The debate on vaccines has heated up as the number of measles cases increased during the last year. Voices for both sides – those who believe everyone should be vaccinated versus those who don’t – have become more strident as time passes.
Here are four doctors who have been vocal about supporting the parental right to choose whether their children are vaccinated and about their concerns that vaccines aren’t safe:
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1. Arizona Dr. Jack Wolfson has been vocal about his opposition to putting chemicals in anyone’s body,
CNN reported, and has been a leader in encouraging parents to reject vaccines. “What I am opposed to is that we are injecting chemicals into our children," Wolfson told CNN. "This is aluminum, mercury, sometimes aborted fetal proteins. There are antibiotics in there." However, the Centers for Disease Control told CNN that the aluminum hydroxide found in vaccines is also found in antacid tablets and the trace mercury compound used has been taken out of almost all children’s vaccinations.
2. California pediatrician Dr. Jay Gordon said measles is not a serious illness, and more than half of his patients are not vaccinated,
according to CBS News. "You just said it, they'd get measles," Dr. Gordon told CBS when asked . "Not meningitis, not the plague, not Ebola, they'd get measles. Measles is almost an always a benign childhood illness."
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3. Dr. Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician with a focus on alternative medicine,
on his website covers the concerns that not enough is known about the impacts of vaccinations. On a Vaccine Information Page on his website, he covers numerous vaccine studies and opinions about whether they are dangerous or not. In an interview with Greatist, he said people should read the literature and there needs to be more criticism so people don’t receive “just the prejudicial one-sided view that the industry offers that has effectively been able to manipulate the vast majority of the media and public health officials to take that position, to promote vaccines as the solution for people’s health challenges.”
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4. Dr. Sherri Tenpenny’s website is dedicated to disseminating information about vaccines. “I got drawn into the ever-changing, emotionally charged vaccine debate after attending the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) meeting in September 2000. I was troubled by what I had heard and decided to search for answers by going straight to the leading vaccine ‘authority’ in the country: the Centers for Disease Control (CDC),”
Tenpenny wrote on her website. “Imagine my surprise—and dismay—when I discovered that most of what I had accepted as The Truth about vaccines really wasn’t the truth at all.”
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