When I began practicing homeopathy 25 years ago, it was common for me to see children with ear infections, allergies or asthma. Over the years, however, I began seeing children with much more serious illnesses, such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis—diseases I would normally see in adults. Then at some point I was inundated with children on the autistic spectrum. As a homeopathic physician, I witnessed the parallel and widespread increase in pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines in younger and younger children, and I clinically observed that they were having deleterious effects on my patients’ health.

I noticed that a child’s first ear infection, bout of eczema or worsening of allergic rhinitis sometimes occurred within days to weeks of his or her immunizations. I also worried about the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in infants and toddlers, because I observed their immune systems weaken over time. Now we know this weakening is partly due to the antibiotics’ disruption of the gut microbiome at an early age. Research published last year in the journal Genome Medicine showed that this disruption can increase a child’s vulnerability to chronic disease later in life.

Although I agree with my allopathic colleagues that certain vaccines are important for public health, and I share their desire for the safest vaccines possible, as a homeopathic physician I have been especially concerned with the increasing number of vaccines given to infants and children. According to the website CenterWatch, which follows the clinical trials industry, since 2005 alone, the number of vaccine products in research and development have more than tripled.

Because of the toxic preservatives in vaccines, I have always cautioned parents to space them out to lessen the risk of side effects. While mercury was finally removed from most vaccines in 2002 (it still remains in some flu vaccines), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) still lists aluminum and other toxic preservatives among the ingredients in most vaccines .

In fact, Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies by Neil Z. Miller offers a wealth of scientific data refuting the idea that vaccines are completely safe and efficacious. This book contains summaries of more than 400 scientific studies published in leading journals worldwide that provide statistical data showing the negative effects of vaccines.

The 2016 documentary VAXXED: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, alleges that the governmental agency charged with vaccine safety oversight, the CDC, might have known about a vaccine-autism connection since at least November 2001, and discarded the supporting data to keep the information hidden. This allegation is especially disturbing in light of the explosion of autistic cases since 2002, as noted by the nonprofit advocacy organization Autism Speaks.

Apparently, the CDC has a significant financial interest in making sure vaccines are marketed and sold. In an interview published at VaccinesRevealed. com, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., environmental attorney and chairman of the World Mercury Project for vaccine safety advocacy, notes that the CDC buys and sells $4.1 billion of vaccines annually. Speaking at an Autism One conference, he called the interrelationships within and between the CDC and the pharmaceutical industry a “captive agency phenomenon,” whereby government agencies become “sock puppets” for the very industries they’re supposed to be regulating.

According to the World Health Organization, the vaccine business is a $30 billion-per-year industry and is projected to become a $100 billionper- year industry by 2025. The CDC currently recommends that children be given 69 doses of vaccines by age 18, and according to PhRMA, which represents the country’s leading biopharmaceutical research companies, there are 271 vaccines in the development pipeline.

It’s my hope that increasing public awareness and endeavors such as the World Mercury Project will eventually counter Big Pharma and help educate physicians on the potential dangers of injecting multiple vaccines at once into immunologically immature beings—a practice, along with the excessive use of antibiotics, that may be contributing to the alarming increase of neurological and immunological diseases in our children. The social, psychological and economic toll this has taken on our society—from caring for these young people to lost productivity—is incalculable.

Homeopathy can be an extremely effective treatment for children on the autistic spectrum; many children will need a number of homeopathic medicines or different potencies of the same medicine over time. Homeopathic treatment allows other interventional methods, such as behavioral therapy or a change in diet, to work more effectively. It also can be used to counter the negative effects of medications and/or vaccines when they are prescribed on an individual basis.

Susanne Saltzman, M.D., has a family practice emphasizing homeopathy and functional medicine. Her office is located at 250 E. Hartsdale Ave., Ste. 22, Hartsdale, NY. For more info, call 914.472.0666 or visit HartsdaleHomeopathy.com.