)
• Recommends non-intervention and stresses “first, do nothing” approach for newborns.

Navigating Medical/Legal Risks, Daycare, and Travel (69:05, 80:04, 82:38)

• Homeschool may be required for unvaccinated children in states like California.
• Not vaccinating is generally insufficient, by itself, to trigger CPS investigations; typically, other concerns must be present.
• No international travel bans exist for the unvaccinated, but parents should weigh risks based on destination and type of trip.

Teenage Vaccines—Risks and Decisions (74:00)

• Against universal HPV (Gardasil) vaccination due to serious, though rare, neurological side effects:
  • “HPV vaccine might create the worst possible neurologic side effects that I’ve seen of any vaccine.” (74:37)
• Hep B and Meningitis vaccine: risks exist but real-world disease risk is low.

Delayed/Alternate Vaccine Schedules & Genetic Susceptibility (86:26–89:15)

• Dr. Sears formerly promoted alternative schedules, but has pulled them, citing continued reactions even with delays.
• MTHFR gene testing exists but does not guarantee reaction-free vaccination.
• If vaccines are given: “If you’re gonna have to do it, at least delay till 4 [years old], probably.” (88:59)

Parental Confidence & Autonomy (90:01–94:38)

• Empowers parents to be assertive with medical professionals:
  • “You are the one making the decisions. You have to make the decisions that you feel like is best for your child.” (90:27)
• If open-minded care is unavailable, explore alternatives like family doctors, naturopaths, or chiropractors, even if not covered by insurance.
• Challenges mindset of being dependent on mainstream insurance-covered providers.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “As a parent, you can find the confidence to have the wisdom that you need… No medical professional is ever going to know your kids as well as you can.” (Dr. Bob Sears, 01:06, 101:12)
• “There’s no such thing as clean vaccines… My vaccines are just as chemical-filled as any other pediatrician’s.” (Dr. Bob Sears, 10:56)
• “To me, this is a case where you’re better leaving nature alone instead of intervening unless it’s very important religiously to you.” (Dr. Bob Sears, 59:20)
• “First, do no harm. I say, with a newborn, first don’t do anything.” (Dr. Bob Sears, 61:08)
• “The vaccine safety trials are done by the companies that made the vaccine and that should tell you something.” (Dr. Bob Sears, 16:57)
• On “cocooning” with vaccines: “It’s a fallacy… There’s zero science that shows that cocoons the baby at all.” (Dr. Bob Sears, 39:04)
• “You're going to get so much better medical care if you are paying for it yourself…” (Dr. Bob Sears, 93:54)

Key Timestamps for Segments

• 00:00 – Vaccine schedule changes since 90s
• 05:30 – Tripling of vaccine doses
• 09:45 – Myth of “clean” vaccines
• 13:39 – Do vaccines work? Dr. Sears’ nuanced take
• 16:04 – How vaccine safety trials are conducted
• 18:00 – Pediatrician kickbacks from insurance companies
• 20:18 – Pregnant women and increasing vaccine pressure
• 29:16 – Pregnancy vaccine ingredients rundown
• 33:40 – Vitamin K debate (oral vs. injection)
• 39:04 – Vaccinating caregivers: the "cocooning" myth
• 47:09 – Chickenpox parties and lifelong immunity
• 55:27–59:20 – Circumcision debate and shifting trends
• 69:05 – Homeschool and vaccine mandates in California
• 74:00 – Gardasil and teenage vaccine risks
• 86:26–89:15 – Delayed schedules and genetic susceptibility
• 90:01–94:38 – How to confidently deny vaccines and find support

Conclusion

Dr. Bob Sears delivers a sweeping critique of mainstream vaccine policy and perinatal interventions, advocates for parental choice, and offers practical, sometimes unconventional, strategies for families wanting to chart a more natural path. This episode is packed with hands-on advice, behind-the-scenes industry claims, and a call to restore confidence, autonomy, and discernment to parenting and healthcare. It is a must-listen (or -read) resource for parents navigating controversial topics with curiosity and caution.

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For more information:

• Dr. Bob Sears’ resources: drbobsears.com, "The Vaccine Book", Vaccine Book Companion Podcast
• Alex Clark’s show: Search “Culture Apothecary” on your podcast platform

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Note: Nothing in this summary is intended as medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional for your personal healthcare decisions.

Transcript

[Alex Clark]

What exactly has changed in the vaccine schedule from the 90s to today?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I mean, it's like night and day. We give over 80 vaccine doses to kids.

Back in the late 80s, early 90s,

we gave about 24 vaccine doses.

When they're two months, four months and six months, they get eight vaccines or

nine vaccines at each of those visits.

[Alex Clark]

What is the most gracious way and confident way to deny a vaccine to your pediatrician?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I don't know why any parent should

feel they are obligated to be gracious about this.

As a parent, you can find the

confidence to have the wisdom that you need to know how to raise your kids. No medical professional is ever going to know your kids as well as you can.

[Alex Clark]

A generation ago, pregnant women were rarely offered vaccines. Today, they're being encouraged to get multiple shots before their baby even takes their first breath. My guest today is Dr. Bob Sears, a pediatrician in Orange County, California, vaccine educator and author of the Vaccine Book. He earned his medical degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine and completed his pediatric residency at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. For decades, he's been one of the most outspoken voices advocating for informed consent, parental choice, and a closer look at the risks and benefits of vaccination, especially during pregnancy and early childhood. Maybe you remember Dr. Sears his first interview on Culture Apothecary. If you missed that one or want to find any of my other vaccine episodes, you can just Google or search Spotify or Apple with Vaccine and Culture Path Care. If you use any keyword, I mean, it could be birth control, Culture Path Care. You will find every episode I've ever done on those topics. This episode is only available on video on the Culture Apothecary, Spotify or you can listen on Apple Podcasts. Unfortunately, YouTube are still tyrants. Share this episode with every pregnant woman you know, pause. Leave a five star review for this episode, which is always highly controversial in the algorithm. Please welcome Dr. Bob Sears for a second time to Culture Apothecary. So excited to have you back on the show. Your first episode that we did was phenomenal. So many people go back to that. I mean, it's a really evergreen episode where we cover all of the basics about vaccines. We'll repeat some of that today for those who I didn't hear that yet, but also we have a lot of new territory to cover today, which I'm excited about.

But we just saw each other at

the Seeking Whole Health conference in Ohio, which a month or two ago. And that conference was so neat because it was a Christian Health and wellness conference. It was so well done.

And it's like in the middle of nowhere, Ohio.

But they had food trucks coming in.

They. They asked the food trucks providing us

food, like, can you only use clean ingredients, no seed oils, change up how you're making the fries and all this. I mean, they went out for attendees. I was so impressed.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yeah.

And it was fun to see your

talks there, to see your. Your dynamic talks. My favorite was your Q and A part where people are asking you questions on the spot. And you.

The answers you gave were just so

hilarious and so entertaining and interesting and personal. And it was just fun. It was fun to sit in the audience.

[Alex Clark]

Well, anytime I do a q and A when I'm being asked to be to speak at something live, I'm always like, now listen, I have to reiterate. I am not a medical professional. I interview the medical professionals. So don't ask me, diagnose your rash or whatever else. Like, I have no idea, you know, so it's funny. People think, like, just ask me anything. And I'm like, listen, I can do my best with the knowledge that I have from the people that I interview on this show, like you. I've learned so much from you and I. And I've read the vaccine book.

You're.

It's called the vaccine book from Dr. Bob Sears. I have that on my bookshelf. I refer to it all the time. If my mom friends ask me questions like, what do you know about this? I'm like, let me see what Dr. Bob says. So, yeah, you are such a great friend of the show. Let's start with this. If a parent asks you if risks outweigh the benefits of vaccines, how do you answer?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Well, it's interesting how I answer in the office.

I'm very open with my patients, and I just put it right out there.

But I never really tell them what they should do.

I don't say you should do this.

The way I like to phrase it is, well, if I was having more kids today, knowing what I know about vaccines, here's what I would do.

And it's a very hypothetical question because we're not having more kids today. I mean, we're done. Our kids are all in their 20s

and older, so it's a hypothetical situation. But I like people to really know, like, what would I do? I don't tell people what I did 20, 30 years ago with my own

kids because that's their own confidential information, I feel like. But I will share.

If I was having kids today, I can see myself raising them vaccine free. I can see the way I look at all the data, the disease risk

versus the vaccine risk. The way I interpret all that information is I feel like your kid is likely to be healthier and safer and

happier and have a healthier life with

fewer medical problems if you raise them vaccine free.

[Alex Clark]

What exactly has changed in the vaccine schedule from the 90s to today?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I mean, it's like night and day. It's more than tripled. Since the late 80s, early 90s, we give about 70. Well, if you include the COVID vaccine, that is sort of optional for kids. Every year now we give over 80 vaccine doses to kids.

Back in the late 80s, early 90s,

we gave about 24 vaccine doses.

And people don't realize what a huge

impact that has on the body today versus way back then.

And that's why I like to tell people, you know, maybe people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, they're like, oh, we

all got the vaccines and look at us, we're fine. Well, first of all, they're not fine.

[Alex Clark]

Yeah, we're not fine.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Right.

But, but no, what we asked people to do in the 70s and 80s, it was like DTP, MMR and polio. You know, that's three of the, of the immunizations, three of the injections we gave way back then. Now, including Covid, there's 13 injections.

We're giving 80 total doses of all those because so many of them are multiple doses.

So that's what I want the older

generation to understand is what you're asking

of the young people today to kind

of like do their part with vaccination. Because it's fine. It's nothing like what, what the medical community asked of them 30, 40, 50 years ago. That's why smart young parents today are reevaluating this.

[Alex Clark]

A lot of parents will hear you say there's over 80 vaccines now on the childhood schedule. And they'll say that's the. That's absolutely not true. I've taken my kid to the pediatrician. Nowhere near 80 vaccines were given to my child.

So what do you say to that?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Right? I say when they're two months, four months and six months, they get eight vaccines or nine vaccines at each of those visits. It might be grouped into now as little as one needle.

They now found a way to put six different vaccines into one needle. It's probably more than that. I think it is six in one needle.

It used to be lots of separate needles. You're right. So it doesn't seem like that many Doses parents might think, oh, my kid got one vaccine. No, you got six in one needle, one in another needle.

Cause there's one they can't figure out how to group together. And then one by mouth and maybe possibly if you're getting a flu shot or a COVID vaccine that day, that's nine.

Nine for babies.

In each one of those little baby

[Alex Clark]

visits, what are the chances that a child contracts an illness that a vaccine was supposed to prevent?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

The chances that they contract an illness is fairly high, but the chance they're gonna be harmed by that illness is microscopically low. It's tiny. The risk of being harmed by infectious disease is so tiny. It's so tiny. In my office of being a pediatrician for 30 years, I might have answered

this on the last time we talked together.

But guess how many patients I've seen

harmed by a vaccine Targeted infection?

[Alex Clark]

How many?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Zero. Zero in 30 years. Now, I've seen infections, of course, but they've all been manageable. The kids all did fine. Yeah. I've had to put a few in

the hospital for IV antibiotics or maybe a little bit of oxygen for their

pneumonia or what have you, but no one was ever seriously sick and they all got through each of these infections without harm. So I think the chance you're gonna catch something that vaccines might have prevented

or influenced or reduced how severe it

is, you're almost guaranteed to catch at least one.

Everyone's going to catch a flu, everyone's going to catch COVID everyone's going to catch rotavirus. You might catch like a cough, runny nose. Sinus infection is one vaccine that can prevent sinus infections, ear infections.

You might catch chickenpox.

In fact, you probably want to catch chickenpox. If you want your lifetime immunity, you're

going to catch those things.

But the better question is, will you be harmed? And the answer really is for almost everybody in our nation, or in any nation across the world or developed nations, with, I should specify with kids who are well nourished, who are well fed, don't have any serious vitamin deficiencies, those kids are going to sail through these infections with very little harm.

[Alex Clark]

So I asked the audience to send in questions for you for this interview. And this one really stood out to me. I thought this was really bizarre. I was like, I've got to ask him this. This mom said, is it possible for pediatricians to make and market cleaner vaccines for their patients? My pediatrician is saying that the vaccines at his office are cleaner.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Right. I get that question all the time.

[Alex Clark]

You do I've never heard this. I was like, you are being scammed, girl.

What is that?

It's made up.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I know, I know, I know.

So the one way pediatricians can make

vaccines cleaner is to buy one brand of dtap, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough vaccine.

There's one brand that has about half

the aluminum than the competitor brand. Okay, so you get half the amount of poison.

[Alex Clark]

Oh, Lord.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Than. Than the competitor. And I say, I mean, I say poison, you know, I don't know in

a. I guess it's not a funny

way, but aluminum is the only difference

that you can make when you're looking across the brands. So what I tell my patients is, no, my vaccines are just as chemical filled as any other pediatricians. There's no such thing as clean vaccines.

You can make some wiser aluminum choices

with the brands you buy, but that's it.

People will ask me, should I come

to your office and get vaccines there if I want vaccines? And I say, well, no, it's not really going to be any different. We're just friendlier about it, you know.

And so, yeah, yeah, people might be referring to homeopathic vaccines.

[Alex Clark]

What's that, of course?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Well, homeopathic vaccines, they're not really vaccines because they don't really give you the

same level of live immunities that regular vaccine would give. But homeopathic vaccines are basically homeopathics that have the tiny, tiny little trace amount

of the germ components in it.

And you take those homeopathic vaccines and

if you follow homeopathy or you trust

homeopathic theory, then those vaccines should give you some natural versions of immunity.

[Alex Clark]

What do you think about that?

Do you give those at your office?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I don't give them at my office because there's no research at all on

homeopathic vaccines showing that they work with a few tiny little exceptions from like 50 years ago. There's no, no recent research on it. So they're probably very safe. But I don't think they give you anything, you know, tangible.

[Alex Clark]

Is there scientific evidence that the vaccines currently on the childhood schedule do work? That they are preventing these illnesses?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Actually, yes, I would say they do work. And I was having this conversation with

somebody I don't know, like 10 years

ago, and I was saying, well, yeah, the chickenpox vaccine, it, you know, it kind of seems to work at least

in reducing the severity of the infection. It might not really stop you from getting infected with the virus if you're exposed, but you probably won't really show display signs of the disease. Right. You might not have much of a

rash, but it seems to do something by giving you some levels of immunity. And she's like, well, I don't understand how you can recommend the chickenpox vaccine. And I said, wait, wait, wait. I don't recommend it. I'm just acknowledging that there's some efficacy there, you know?

But, no, I don't recommend it. I think you're better off catching chickenpox.

So people often, I guess, misinterpret when someone says, well, yeah, vaccines work in some degree. They like, you know, the MMR vaccine gives you some immunity from measles.

The mumps part doesn't work very well,

but it does give you some immunities to rubella. And some of these vaccines work. The whooping cough vaccine reduces probably the

severity of infection in your body, but it doesn't stop you from catching the germ, kind of like I referred to earlier.

So vaccines work in a certain way,

but they're absolutely not like the godsend that people claim they are.

[Alex Clark]

Because why?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Because they don't work nearly as well

as the medical community thinks they do.

[Alex Clark]

How so?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Most of them don't stop you from

getting infected and becoming contagious and spreading the disease to others.

Most vaccines don't work that way. Most of those simply just reduce the severity of infection in you. But the medical community acts as if

every single vaccine does prevent infection and spread.

So they try to play it off

like it's your civic duty to vaccinate.

But the science is very clear about this. Most vaccines don't do that at all. And so it kind of pisses me

off when doctors try to play that card. It's almost like.

I mean, it's almost like it's a religion, right? You've heard this before, A religion of vaccines. Like, they have faith that vaccines work this way. They just don't have the science.

[Alex Clark]

Have you ever watched that guy, Dr. Mike?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Oh, yeah. I was invited to be on his show until I think they looked a little bit more into who I am

and what my messaging is. I think they decided not to give me that platform.

[Alex Clark]

Interesting, I know, but I was super excited.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I was stoked to talk to another doctor. Right.

And have this conversation. And we wouldn't have argued.

We would just have had a great colleague conversation. And I don't know if we would have even debated. I would just say, well, here's scientifically how I feel, and I probably know way more about vaccines than he does because he's a generalist Right. I'm a vaccine specialist because I've devoted

my life to that education.

He hasn't.

So I would have loved to have that conversation.

[Alex Clark]

But yeah, I wonder if we invited him and I was like, hey, I want to moderate a discussion between you and Dr. Bob Sears. I wonder if he would agree I

[Dr. Bob Sears]

should try sometime maybe if he has like rights to say let's not air this because I don't like the outcome.

[Alex Clark]

Well, they don't get that on my show. I don't give that on my show. I say if you're sitting down, get to put it out how it is, how I want it to be. So that's a big thing.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I'm certain if I could have a

two hour conversation with doctors like him or any other doctor and just talk, let's just talk.

The science that we have, the medicine that we know is true based on scientific research. I think I would blow a lot

of those doctors minds because almost everything they believe is based on their faith in vaccines, not the science of vaccines.

[Alex Clark]

What do the safety trials of most vaccines actually look like?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

This floored me when I saw that.

I'll give you some examples. But I mean in general, in some vaccines they've only studied like 29 babies

with the flu vaccine.

When they first approved the flu vaccine

for infancy, 29 babies were given the vaccine.

[Alex Clark]

That's it.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

That's it.

And then the FDA approves it and they do like another phase of study

where they study maybe a few thousand babies to double check to make sure they got it right, I suppose.

But a lot of the vaccines we give were initially studied and approved based on research in 50 kids, 100 kids. Now there's also vaccines they've approved based on research in 30,000 babies, especially newer vaccines. So the bigger one, the newer ones, pretty big studies, but the older ones, very little research. And once a vaccine is approved by the FDA from that point on, you

can't do a placebo controlled safety study because it's approved.

So it's unethical to go back and

do a study on a bigger group where you don't vaccinate a whole bunch because you can't withhold a vaccine that's already FDA approved in a clinical trial.

Does that make sense? They should be able to do it,

but the medical community doesn't. So yeah, the vaccine safety trials are done by the companies that made the vaccine and that should tell you something. And some of the FDA people who

approve these vaccines, well, they work for

the vaccine manufacturers themselves in some cases wow.

That's how these are approved. And so people really can't. And I feel like the Americans and

people nationwide are really waking up to the fact that you can't.

That there's a lot of conflict of

interest in the vaccine safety research.

[Alex Clark]

Do pediatricians get a kickback for vaccinating?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yes, yes, yes.

And I just discovered the most shocking

kickback, that it blew my mind. Cheryl handed me this paper on my desk in the office. She runs the whole office, and she handed me this.

She's like, you're not going to believe

this is going to blow your mind.

There's a company, I'm not going to say the company, but there is a

very popular insurance company for medical insurance

that incentivizes pediatricians with $2,500 bonus for every kid who falls behind in vaccines.

And they get them caught up by the time they're two and a half now.

[Alex Clark]

Why do they have such an interest in that, do you think?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Well, I think you know as well as I do, but I want to

know where this money comes from. You know, insurance companies, I mean, they're

trying to, you know, make every buck they can.

[Alex Clark]

Well, you know, they're denying, like, one out of every four claims. So they've got a lot of extra money, it seems to just be spending on getting your kids vaccinated.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yeah, yeah. So. So this pediatrician, I mean, he or she is making, I mean, for the first three years of providing pediatric care, you. You might make $1000, maybe $1500, maybe

2000 tops by providing care for that family.

The company's then going to give you

another 2,500 on top of that.

If any family that falls behind, if you can get them caught up, and

then you send in the records showing

that you caught them up, I mean, that's tens of thousands, if not hundreds

of thousands of dollars of extra income for a pediatrician.

So that's one company. There are other companies that only incentivize maybe $400 or $250. But I would say nowadays the vast majority of patients who are covered by

medical insurance, that doctor gets an extra incentive for keeping up to date or catching them up if they fall behind way more than they used to.

That's a. That's a big problem for pediatricians because

it's hard to ignore that kind of extra money when it's dangled in front

of you that way.

[Alex Clark]

In the last decade, we have seen astronomical changes with the amount of vaccines that pregnant women are being encouraged to take. Why are pregnant Women being offered more vaccines than ever before.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Well, because the companies can, you know, do their safety research to, to show that they are safe enough to give. And I like to tell the story the way this whole pregnancy and vaccine thing started.

It started, you guessed it, in California, where all great medical decisions begin. Right.

This was actually, I think, the second vaccine.

They started giving flu vaccines to pregnant women like, I don't know, 15 years ago, maybe because they just thought it'd be a great idea.

But then we had a big whooping

cough outbreak in California.

And I tell this story to give

you maybe the mindset of the medical community and how they go about deciding which vaccines to give pregnant women. We had a big whooping cough outbreak and four children passed away from whooping cough in California alone. I think there was about 20 nationwide that year.

But we had four young babies die of whooping cough. And so the CDC didn't come investigate

and step in and say, hey, let's add the whooping cough vaccine for pregnant women so that all these babies can be born with whooping cough protection.

It wasn't the cdc, it wasn't the

fda, it wasn't our government.

It was the California public health department actually took it upon themselves to order all California obs to start giving their

pregnant patients a whooping cough vaccine.

Zero safety data.

Zero.

I'm not talking a small safety study.

I'm saying zero.

The reason they do that, and this is why this is important, the mindset of the medical community is disease prevention first. Health and safety comes second.

To me, that's very sad, especially during pregnancy.

To them, it was such an incredibly

important mission to reduce whooping cough exposure

to both pregnant moms and their newborn babies by giving moms these vaccines so

that babies would be born with a little bit of whooping cough immunity. That was paramount.

They thought, you know, even if it causes harm in their minds, it would still be worth doing. For every little baby we can save

from whooping cough, it's worth essentially causing

potential harm to every, you know, yet

to be born baby. Let's say it does harm some of

those babies, or let's say it causes a little bit of harm in every baby. That's okay because we're saving a few lives in the long run. I mean, you could argue one way or the other who's right or wrong, but that's their mindset.

So that's what they think when they make these decisions.

Disease prevention first, you know, long term

health of the babies exposed all this and maybe the safety of the Vaccines kind of is secondary to them.

Sadly.

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[Alex Clark]

If a pregnant woman denies every single vaccine that's offered to her, what risks is she taking on?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Well, she's taking the risk of normal life. You know, I mean, infection and illness is a normal part of life. So you're risking that you're going to

catch the flu as a pregnant woman. However, the flu vaccine doesn't stop you from getting the flu. It just maybe reduces severity.

It'll protect you from catching rsv.

If you get an RSV vaccine while

you're pregnant, it'll stop you from catching whooping cough. It'll stop you.

What's the fourth one?

Covid.

Giving Covid vaccines to pregnant women, it'll reduce the severity of that.

So it's all about reducing disease severity. So if you deny those vaccines or

decline them, opt out of them.

I almost like to look at it

as not opting in for them.

I feel like the default should be a normal, healthy, natural pregnancy where you

don't do any intervention and then you choose to opt into a medical intervention versus opting out. It's a different mindset.

If you don't choose to opt in

to those four vaccines, you are basically

as a pregnant mom. You might catch one or all four of those infections. It's not gonna harm you.

[Alex Clark]

Could it harm your baby?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

No. Except for that tiny little, like, one

in a million, one in 500,000, like

a very tiny number of pregnant women

every year who catch a flu or who catches whooping cough or Covid will go into premature labor.

[Alex Clark]

Why is TDAP recommended during every pregnancy, even if you've just taken it a couple years ago?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Because it doesn't work very well.

It doesn't create very good immunity. And they want, you know, the TDAP

vaccine you got as a pregnant mom with your first or second baby.

That vaccine isn't going to give your

next babies any immunity. So they want to give you a whole new fresh dose.

Again with very little safety research. They had to do some safety research

to get those second doses approved.

The California Public Health Department got the

first dose approved with no safety research. The CDC jumped on board with no safety research.

Then they did a little bit of

safety research that showed it's probably safe to give it in subsequent pregnancies.

But again, you know, as well, as

I do how good the safety research is, it's not great.

[Alex Clark]

What is the actual data and number of injuries from TDAP on infants for

[Dr. Bob Sears]

pregnant moms getting the vaccine. The data we have.

I don't have that information off the top of my head. It's not something I've memorized. We have VAERS data, we have injuries,

we have reports of stillbirth, premature labor,

or babies being born with certain medical problems. And those have happened after these vaccines have been given. But there's no way to scientifically analyze if the vaccine is related to that.

[Alex Clark]

Got it.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

So that's a big unknown. Right. What actual harm could be done? I think it's more about as a pregnant mom, do you trust your body? Do you trust your health? And the natural approach, the natural wisdom of pregnancy, where we've always told moms,

be careful, be very careful. It goes into your body. And if any mom. Read the ingredients in these four vaccines, if you wanted, I was going to

have a little fun and pull out

these four vaccines in the book and

read the ingredients to the four pregnancy vaccines if you want me to, and see how bad it is.

[Alex Clark]

Why not?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

You want to put all this in your body during pregnancy, but you're so

careful with everything else, right?

Yeah.

[Alex Clark]

Like no Diet Coke or whatever you're doing.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

And you're going to put the most interesting ingredients in your body. So if you get a COVID vaccine

during pregnancy, you're putting the MRNA Covid spike proteins into your body, which is then gonna go into your baby.

You're putting a bunch of lipids, including polyethylene glycol.

[Alex Clark]

Is that not antifreeze?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Essentially, polypropylene glycol.

Poly.

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[Dr. Bob Sears]

Polyethylene glycol is good for you.

[Alex Clark]

Oh, yeah.

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In quotes.

[Alex Clark]

Okay.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Tromethamine, which is a certain kind of chemical. So that's just one vaccine. I mean, we have flu vaccine.

Oh, my gosh.

The flu vaccine chemicals.

[Alex Clark]

Tell us about that.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yeah, I mean, if you're. So this is what you're injecting in your body, you're putting egg proteins in.

So if you're a little bit allergic to egg, you're putting formaldehyde into your body.

With the flu vaccine while you're growing a baby, you're putting octophenol ethoxylate.

Say that five times fast.

Some women are still putting mercury into

the bodies with flu vaccine because some, some brands of mercury. Some brands of flu vaccine still have mercury.

The TDAP vaccine, you're putting more formaldehyde. You're putting aluminum in your body. So these things are not. And then I left one out. Oh, the new RSV vaccine.

[Alex Clark]

Tell us about that.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

So that's a new one. That's a brand new one. That's not even in the book yet.

[Alex Clark]

Isn't this sick?

Let me just tell you guys, for those listening, the vaccine book. Basically, if you don't know anything about the Bob Sears vaccine book, it goes through every single vaccine. And then the like, like what could be the pros? What people see are the pros of these vaccines and then what are the cons? And then the full ingredients list that are all unbiased. And then it says, and if you want my opinion, here's my opinion. And so he goes through every vaccine. It's like the best vaccine encyclopedia book.

Okay?

It's already so freaking thick with every vaccine.

And you're gonna have to keep doing more and more additions because these people keep creating more to pump into our bodies. It's nuts.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Right, Right. Well, that, well, that's what podcasting is for. So I, I had this.

I think it's a brilliant idea.

A couple years ago, I'm gonna just self produce a podcast that is the companion podcast to the book. So if you just check out the vaccine book companion podcast, I've actually recorded an entire chapter on the new RSV vaccine. Perfect for both pregnant women and for the RSV vaccine that they give to new babies.

[Alex Clark]

So give us a few of the hot takes about it.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

A couple things.

The pregnancy vaccine that they just approved for pregnant women, they.

It's a genetically engineered vaccine, so there's

nothing natural about it. They take hamster ovary cells. This company basically figured out how to

propagate hamster ovary cells and multiply them, produce them. So they become great growers of genetically engineered proteins. So they taught these hamster ovaries how

to make RSV viral proteins. And they just pump these out in big vats or big vials or whatever, petri dishes. I don't know how they do it.

And then they filter those out and they put all these RSV genetically engineered proteins into a vaccine solution with some chemicals, preservatives, and that's what they inject into you as a pregnant mom to hopefully protect your yet to be born baby. So when your baby's born, your baby theoretically will have some of that immunity. But it's very. It's so artificial. That's the thing. All this stuff we're injecting, there's nothing natural about it. Part of the vaccine book I think some people have been frustrated is I'm very objective.

Right.

I just give you the information, the pros and cons, I give you some of my opinions, but I don't really

tell you what to do when it comes to pregnancy vaccines. I'm very upfront about it. I think I'm very clear about telling

people what I think they should do

when it comes to pregnancy vaccines.

And if you haven't been clear about

that from this episode, then I think you're not listening.

[Alex Clark]

How necessary is the vitamin K vaccine?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Vitamin K is super interesting. So I think, first of all, I like to clarify it's not a vaccine, it's just a vitamin. People look at it as a vaccine because it's an injection, but it's not doing anything with your immune system, so to speak. So it's not designed to protect you from an infection. So I think, but, but I think

most people refer to it as a vaccine. I think that's how it's most commonly asked to me in my office too.

It is an injection. I feel like giving vitamin K at birth seems like a good idea, but I like to give it by mouth

instead of injecting it.

I think giving it orally is a lot safer and it's still almost just

as effective as getting it by injection.

[Alex Clark]

So what are you doing?

You're telling the mom, like after the baby's born, at the first pediatrician checkup to come see you, and then you give it, or do you give them something so they have it there at birth?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yeah, I tell them anytime I get

to do like a, like a prenatal consult with a family or I'm talking to them before their baby's born, and I will make sure they know this. They have to buy their own vitamin K. And I tell them. This is on my website, too. I tell them what kind to buy, how to dose it. You give it to your baby starting the second or third, maybe fourth day

of baby's life, maybe after mom's milk

has come in and the milk starts flowing around day three, give the baby

vitamin K by mouth.

Then you do it again when the baby's about a week old, you do it again when the baby's about a month old.

And what that benefits you is about 1 in maybe 10,000 babies or maybe

1 in 5,000 babies when they're born,

they don't generate their own vitamin K.

Something about their gut doesn't generate vitamin K for themselves to use, and that

leaves them prone to bleeding problems. So about 1 in 10,000 or so of these babies will develop very severe bleeding problems. And I've seen that happen to two

babies who didn't get any vitamin K.

So when you get vitamin K by mouth, it. I think it eliminates that risk of that. It's a very rare risk to begin with.

[Alex Clark]

Is there risk of taking vitamin K?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

There probably is.

Right.

And Alex, I don't think we really have researched. Is giving vitamin K by mouth safe?

[Alex Clark]

Can you test the baby to see

if they're deficient before you give them anything?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

There's not a good way to do that. There's not an easy test. There's not a clear cut. Yes and no tests you can do. So no.

So the medical community just gives every

baby a vitamin K shot when they're born just to cover every baby's.

But there's very little safety data on that. So I think giving it by mouth is probably safer. But admittedly, we don't even know if

that's for sure safe.

So then parents have to decide, well, do you do nothing and take that

maybe 1 in 10,000 chance that your baby's gonna have some bleeding problems?

[Alex Clark]

Is there anything weird mixed in with that shot?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

With the shot, yes. I mean, it's like a genetically engineered

form of vitamin K. All right, so it's not like. It's not like a. There's nothing natural about it.

I guess some forms have a preservative in it that you don't want to give your babies.

Some forms don't have a preservative, but

for me it's more about you're injecting

something, you're intervening on a newborn.

You're putting something through the skin into

their body that's artificially manufactured.

Maybe it's totally safe.

We just don't know. So I like to first do no harm. So I tell my patients it's okay to skip that shot if you're not comfortable with it, but do the vitamin K by mouth. Then they ask me, well, do we know that's safe? And all metal say, no, we don't

know that's safe either.

But there's that tiny little chance your baby's gonna have bleeding problems.

So you make the decision. I would say the majority of my patients do give the vitamin K by

mouth as a little precaution against bleeding.

[Alex Clark]

What about the preservative free vitamin K, what is that?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I still don't like the shot.

[Alex Clark]

Okay.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I just don't like doing it as a shot.

Okay, but if you're gonna do it,

yeah, do Preservative free. But that's hard to come across because the people in the hospital, they're not gonna know if what they have is preservative free.

[Alex Clark]

New parents are often told, everyone around your baby needs to be vaccinated. It's the safest thing for the baby. So my question is, does vaccinating grandparents and aunts and uncles and siblings and caregivers meaningfully reduce risk to a newborn?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Absolutely not. It does not.

I like to be very clear about that.

The three vaccines that.

Well, actually, now it's four vaccines that

they promote for pregnant moms, grandma, grandpa, you know, little brothers and sisters and mom and dad. They promote these four vaccines for.

For that whole group of people to

achieve what they call the cocooning effect. This was an idea that the obstetrical

community had and the pediatric community had about 15 years ago.

Let's cocoon that newborn baby. Let's protect them from infection by giving every baby, everybody around that baby all

four of those vaccines. Now, they didn't have RSV vaccine yet when they did this, so it started with the three vaccines. Whooping cough, flu, then Covid, and now rsv.

None of those four vaccines prevent infection and prevent you from getting sick and

becoming contagious to those around you.

So none of those vaccines in the cocooning strategy even provide any sort of cocoon for the new baby at all. They do nothing. It doesn't stop mom or dad from catching whooping cough. It doesn't stop grandma from catching RSV

or the flu doesn't stop anyone from

catching COVID So it doesn't do you any good for the new baby. It's a fallacy. But obs, I think out of the goodness of their heart, or they think they're doing a lot of good by advising everyone, get these vaccines and don't let anyone around your baby until they've had those vaccines. Pediatricians are the same way. I hear patients who are new to my office saying, yeah, my pediatrician warned

us before they found out we weren't vaccinating. They warned us, yeah, make sure everyone

around your baby's vaccinated because. Because again, there's zero science that shows that cocoons the baby at all. And there's a lot of science that shows it doesn't. We know it doesn't, but doctors just. They don't get it. They're not willing to open their eyes to the science and realize all four

of those vaccines do nothing to prevent transmission. So there's no medical benefit for promoting them. To our patients. But that's the medical mindset. That's, again, the religion of vaccines. Right? The faith and not the science. Science.

[Alex Clark]

What do you recommend parents do who have kids in daycare?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I used to tell people, essentially, cocoon your young babies not with vaccines. Right. But cocoon them by staying at home a lot. Don't go out too much in public.

You know, don't go to church nurseries,

don't put them in childcare, don't take them to the nursery, at the gym. Be very careful what you do with your unvaccinated baby. Because I think when I first started

writing about vaccines 20 years ago now,

I really thought these babies were at a huge risk of dying from all these infections. So I used to tell people, be

very careful with your baby. I don't tell people that anymore.

I feel like people who are raising a baby without vaccines can feel confident

to live a normal life.

And the infection risk to their baby,

I feel like is acceptably low.

The risk isn't zero.

There's some risk your baby's gonna catch

infections, but I feel like it's acceptably low that you don't have to live

in fear and live like hermits and be afraid to even go anywhere.

What I tell people is, everywhere you go with your baby for the first few months of life, or maybe the

first winter of your baby's life, enter

every scenario with your baby in a

baby carrier on you.

Don't walk into, like, church with your baby in a stroller, pushing ahead through big crowds of people, because everyone's going to descend on your baby and want to touch your baby and get your

hands on your baby and want to hold your baby.

If you walk into church with a baby strapped to your chest, then people respect your personal space. They're not going to reach their hands out and touch because the baby's, like, right here. You know, I think people have some common sense and that sort of provides a little bit of space around you and the baby so that you can have your hand on the baby. You can kind of maneuver around people, and it gives you a chance to talk to people. And if you're talking to someone and they're like.

And they're like, coughing and sniffing, they've

been probably this far away from your baby. You can just turn around and move.

[Alex Clark]

Yeah, yeah, right.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

And just get out of there.

Take it outside.

So enter engagements with a baby on

a carrier, in a carrier, and your

personal space protects baby. And I feel like you can feel

confident to take that baby around in

fact, you can't really easily hand the baby over for people to hold either. It takes a lot to get that

baby out of a carrier.

So you can just say, no, baby's sleeping. No, the baby's nice and happy.

I want to keep him right where he is right now.

And so whereas you go in a

stroller or a car seat, you know, carry him in and set them down on the table in a car seat.

Oh yeah, people are gonna be holding

that baby all day and then the baby's gonna be exposed to a lot of things.

So that's the smart way, I think,

to bring your vaccine free baby into the world and let them live a normal life with you.

[Alex Clark]

If you do choose to vaccinate your child and they become vaccine injured, how do you report it?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Parents can report it themselves through vaers.

You just google or however you search things. Vaccine adverse events reporting system. You make the report yourself.

You can also ask your doctor to report it, but it takes a lot of time. There's a lot of paperwork involved. And I was actually just listening to

another podcast yesterday and they had this great, great point that I never thought about.

The government made the reporting system so complicated for doctors.

They don't want to take the time to report these injuries because what doctor has an hour to sit down and

fill out these forms, you know, in paper.

It used to be in paper, now it's on computer.

But it takes a lot to fill out these forms. So I mean, I've filled them out and because I feel like it's very important to me.

But you can't trust your doctor to do it.

It takes a lot of time so parents can do it themselves. And the more reporting, the more data that are collected, I think the better.

I think it's very important that parents do that.

[Alex Clark]

Is there glyphosate in vaccines?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Not that I've found. It's not listed on any of the ingredients.

I'm trying to think of any of the brand new vaccines.

I feel like though people have analyzed, like analyze vaccine solutions and run them

through mass spectrometers, I think they call them. And maybe it's shown up when they

go investigating it like that, I feel like. But it's not listed anywhere on ingredients.

[Alex Clark]

Will certain diseases come back if people don't vaccinate their children?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yes, yes. Let's talk about what won't come back. Polio is not going to come back. And the reason I can say that

is for what is he 1990?

For the last 35 years, we've been

using a polio vaccine in our country that doesn't stop infection.

It's the injected polio vaccine. It doesn't stop anyone from getting infected with polio. So if you were exposed to polio,

you say you visited somewhere like Pakistan where they still have polio and you

caught polio, you, there's a good chance you would actually your gut would get

infected with polio because your vaccine is not going to stop you from catching it.

The vaccine is going to stop it from invading your body and you having neurologic consequences from polio. So you're not going to get paralyzed,

you're not going to get nerve injured

from polio, but you'll still get infected and pass it or potentially pass it

around to other people.

[Alex Clark]

Obviously I'm not going there anytime soon or ever. Let's just say I wanted to just take a family vacation to Pakistan. Would you say you might want to get the polio vaccine?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Not necessarily. But my point of saying this is everybody in the country has been getting a polio vaccine that doesn't stop transmission or infection.

[Alex Clark]

Got it.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

It just protects you neurologically. We've had zero cases of wild, natural

type of polio, like the disease polio,

zero cases in our country. The last case in our country was 1979.

So do the math real quick. That's like almost 50 years now.

We're going on zero polio while we're

using a vaccine that wouldn't stop it from coming into our country.

So that's why I can say polio won't come back. I don't think rubella is going to come back.

I don't think we're going to see some of the old meningitis has come back that we've eliminated.

What will come back is I think chickenpox would come back, but I would almost argue we that would be a good thing. I think catching chickenpox while you're young

and healthy gives you lifelong immunity. And then you're immune when you're later and having babies. Pregnant moms are immune. Their babies are born immune.

[Alex Clark]

If you choose not to vaccinate your kids for the chickenpox vaccine, do you recommend they go to chickenpox parties?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I would have to say yes if they feel okay about it. My wife and I talked about this

when our kids were young and she

couldn't bring it upon herself to purposely

inflict

itching and fever on her children. We had this conversation, should we get them infected? And she's like, I just can't do that.

As A mom.

So my kids caught it though.

They caught it naturally at school.

But I do feel like, yeah, if you can get your kids infected with chickenpox, that might, that'll provide them with that lifelong immunity. You're taking about a 1 in 80,000

risk that they will suffer a serious complication that could end up fatal.

[Alex Clark]

So what else could come back besides chickenpox?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Measles could come back.

[Alex Clark]

Is that concerning?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

People don't die from measles in modern

countries where children are well fed.

[Alex Clark]

But what about these recent stories?

I thought there were kids that died of measles.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

That is up for debate. What do you mean? There's some interesting information that has come out very recently. The families of the kids who died

of measles in Texas recently. That was like last year.

I mean this is all second, third hand.

So I'm not a firsthand privy to this information.

But what has been reported and published online is some lawyers hired some doctors

to review the medical records of those children who tragically died. And those children died from other infectious complications from other bacteria after they were already done with measles. The measles had already come and gone. They were better from measles and they died from other things. And the hospitals apparently ignored that and then didn't provide them with the right care. I don't know firsthand what's true about this, okay?

But what I know is the chance

of a healthy child dying from measles

who's well nourished is it's probably somewhere

as high as 1 in 80,000 or 1 in 100,000. It's a very tiny number.

When you look at published research, you'll

see numbers as high as 1 in 10,000 cases where kids will die of measles.

If you include kids who are not

well nourished, kids who maybe have vitamin A deficiency or really slim not growing, well, a little undernourished.

If you include them, it's maybe 1

in 10,000 rate of death.

So that's a very small, that's a very small fatality rate for an infection. The media portrays measles as a deadly

infection that's going to kill everyone left and right. That's not played out in our country for many decades now. It's not a fatal infection in a well nourished nation.

So the answer as measles continues to increase is let's feed our children healthy. Let's feed our kids vitamin A foods. Let's give them cod liver oil so

they get supplemented with vitamin A.

If you have Enough vitamin A in your system, you should sail through measles without problems. It's not a cure.

It doesn't stop you from getting measles, but it should make your measles way less severe.

And that's the answer. And because, honestly, fewer and fewer people are comfortable with the measles vaccine, because

it's part of the MMR vaccine, the triple live virus MMR vaccine, because fewer people get that vaccine now, I think,

consequently, we're gonna see more measles. And that doesn't mean that the vaccine

is why we got rid of measles in the first place. I mean, the reason we got rid of measles fatalities is because we all started eating better.

So, I mean, measles is a very complicated discussion.

It probably deserves its own hour alone, and we don't have time for that.

But bottom line is the vaccine is one of the riskier ones.

So people don't trust it as much anymore. People aren't getting it as much anymore.

I don't think we can ignore the likelihood that we're gonna see more measles because of that.

So we can prepare ourselves, like I mentioned, with good nutrition to kind of weather that increase in measles, maybe we'll come out with a safer measles vaccine in the future and people will feel

comfortable with that with it again.

[Alex Clark]

You know what's funny? We used to call sheets bed linens and hospital linens because people understood something that we've kind of forgotten.

Today, fabrics have the power to affect

how we feel and our health. Your skin absorbs chemicals. We spend roughly a third of our lives in bed for seven, eight, sometimes nine hours every night. Our skin, our largest organ, is pressed directly against our sheets while our body is trying to repair, recover, and reduce inflammation from the day. But here's what most people don't realize. Even a lot of expensive organic sheets can still contain synthetic dyes, plastic based polyester threads, pfas, and chemical finishes that stay in contact with your skin night after night. And it's heating up as you're sweating in the night. That's why I was so fascinated when

my friend Hannah Dunning, who you guys know and love, told me about Izomi.

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random sidebar question Just because you're talking about parents waking up to mmr, they're kind of opting out of MMR and different health trends that we're seeing with parents and newborn babies in America. Are you seeing in your practice an increased number of families who are opting to not circumcise their baby boys?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yeah.

[Alex Clark]

Do you think that we're going to see trends change in America where less boys are circumcised?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Oh, yes. We've already seen that trend. And I've actually, my wife and I did some research on this because we

wanted to be able to counsel our patients on this as well.

The data they've collected over the last

30 years has shown now on the

west coast of the U.S. and the

East coast of the U.S. so the two, you know, the two sides, only about 25 of people now circumcised.

[Alex Clark]

I knew it.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

People born today.

[Alex Clark]

I've been telling, so I've been trying to tell people this, but you know, I'm a Midwest girl, so I grew up in Indiana. When I try to tell people I grew up with this, I'm like, it's coming. Like it's going to be very, you're, your kid is going to stick out if they are circumcised. Like, we're seeing this trend. It's going to change and it's going to become like really shocking if you do that. I think culturally people are coming around to how unnecessary it is in the United States before it was seen as like gross or whatever. I mean, we're one of the only countries in the world that is still doing this. I mean, besides Muslim countries. Right, right. So it's just I feel like the tides are really turning on this and people are kind of waking up and shifting their mindset on it.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yeah, no, they're very much shifting. That's interesting. In the Midwest, 75% of people are still circumcising in the middle of our country, like the trend is still there.

[Alex Clark]

And that's where trends always go. If you think of fashion trends, beauty trends, it's always usually west coast sweeps through, you know, and then Midwest is last. So it's interesting.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yeah. But no, this is a very important topic. I know it's not nothing to do with vaccines, but it's a very important newborn topic. And that's why I really actually made

a point to really stress this in some of my prenatal education on my website that I offer people.

I think I, I think I have like a 12 minute video on circum alone because I want people to know the main reason people do it is religious for Jewish people and Muslims is a very important religious issue for them. But there's no medical benefit or there's

no large medical benefit from the people

[Alex Clark]

that are not kind of on board with this yet. They're going to say, how can you say there's no medical benefit? We have people in nursing homes that get infections or like, we don't know how to take care of it and clean it. Isn't it a hygiene issue?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Because we don't know how to take care of it.

[Alex Clark]

Yeah, that's what I said. I said it's education, It's a cultural education piece. If we start educating Americans on how to take care of their uncircumcised baby boys, you're not going to have this problem, right?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Absolutely.

So, yeah. So that trend, I've actually been way

more proactive with my patients in recommending they don't circumcise.

[Alex Clark]

Why?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Well, I used to stay neutral about it and just say, oh, you know, here's the pros and cons. Kind of like I used to be with vaccines, but now that I, now that I'm aware there's no significant medical benefit and there's potential harm, you know, something could go wrong. You could. You know, the thing that I see most go wrong with circumcisions is the swelling afterwards.

During the healing process, some people swell

up very significantly and then they're left

with actually sometimes more foreskin than when they started because that swelling doesn't go away. And it can lead to some, you know, disfigurement too.

So if it's not done right or if it doesn't heal right, something can go wrong. So sometimes to me, this is a case where you're better leaving nature alone instead of intervening unless it's very important religiously to you because you're not getting a medical benefit.

There's all risk and no benefit.

[Alex Clark]

Is this true or not? I've heard that the foreskin is incredibly sensitive sexually, that you're cutting this off and kind of preventing extra pleasure that a grown man could experience one day by removing that.

That.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yes. Oh, yeah, that's very true.

Yeah.

[Alex Clark]

Because it would almost be like if you were going to remove the clitoris of a little girl. But see, you have men that are like, well, that's. Obviously, I enjoy sex and I have no problem. So I don't know how you could say that. It's like, it could be better than this or whatever, but it. It actually could.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Well, yeah, yeah, that. That's what I've been told. And I feel like, yeah, I. I imagine that's true. I mean, I grew up in the time where everyone was circumcised.

Right.

But I. I've heard, I think a lot of older men who are circumcised really wish they hadn't been.

And people who are not circumcised, they say that, yeah, they feel like the enjoyment of sexual pleasure is probably way heightened because of all the nerve endings.

[Alex Clark]

This is stuff like just most people have never heard.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Right.

And so I think, parents, you have to stop and think about everything you're

doing with your newborn baby.

And you gotta ask, why? Like, is there a reason for this? I mean, there's. You know the saying in medicine, first do no harm. I say, with a newborn, first, don't do anything. First, do nothing. You have that baby, the baby comes out, the baby's born, do nothing. Don't give the vitamin K shot, don't give the antibiotic eye ointment. Don't take the baby away from mom's

chest and do all kinds of medical procedures.

Leave the baby and mom together and just do nothing. And then you gotta decide, well, do we want to remove the foreskin? Well, why would we remove the foreskin?

[Alex Clark]

I also don't.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Do you want to give vaccines?

Well, why do we give this vaccines?

You have to stop and think about everything before you say okay. And I feel like you're almost better

off saying no to almost everything.

[Alex Clark]

Well, then you have, you know, families that have multiple children. Maybe they have older sons now they're having a new baby boy. And they're like, well, I can't have. Wouldn't that be weird for him to have, you know, a different situation than his older siblings? And I'm just thinking, like, I mean, can't you just explain. When you know better, you do better.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yes.

[Alex Clark]

We just changed Our mind. I mean, because it's the same with. You have families that your oldest child is fully vaccinated, and then by the time you have your fourth kid, it's like, we're not doing any vaccines. Are you gonna. Now that you know what you know about vaccines, are you gonna say, sorry, honey, we gotta fully vaccinate you because your older sister is fully vaccine. Like, I don't think that that's true. Or, you know, people say, well, they have to match their dad or whatever again, it's like, you know, if my mom was genitally. Genitally mutilated, I don't want that done to me just because it was done to my mom. You know, I don't know. And that's an extreme way of phrasing it. That's my phrase, not Dr. Bob's.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

But yeah, no but. And I think that's important for dads

to understand out there, because I hear

so many dads say to me in the office, well, I don't think I really care whether he's circumcised or not. It's not that important. But I really want him to look just like me. So we're probably just going to go ahead and do it just for that reason. And I say no. I say, your kid is not going to care whether or not they look like you. They're not going to even notice that anyway.

They notice the hair.

Like, gosh, dad has all this hair and I don't have any of this hair.

That's what they notice. They're not noticing that. The little details of the foreskin.

And when they're old enough to notice the difference, they're not letting you see their penis anymore anyway, because they're 12 years old. And now they've become modest.

They're not looking at dad anymore either.

So there's no comparison between kids and

dad after the age of awareness like that.

And then eventually you have the conversation.

You say, son, you know what?

Our country used to do this, but

we've kind of become more enlightened and we decided not to circumcise you. We're not Jewish Muslim, so there wasn't a religious reason.

And so we just left you alone. And they probably will say, dad, thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

[Alex Clark]

If you are a parent who has chosen not to vaccinate, should you avoid letting your kids be around freshly vaccinated children?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

My answer is no. I don't think you have to take that precaution. People talked a lot about shedding Covid

like, you know, spike proteins. During when the COVID vaccine came out, people worried a lot about shedding.

Shedding's not new, though.

Shedding has happened with other vaccines as well.

It happens with the polio vaccine, with

the rotavirus vaccine, happens with rubella from the MMR vaccine.

[Alex Clark]

Covid, right?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

COVID vaccine.

Yeah. It happens with, I think, some, maybe

with the chickenpox vaccine.

There's a lot of vaccine germs that can be shed from a freshly vaccinated person to other people.

However, the reason why I say I don't think you have to take precautions is I feel like the amount of virus that is shed around in almost

all cases is going to be too small to really cause you harm.

Now, people still argue that about the

COVID vaccine, that maybe there is potential

harm from that, and I don't know

one way or the other.

But if I just think about all

the vaccine, all the childhood vaccines in general that we know have shed, I

feel like there's really very little potential

for harm for your baby. Say you go to the church nursery or you let your kid play with some other kids, and I feel like there's very little harm from that.

Plus, I think an equally important issue

is

you're raising your kids without vaccines and you want to be loved and

accepted by everyone around you.

You don't want to create a divide

between you and anyone else, maybe who's raising their family with vaccines.

We want vaccine status to be a

non issue in our society because there's no reason to discriminate against people who don't vaccinate and treat them as they're dangerous.

But to me, nor do we want

to discriminate against people who do vaccinate

and look at them as dangerous, because then, do you know what I'm saying? I mean, we want to be all together, you know, have our kids play together, be together in our differences. And so I don't want families being like, oh, did you give your kids vaccines? If so, I'm not letting my kids play with your kids. They're like, wait, what? Your kids aren't vaccinated and you know, you just attacked them for vaccinating.

They're going to retaliate by attacking you for not vaccinating. And then you just lost a friend. Right?

Does that make sense? So I feel like, I feel like

you don't have to have that in your mind as an unvaccinated parent taking that precaution with people around you, because I feel like that would create even more problems for a society.

Your kid has a healthier immune system, they're going to handle that.

Shedding exposure, in my opinion. And I don't think you have to have your radar on for that issue personally.

[Alex Clark]

What has changed with President Trump in office in regards to the childhood vaccine schedule?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I was super excited to see, number one, what would change. But also I'm like, how on earth

are they going to even achieve any change? Because that's not easy to do in any government system.

And so what has changed is the

CDC has removed the recommendation to give newborns the Hepatitis B vaccine. All right.

However, that's the CDC's recommendation.

Now, every state in our nation individually will decide, and I think it's mostly their public health departments that will decide.

Do we leave hepatitis B on our newborn vaccine schedule for our newborns in

our state or do we take it off?

[Alex Clark]

So it matters who you're voting to be in your public health and your state's state?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yeah, probably. Probably both. Probably a combination of your state legislatures

and your state public health departments.

So we all wanted Secretary Kennedy to create all kinds of amazing changes in the vaccine schedule with the support of President Trump.

And I was hoping for some awesome changes.

What I'm hearing, I'm not firsthand part

of any of this, so I don't know any inside information at all, but

I'm hearing it's very hard to make those changes even though they're the bosses

of those departments and governments.

The CDC is so entrenched with people in the vaccine industry, people who work for pharmaceutical companies, the people that run the CDC and do all the day

to day decision making and all the

day to day research, and they're all so closely tied financially to the pharmaceutical industry that somehow, for some reason, the powers that be at the top of our government can't instill the changes that we were hoping they would be able to. Or it's just an uphill battle. It's taking a lot to make these changes. So they're trying to make some very

good, smart changes that they can.

But I feel like I don't know what we're going to see. But I know in the California where

I practice,

any changes the federal government wants to make on the vaccine schedule

is not going to impact California because California has already said we're ignoring the CDC starting two years ago, we're ignoring the cdc. We're going to continue to ignore you for the next two years. We're going to make our own vaccine policy.

[Alex Clark]

So in California, if a parent does not Want to vaccinate their child is their only option to homeschool. Like, you cannot send them to school at all.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

You can't send them to school unless

the school is choosing to not enforce the vaccine law.

[Alex Clark]

Got it? And so, so there, like, it's probably like an underground network, word of mouth of like, hey, this school's gonna be fine.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Maybe there is, maybe there isn't.

Who knows?

[Alex Clark]

Are H I B cases, you know, that is okay. I've never heard of this 1. Are HIV cases as devastating as some pediatricians make them out to be?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

So they used to be, but we've

eliminated that disease from our country.

[Alex Clark]

What is it?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

So Hib is haemophilus influenza type B.

It's a bacterial infection.

It was the worst cause of meningitis

and an infection called epiglottitis that we used to have, that we don't have anymore because we've eliminated Hib from our country.

Two very serious infections. Very serious. Now, that was before my time.

I started 1995 when I graduated medical school, and we had already eliminated Hib from our country for the most part by then. Hib was devastating in the 70s and

80s, but then they figured out how

to treat it better. The fatality rate from Hib infections went way down.

And then we developed a vaccine in

the late 80s, early 90s, and that

maybe has played a role in totally eliminating Hib. We already brought it way down before the vaccine, and then now we don't

have it at all.

So it's no longer a threat to babies born today.

We might have one or two cases show up, surprisingly here or there, but it's not making a comeback.

It's not the kind of infection that

I think would make a comeback, because bacteria don't do that as easy as viruses like measles and chickenpox.

[Alex Clark]

What are the risks associated with the MMR vaccine? And what age would be ideal for a child to get it if the parent still wants them to get it?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

MMR vaccine probably has the biggest list of side effects.

If you.

If you read, like, if you open

up the package insert for every vaccine and you read all side effects, the MMR list is very long.

It's so long because every side effect is the same as what the diseases

themselves can do to you.

So mumps and measles and rubella, all three of those diseases can cause all

kinds of complications in your body. Different organ systems in your body cause all kinds of interesting inflammatory problems. So, so can the vaccine, because it's a live virus. Vaccine, and I'm not going to list

them all, but some of the worst

side effects are brain inflammation and brain injury, severe intestinal inflammation and inflammatory bowel disease, severe arthritis reactions, allergic problems. Those are probably some of the worst reactions from MMR vaccine.

But so can the diseases do all that. So it's like, it's kind of like,

do you accept like the natural course of the infection or do you accept the artificial course of the vaccine? That's kind of how I look at it.

But the ideal age, I feel like,

is what all my patients typically do is they don't do the vaccine during infancy anymore. Like is recommended. They used to give the vaccine to everyone when they're one year old. And that's where we've seen a lot of problems come up for kids neurologically and intestinally and their allergic systems.

So if you skip it while they're young and you give it, maybe when you're going to be entering school, like,

especially in California where you have to do it for school age 4, 5, 6, I don't think you're going to to see those neurologic problems or those intestinal problems as much, but you still can. There's still a risk. The risk is probably a little smaller

for school age, however, once you go through puberty and your body changes and

you're now essentially an adult and start having your cycles as a young woman,

if you get an MMR vaccine after that has happened, the vaccine becomes more

risky for you again.

[Alex Clark]

Oh, interesting.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Super interesting. Dynamic stomach. Risky as a young baby.

And then a little lower risk during like elementary school.

Once you go through puberty, your risk

of having serious reactions from MMR vaccine if you're a woman goes way, way up. Specifically, it's arthritis, autoimmune arthritis.

Any young woman who has a big

family history of autoimmune disease, especially arthritis, the MMR vaccine for you as a post puberty young woman, that risk is very high.

[Alex Clark]

Wow, that's really important information.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

And I don't recommend any teenage and older young woman get an MMR vaccine because of that risk.

Now, I don't necessarily tell people to

get that vaccine anyway, even at any age, but if you feel like you're gonna have to get that vaccine for women, you wanna do it it pre puberty.

[Alex Clark]

So let's talk a little bit about the recommended teenage vaccines because we've done a lot of childhood stuff on the show, but I don't think I've really asked about the teenage ones. What can you share about the risks versus Benefits of Gardasil meningitis or hep B in a teen.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I do not recommend Gardasil or HPV vaccine in general because there's more than just Gardasil.

I don't recommend it.

I think.

I think the risk profile of HPV vaccine is very high. When we see serious side effects, they are very serious. HPV vaccine might create the worst possible

neurologic side effects that I've seen of any vaccine. Now, it's rare, okay?

The number of people that have been

severely neurologically harmed by the HPV vaccine, it's rare. But when it happens, it's devastating. It's lifelong, lifelong severe brain injury, spinal cord paralysis, and you're paralyzed for life.

HPV as an infection is completely preventable. All right, so is hepatitis B. So you have two sexually transmitted infections

we're vaccinating teenage kids for that are completely preventable with good, wise decisions.

The Hep B vaccine doesn't have nearly

the risk that the HPV vaccine does. But even the Hep B vaccine can cause some autoimmune reactions and some potential severe neurological reactions. It's just not as common as the HPV vaccine.

But you have two vaccines that could potentially harm you for infections that are completely preventable. So what decision do you make?

[Alex Clark]

And what about meningitis?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

So meningitis is a little different because it's not preventable. But I say thank God teenage meningitis is extremely rare. That's kind of.

I think what saves people who don't vaccinate is the rarity of teenage meningitis.

You hear about it in colleges.

It's meningococcal meningitis. They give that vaccine to 12 year olds. They give you a booster at 16. That's when they recommend it.

Or if you get just one dose

at 16, that's all you need. You don't need two doses because the older dose works better for some reason than the younger dose.

So if you're going to get a

meningitis vaccine for your teenager, just wait till they're 16 and just you can rely on one dose.

But I say if you have such a rare infection, that vaccine can cause some neurological side effects. So I don't think you have to

live in fear of teenage meningitis just because, I mean, given every kid who's in high school and going off to college, their chance of getting exposed to meningococcal meningitis is so low. I don't think you have to live in fear.

[Alex Clark]

I saw a story about how somebody got charged $600 for a single band aid at a hospital. A band aid, at that point, just let me bleed out financially. I think it's the more responsible choice. And this is the system that we're trusting with our entire health health, where you're like, hey, I need care. And they're like, amazing. That's $47,000. Unless the moon is in retrograde and your doctor was pre approved by a wizard. It's freaking nuts. People are waking up to this. Okay, you're realizing, wait, I don't actually want to fight an insurance company while dealing with a health issue. Because here's the truth. When you pay cash for care, prices can drop 50, even up to 95%. So, yeah, tell your husband that the small stuff becomes way more manageable. Okay, fine, Alex. I'm fine with paying cash for, like, little things, but what about the big stuff? What if I get in a car accident? Big insurance promises to be there, but in reality, one of every five claims gets denied, and hundreds of thousands of families still end up in medical bankruptcy even with insurance. So this is why I recommend crowd health for those big, big issues. Okay, I talked to Andy, the founder, because I was like, well, how do we get out of this system? And the answer is actually simple. Crowd health is a community of people helping each other cover major medical expenses. You pay a monthly contribution, and when something big happens, like a serious diagnosis or emergency, the community helps fund it. No networks, no guessing, no fighting a corpor. And then you get to choose your doctor, explore the care you actually want, including functional medicine. And you even get support negotiating your bills down. So a lot of you are like, well, I wish I could see a functional medicine doctor, but I can't. My insurance doesn't support it. Why are you paying for this insurance? You've got to use crowd health. It makes sense. You have the power to take control of your health. Join crowd health to get started today for $99 for your first three months using code culture@joincrowd health.com that's joincrowdhealth.com code culture. Crowd health is not insurance. Opt out. Take your power back. This is how we win.

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I want to talk about real world risks of not vaccinating your kids beyond just medical risks. So for example, if an unvaccinated child were to become seriously ill from a vaccine preventable disease, could that ever trigger involvement from cps? Child protective services?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

So far, in my experience, I have not to my memory, I have not

had a patient get investigated by CPS because they didn't vaccinate.

It hasn't happened yet to my memory.

Now I'm sure it happens somewhere. I'm sure that has happened to people all over the country here and there, because you do hear stories about it.

But that has not been my experience.

And I have all the unvaccinated families in Southern California as my patients. Patients. Not all of them, I'm sure, but many tens of thousands of them.

And that has not been something that

my patients have been faced with.

[Alex Clark]

So under what circumstances, if any, would a parent's decision not to vaccinate be considered medical neglect? How does that differ from state or situation?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Well, at least in California, there has

to be another reason first for CPS to investigate you like they believe there's been some harm done in other ways or neglect in other ways or abuse in other ways.

And then.

So once they're investigating you.

Oh yeah.

Then they find out you're not vaccinating. Oh, and your kid is at the er cause they have measles. Yeah. They will add that on to an additional reason for your investigation. The fact that you didn't vaccinate and now your kid is here with measles.

But there had to be something worse

first for them to investigate that. Okay.

And I've been told, and I've actually

read the California law, that it actually says that in California law, that the decision to not vaccinate can't be the primary reason for a CPS investigation.

[Alex Clark]

If a child gets sick from any of the illnesses, are there cases where the vaccine for that illness would be good to take? So, like, your kid gets measles. They didn't get vaccinated for measles. Should you then give them the measles vaccine?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

No, no, it won't help you. And it even could compound the heart because now your immune system's really freaking out, fighting the regular disease, and then they're hit with this artificial version of the disease, and now your immune system doesn't know what to do.

So I don't think no one does

that or no one recommends that.

The only time they might recommend that

is if, say, your one child has measles or chickenpox and you're a family, that you don't want the infections to spread to your other kids. Well, if you get those vaccines for your other kids now before they're sick, that vaccine could prevent them from coming down with the chickenpox or measles, if you want that.

[Alex Clark]

How can an unvaccinated family travel internationally?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Oh, I think they certainly can. Oh, everyone can. Yeah. There are no international laws about vaccine

status for tourists travel.

[Alex Clark]

So what about, like, going on a mission trip with your church or something your teenager wants to go.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

You know what? For all the routine vaccines we give

kids in our country, if you've chosen

not to vaccinate, I feel like you

can safely go on missions trips and do humanitarian work. And even more safe would be to go on any tourist travel with unvaccinated kids.

And your chance of catching and being

harmed by any of those infections is very, very tiny.

I tell all my patients feel very safe to travel. Now, you bring a good point, though.

Tourism travel really doesn't expose you much to the local infection because you're not running around with all the kids that live there or families that live there.

You're a tourist, so you're not really intermingling much with the infectious diseases that might be there. But if you're going there as a missionary, you are. So your kids are playing with their kids. You're working with the impoverished people there. So you're going to be exposed to infections that are there. So you have to decide, am I

okay with my kids being exposed to measles? Am I okay with my kids being exposed to whooping cough? Cough and rotavirus and everything else.

Polio is not something you really have to worry much about in almost every country. It's really limited to a few countries

like Pakistan, a little bit of Afghanistan.

[Alex Clark]

Yeah.

But they're going to behead you for being American anyway. So worry about polio. You worry about being beheaded and kept as a, as a prison.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Well, people aren't going there for tourism and missionaries that go there are very,

very careful so they know what they're getting into.

So that's why I say as kind

of a global statement, missionary families and

tourists, I feel like you can live a regular life that you want to

live and your vaccine status, I feel like doesn't have to change that.

[Alex Clark]

What are the risks of the PCV vaccine?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Pneumococcal vaccine is one of our newer vaccines.

It came out I think in the late 90s. So it might not sound new to consumers of vaccines, but in the medical

community it's a fairly new one. That vaccine I don't like it because it's multi strain, it has many, many strains in it. It's kind of akin to the flu

vaccine which has multiple strains in it.

So the pneumococcal vaccine, when they first made it, they put four strains of

pneumococcal bacteria in it to protect you from the four most common and pneumococcal germs.

And pneumococcal disease is something that will give you pneumonia or a sinus infection

or in very rare cases, meningitis. So people wanted protection from meningitis, people

wanted protection from pneumonia.

So they came out with pneumococcal vaccine.

The problem is now they've added so much to it. Now it's pneumococcal with 20 strains of

pneumococcal germs in it.

So it went from basically a four

strain vaccine to a 20 strain vaccine. So it's almost like you're getting 20 vaccines in the one injection to give

your kid some artificial immunity from all

these different strains of pneumococcal vaccine.

So the way I see babies react

is they don't react well. They scream and scream and scream for hours and hours and hours. And that reaction is encephalitis, which is your brain is swelling.

And fortunately most of them, it calms

down, they recover, they seem to do okay, but then they have to go through it all over again, you know, two months later with their next dose, two months later again, or the next dose.

So when babies react that way to

pneumococcal, I don't like it when a

[Alex Clark]

parent hears about a delayed schedule.

What does that mean and when does it start?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Well, there's nothing written in stone about delayed schedules.

In fact, I came out with some delayed and alternative vaccine schedules years ago to kind of give people a guide on how to vaccinate differently if they're going to do it. But now, because everyone's kind of deciding not to even vaccinate at all, very few people even follow the alternative or delayed schedules in my experience. And so I actually even took them offline and took them out of my

book because I see people were still

reacting in a lot of cases, even with delayed vaccine schedules or even with slowed down vaccine schedules.

If your kid has some sort of

genetic predisposition to having a vaccine reaction, it could happen even after one vaccine,

[Alex Clark]

which could be meaning that your kid has an MTHFR gene mutation, for example. So let's say, man, I'm a parent who, who I really do want my kids to get at least some of these vaccines, but I am concerned that they have the MTHFR gene mutation. Is there a test that they can obtain to see if their kid has that gene mutation before vaccinating?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yes, there is a do it yourself

test, like a cheek swab test. You can just order yourself online.

The problem is MTHFR is not the

only gene that dictates your susceptibility to vaccine reactions.

[Alex Clark]

So how do you know the others?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Oh, there's many, many genes. We don't know most of them yet, so we don't problem.

[Alex Clark]

This is the risk.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Right.

So in my opinion, if you get an MTHFR test and it's all normal and you're all good, that doesn't make

vaccines safe for you.

[Alex Clark]

Okay, I think, yeah, that's super good to know.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Right.

So I feel like even alternative schedules or delaying vaccines, there's still some risk. So I don't have anything written down

that tells people when to start.

Now what I will say though is what my patients who do end up vaccinating, what they do is they will

wait till their kids are about four

years old and then we'll slowly give

them the vaccines required for school in California because they want to go to like a public school or a big private school.

We'll do it between four and six.

We'll do it one at a time and Slowly.

And it seems safer to me the way they handle it. It seems safer than having done all

these when they were younger.

But I still see occasionally someone have

a real bad reaction. So it still happens.

[Alex Clark]

But in your practice?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

In my practice, yeah.

But delaying till 4, if you're gonna

have to do it, at least delay till 4, probably.

[Alex Clark]

How do you handle that as a doctor? Like, the parent is like, I think we really need to try this. Let's do delayed. And then something bad happens.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yeah, it's.

[Alex Clark]

You're just there for them.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yeah, it's tough.

Jeez, it's hard. And then they don't keep vaccinating after that.

But it doesn't happen often. But it's just, I guess it's woken

me up and, and my patients, as they read more and more about this,

it's really woken people up to the

idea of no longer thinking alternative vaccine schedules, but thinking of just no vaccine schedule.

[Alex Clark]

Totally. If you don't get TDAP while pregnant, how do you prevent your baby from getting pertussis?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Taking them out in a baby carrier

like I talked about.

[Alex Clark]

Okay, so all that advice, just making

[Dr. Bob Sears]

common sense, smart choices when you go out and about with your baby.

[Alex Clark]

What is the most gracious way and confident way to deny a vaccine to your pediatric.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I don't know why any parent should

feel they are obligated to be gracious about this. You're doing nothing wrong. All right.

[Alex Clark]

Well, the thing is though, not every pediatrician's like you. And they, they make the parent feel like they are doing something wrong.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

You know, you're, you're so right.

You're so right. I, maybe I'm naive about that. Yeah, you're talking about, I mean, they're

[Alex Clark]

like, if you don't do this, you can't be patient here.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

So.

So you're right.

Yeah, so. So you, you're right.

You want to be confident. You do want to be gracious because you want to maintain a good, a

good relationship or at least be professional.

But please don't be afraid to do it.

This is your kid.

This is not the pediatrician's kid.

They are working for you. You're not their patient. They're your doctor. They're working for you. So you are the one making the decisions. You have to make the decisions that

you feel like is best for your child.

And you'll know right away if that doctor is accepting and open minded of that and is gonna, you know, or they're gonna, you know, give you, you

know, read you the riot act and Try to belittle you and make you doubt yourself.

And if that's the case, that's the last time you're there.

You find a new pediatrician.

If they are accepting of it, you

don't need them to agree with you. Right.

But you just want them to treat you as a fellow human being and acknowledge your choices. And if they're happy to continue to be your pediatrician, that's great, great.

So you want to have a nice

conversation about this, but you also don't want a pediatrician who's just going to

tolerate you or oh, you're one of those parents, I guess we'll keep you.

[Alex Clark]

Yeah, I had a parent wanted me to ask you, well, what should I do? The closest pediatrician to me who is open minded about the vaccine schedule and non judgmental about not vaccinating my baby is an hour away. But the pediatricians close to me are very judgmental about the vaccine schedule.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Well, you know what, don't go to a pediatrician.

You don't need a pediatrician right now.

I'm a pediatrician and I'm saying that there are many other healthcare practitioners out

there that can provide medical care to your child. First of all, there's family medicine doctors

and most of them are going to

be as close minded as pediatricians.

But I think you're more likely to

find an open minded family practitioner than you are a pediatrician.

Number two, there are other healthcare practitioners. There are naturopathic practitioners that do pediatric care. There are chiropractors that do pediatric well care.

Or I guess they don't call it pediatric well care, but they call, you know, well care for kids.

[Alex Clark]

I mean my pediatrician, my chiropractor who's been on the show, Dr. Mike Pierce, he, yeah, he's not a pediatrician, but also he's walking patients through everything. How to completely detox your house from, you know, toxic items. He's taking you to the grocery store and teaching you how to grocery shop. He's, he, he's going through the whole body, you know, all these different things to do for you, your children, your family. I mean, chiropractors have a really like holistic view of health. I think they're a great option.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Right.

My message to parents that can't find

an open minded doctor is, is exit

yourself from the mainstream medical system.

[Alex Clark]

Yeah.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Find a new way to do this.

[Alex Clark]

And they're like, but you, but that's not in my insurance.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yeah, don't get me started. You're gonna have to pay a little Bit of money.

[Alex Clark]

Yeah.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Right.

You're gonna have to show up.

[Alex Clark]

You pay cash, but usually you're paying cash. When you pay cash, it's actually sometimes less expensive.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Oh yeah.

[Alex Clark]

Than what's happening with insurance.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yeah. And you're gonna get way better care.

[Alex Clark]

Yes.

It's so worth it. We've got to get out of this prison. This mindset I've been trying to like scream this from.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I saw your post about this.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yes.

[Alex Clark]

It's so concerning to me like this,

but it's not in my insurance. I'm like, those doctors are not going

to serve you if you're okay. If you're a member of my audience

and you like this show and what we're learning on this show, then the

insurance model is not going to allow

you to truly get to the root cause of whatever's happening with you or your baby.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Right.

[Alex Clark]

In medical choice and all those things.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

You're going to get so much better medical care if you are paying for it yourself than you are going to

someone who just takes your insurance. Right. And that's not just true in medicine. That's true for every walk of life, every service you're buying.

If there's some sort of plan that's

covering it for you, then they're not working for you.

They're working for that plan and they're working on their behalf. You're better off using medical insurance. If you're going to have it, use

it for that surgery you need or

that, that, that, you know, $10,000 hospital stay. Use it for when something goes really wrong. That's what insurance is for. Don't use it for your day to day medical care because you know, you just pay a little bit of money for that, you're going to be way, way better off.

[Alex Clark]

Your practice is in Orange County, California. Are you accepting new patients?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yes and no. I, I am overwhelmed.

[Alex Clark]

Cool ones that listen to this show, right.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

We're accepting, we're accepting newborn and toddlers

as new patients, but we are overwhelmed.

The number of families in that category that want to raise their baby without vaccines has just skyrocketed. So we don't have room to bring in families with a lot of older kids. We just can't do it. There's only one of me.

I'm looking for a partner.

I'm looking to bring someone on. If you know somebody who's like minded, who's like family medicine or pediatrics and they're looking for a job in Southern

[Alex Clark]

California, you know, reach out, DM him

[Dr. Bob Sears]

on Instagram I don't check my dm,

so don't DM me, but DM Alex.

[Alex Clark]

Okay, I'll get, I'll get it through to you. That's super cool, actually. That's really neat. Oh, somebody in my audience should take him up on that. So one good thing is if you don't live in California and you can't be an in person patient of yours, you have a brand new course for mothers, Right, that anyone can take work, no matter where you live in the world?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Yes. And I'm expanding it over the next

year or two to, to include all areas of pediatrics.

So it's called, I mean, my newest

one is called your prenatal consult with Dr. Bob.

And I created it because people pay a full office fee to come in

and spend 15 minutes talking to me for a prenatal consult. They're having a baby, they want to do everything natural.

They want me to tell them how

to do everything natural.

I love doing that. But then I'm doing it over and over again and people are paying full office fee for that. I thought, well, if I can create an hour long video of me saying all this stuff sitting in my office like I'm talking to you right there, not only are you getting not just 15 minutes of me, you're getting a

whole hour of me telling you everything I want you to know about prenatal care, how to take care of your young baby or yet to be born baby during pregnancy and childbirth and postpartum, how to do all that naturally.

And then I do a monthly zoom

call so they can actually ask me questions. Live in zoom calls. They can email me their questions if

I didn't cover it in my course, they email me. And so I feel like I could

reach so many more people that way.

And we have the same thing with the vaccines.

We have the vaccine consult, same thing. You watch the video, you get on a monthly zoom call with me, you read my FAQs, you email me your questions when I don't answer them.

So I'm going to create that hopefully for the first year of your baby's life, then the next 10 years of your baby's life, these online virtual video consult style programs that people can basically, I can't, hands on, physically examine you

and I can't actually be your physical doctor.

But you're getting the next best thing by hearing everything I would tell my

own patients in my office for whatever you're doing, or whatever your problem is, or whatever you're trying to educate yourself.

So yeah, it's called your all access pass.

Virtual consults. It's right there on my website. It's super fun.

It's fun to kind of like self produce all that.

I'm kind of like learning how to be a video techie and an editor

and I still cannot build a website

to save my life. But that's been a lot of fun. Learning how to get a programming.

[Alex Clark]

Oh, don't even get a program started. I'm trying to build a, like a wedding website right now. And I have. It is so basic. It's like just plug and play and I literally have no idea what I'm doing. I told my fiance, I said, I can't do this task. You've got to take this over. He's like, isn't this like the easiest thing? I'm like, to me, does it. I, I am a boomer when it comes to anything technology. So many times I'm like asking people, I'm like, why? Why isn't my mouse working? Whatever. They're like, it's not plugged in. I mean, it's very embarrassing. It's sad situation. So if there was a certain vaccine that somebody was really hoping for us to bring up and we did, didn't one go back and listen to my first interview with Dr. Bob? There's a chance that I covered in that interview. Or you need to order the vaccine book by Dr. Sears. Tell them what all is in that again?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Well, everything. I mean, every vaccine besides there was one new. Oh yeah, yeah. And. But then the good thing about about books is. Yeah, my companion podcast, anytime something big comes out or changes, I can just, you know, record an hour long podcast episode about it and then that kind of change goes into the next version of my like every five years or

so, the publisher lets me add a new chapter.

[Alex Clark]

That's nice.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Lets me edit it, everything. So yeah, between the podcast and the book, it's always gonna be very up to date information. But in the podcast, I can't just

reread the whole book and the podcast. Right.

So they go together.

The podcast definitely doesn't stand alone.

[Alex Clark]

And here's the thing, you guys, my absolute favorite baby shower gift to give is Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. Give them nourishing traditions and then give them the vaccine book by Dr. Sears. That is like best baby shower gift everyone should be giving, especially to people that are kind of not super into this world and they don't already know all this like, you know, woo woo crunchy stuff that we like to do. Those are Just so like easy to understand and incredible books.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Well, thank you.

It's a safe book to give, I

will say because you're not getting all. You're not hearing me say some of

the crazy stuff I said today. I'm more professional about it.

[Alex Clark]

It's completely unbiased.

It is just a film facts. It's just the what the vaccine is, what are the pros, what are the cons, what's the ingredients? And then if you want this doctor's opinion, here's his opinion. So it is very non aggressive, non threatening for people that are like, you know, going into this and they never have questioned the vaccine schedule before but you want them to see. Where are you on social media?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

I, I was lucky to get at

Dr. Bob Sears across all platforms years ago. It's like Dr. Bob Sears, you know, all across all.

You know, I guess Instagram seems to be the most fun to, to be on this these days.

But I'm on X and Facebook and are there any others?

I'm not on substack yet.

[Alex Clark]

Tick Tock, you would love. Oh my gosh, you should be on.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

No, my kids have begged me to

not be on Tick Tock and I think I. Yeah, am I on Tick Tock? I don't know, I don't think I.

[Alex Clark]

You should have a substack though.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

People say that but.

Oh yeah.

[Alex Clark]

Oh my gosh, that is like literally the perfect platform for you. No, because you are, you are a publish writer. You've written so many things. All you need to do is like publish again on substack. Like things you've already done. You know what I mean? Just put like a, like a, a sexy headline that's going to be attention getting and then stuff you've already written.

[Dr. Bob Sears]

Okay, well I guess I better grab

rbobstears before this airs on stuff you should.

[Alex Clark]

If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, physically, emotionally or spiritually, what would it be?

[Dr. Bob Sears]

As a parent, you can find the

confidence to have the wisdom that you need, need to know how to raise your kids. You are the one that steers that ship, not your doctor. No medical professional is ever going to know your kids as well as you can and should as a parent.

And if you find yourself struggling in that, just you know, make friends with some parents around you that you feel like have reached that, you know that level and that confidence and learn from them. Find it because it's there.

It's God given heaven that holy spirit is there that will show you how to be the parent that your kid needs and to trust yourself instead of, sadly, the medical community that we find ourselves underneath right now.

[Alex Clark]

Thank you for coming on a second time. You're welcome. Anytime, every time you're in town, please tell me we will have you back. You're a fan favorite of my audience and we just appreciate everything you do.

Dr. Sears thanks Alex foreign Dr. Sears,

thank you for joining us and for being willing to have a conversation that so many parents are looking for but often are struggling to find. Whether you agree with everything we discussed today or not, I think everyone can agree that parents deserve access to information, transparency and the opportunity to ask questions without fear. New episodes come out every Monday and Thursday at 6pm Pacific or 9pm Eastern. Wherever you get your podcast podcasts, please

leave us a five star review on Apple or Spotify.

If it's been a while or you never have, let us know what episode is the first one you send to people when you want to introduce them to the show. It takes two seconds. It really, really helps us climb the charts. Also, just look presentable to guests and what have you. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be taken as medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional regarding any questions or decisions related to your health, health or medical care.

I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.