Dr. Bob Sears
oracknows | September 27, 2016It’s been nearly three weeks since we learned that the Medical Board of California had initiated disciplinary proceedings against the most famous antivaccine physician not named Andrew Wakefield. I’m referring, of course, to “Dr. Bob” Sears, author of The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child and creator of an “alternate” vaccine schedule that “spreads out the vaccines.” Unfortunately, it’s a book that’s been very influential, in particular promoting the idea of “too many too soon” and claiming that delaying vaccines will reduce a child’s risk of autism. Basically, the…
oracknows | July 29, 2016After writing about the failure of state medical boards to discipline physicians who practice quackery and an apparent notable exception in Tennessee just yesterday, my attention was brought back to California and the topic of SB 277, the law enacted last year that, as of July 1 this year, eliminated non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. As anyone who’s read this blog for more than a year knows (or anyone who’s just paid attention to the political battle to pass SB 277 lsat year in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak), once the battle was over and antivaccine activists…
oracknows | May 8, 2016I realize that it's a cliché to say so, but some clichés are true. Time really does fly. It's hard to believe that a year ago California—and, by proxy, the rest of the country—was in the throes of a major political war over the bill SB 277. SB 277, you will recall, was a bill introduced into the California Assembly in the wake of the Disneyland Measles outbreak in early 2015 that eliminated non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates beginning with the 2016-2017 school year. Ultimately, SB 277 passed and was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown last July. It was an uncommon victory…
oracknows | July 22, 2015My topic yesterday was When doctors betray their profession. In my post, I talked about some very unethical doctors representing tobacco companies in lawsuits against them seeking compensation for death and injury due to smoking, as well as to doctors and scientists peddling pseudoscience and quackery representing claimants in the Autism Omnibus action several years ago, in essence supporting the scientifically unsupported idea that vaccines cause autism. The reason I brought this up was to show doctors behaving badly in "conventional" and not-so-conventional medical-legal situations.…
oracknows | February 20, 2015
You remember Dr. Bob, don't you?
I'm referring, of course, to Robert "Dr. Bob" Sears, the Capistrano Beach, CA pediatrician who's arguably the most famous of the antivaccine pediatricians who have been spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about vaccines. (Sorry, Dr. Jay, but, regardless of your being Jenny McCarthy's son's pediatrician, I'd bet that more people have heard of Dr. Bob than have heard of you.) Dr. Bob has achieved this fame/notoriety based on his book, The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for your Child, which is chock full of exaggerations about the dangers of…
oracknows | January 21, 2015
In the wake of antivaccine-pandering pediatrician "Dr. Bob" Sears' attempt to paint the measles as no big deal, so much so that it totally escaped his notice that it might not be a bad idea to recommend that the unvaccinated get the MMR vaccine in the midst of an outbreak, the bad news about the Disneyland measles outbreak just keeps coming in. Hot off the presses yesterday:
There are now 67 confirmed cases of measles in an outbreak centered in California, health officials said.
The California Department of Public Health said there are now 59 cases in the state – 42 that have been directly…
oracknows | January 21, 2015
Poor, poor, pitiful Dr. Bob.
For those of you not familiar with him, I'm referring, of course, to Robert "Dr. Bob" Sears, MD, the antivaccine-sympathetic (or, more appropriately, antivaccine-pandering) pediatrician in Capistrano Beach, CA (between Los Angeles and San Diego in Orange County) known for his Vaccine Book, a veritable font of antivaccine misinformation gussied up as a "reasonable" middle ground. Too bad it's not.
In any case, in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak, Dr. Bob has found himself under a lot of criticism, along with our "good buddy," the other famous…
oracknows | March 28, 2014Dr. Robert Sears has to be one of the most irresponsible pediatricians on the face of the earth, if not the most irresponsible. Many of you might recall that a little more than a week ago "Dr. Bob" posted a borderline unhinged rant on Facebook aimed at his own patients, who, quite reasonably, were calling him about the measles outbreak going on in southern California right now and asking him about the measles vaccine. It was entitled Measles Epidemic . . . NOT!, and his response boiled down to, in essence, "get the vaccine if you're worried, but there's no real reason to worry." He also…