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

In 30 years of practice, Dr. Bob Sears says he has seen zero patients harmed by a vaccine-preventable disease. "They've all been manageable," he says. "No one was ever seriously sick." That single observation frames his entire approach to the childhood vaccine schedule, which he argues has changed so dramatically that parents today face a fundamentally different set of decisions than their own parents did.

Dr. Sears, a pediatrician in Orange County, California, and author of The Vaccine Book, returns to Culture Apothecary to walk through the current vaccine landscape, the risks and benefits of individual shots, and the practical realities of raising children outside the standard schedule. The conversation covers the explosion in the number of vaccine doses, the limits of vaccine efficacy, the financial incentives driving pediatricians, and the specific decisions parents face during pregnancy, infancy, and the teenage years.

The Scale of the Schedule and the Limits of Vaccine Science