Episode #53 ** December 3, 2014
Guest // Suzanne Humphries, MD ** Host // Kelly Brogan, MD

The CDC website has information on Vaccines for Pregnant Women and Guidelines for Vaccinating Pregnant Women. Here, pregnant women and clinicians are told:

• Vaccines can keep mama and “her growing family” healthy.
• Specific vaccines that are needed are based on age, lifestyle, medical conditions, type and locations of travel, and previous vaccination.
• Get up to-date with vaccines before getting pregnant
• Some vaccines cannot be given during pregnancy (i.e., rubella).
• Some vaccines should be given during pregnancy: pertussis, hepatitis B, flu.
• It is safe for a woman to receive vaccines right after giving birth, even while she is breastfeeding.

Together, these pages raise more questions than they answer. Kelly Brogan raises a collective, manicured eyebrow on behalf of many dubious women and digs into the research with these probing questions:

• Where’s the science showing safety and efficacy for both mom and fetus?
• If vaccination should vary based on age and lifestyle, then where’s this discussion and the underlying evidence base?
• What do we know about maternal-fetal immunology?
• Which vaccines are Category C pharmaceutical drugs and what does this mean?
• Can we speak very specifically about the reasons women cannot get some vaccines while pregnant? Is it just the live virus vaccines?
• What are the adverse events that have been documented following vaccination while pregnant?
• What’s the down low on flu shots? Efficacy, statistics, mist vs injections, and lessons from the 1917 epidemic and recent swine flu campaigns? How does the CDC justify its recent decision to recommend live virus flu shots to 2 year olds when so many pregnant women have toddlers at home? (Live attenuated rubella virus is excreted from nose and throat 7 to 28 days after vaccination. – MMR II package insert, p. 5)
• Why is the mercury-based preservative thimerosal still in the flu shot, recommended to virtually everyone, including babies and pregnant women?
• What’s cocooning and do you buy it?
• What adverse events have been reported following vaccination of pregnant women?
• Is there a better way for women to boost the immune system during pregnancy?

This discussion is for girls and women of reproductive age, the people who love them, and parents and guardians of young children.

Suzanne Humphries, MD is a conventionally-trained physician who participated in mainstream medicine from 1989-2011. During those years, she saw how often that approach fails patients and creates new diseases. Suzanne is board-certified in nephrology and was formerly certified in internal medicine. She graduated from Temple University Medical School. Read more about Suzanne on her website DrSuzanne.net.

Kelly Brogan, MD is Medical Director of Fearless Parent™ and mom of two. She is board certified in Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine, and Integrative and Holistic Medicine. Holistic living, environmental medicine, and nutrition are the bedrock of her functional medicine practice. She serves as medical advisor to GreenMedInfo, Pathways to Family Wellness, and Fisher Wallace. Kelly holds degrees from MIT and Cornell Medical School.