Dr. Bob Sears, a renowned Dana Point pediatrician who has been sought out by parents who wish to opt out of the state’s mandatory vaccine requirements, has been placed on probation for 35 months by the Medical Board of California.

The June 27 order, which will go into effect on July 27, allows Sears to continue his medical practice but requires him to go through 40 hours of educational courses for each year of probation and a professional ethics course.

He must also be monitored by another licensed doctor during his probation period.

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The board also requires Sears to notify all locations where he practices within seven days of the order going into effect.

Sears has accepted the conditions of his probation by agreeing to settle the case. A spokeswoman for Sears said he was not available for comment Friday.

But, in a lengthy post on Facebook, where he has nearly 68,000 followers, Sears talked about being targeted by the Medical Board and explained that he agreed to a settlement even when he’d done “nothing wrong” because he believes it is futile to fight the board’s decision.

Vaccine exemptions

An attorney general’s complaint filed Sept. 2, 2016, alleged that Sears deviated from the standard of care by not “obtaining the basic information needed for decision making” before exempting the child from all vaccinations.

By doing so, the complaint said, Sears exposed both the child and his mother to infections.

Sears contended in his Facebook post that he was only trying to help the boy’s mother.

“The mom described how her baby had suffered a moderate to severe neurologic reaction to vaccines three years prior, and she was afraid a judge in her upcoming hearing was going to force her to resume vaccines now,” he said. “Medical records of the reaction were not available yet, and I gave the patient a letter of opinion to show the judge that the reaction was severe enough to justify not doing any more vaccines.”

The Medical Board investigated Sears’s case based on complaints received, said spokesman Carlos Villatoro.

“So, if we get a complaint that a doctor is inappropriately approving medical exemptions to a vaccine, we’re going to look into that,” he said. “There isn’t a specific effort on our part to investigate doctors who approve these exemptions.”

Vaccine exemptions are a controversial issue in California, with passionate advocates on both sides.

California passed Senate Bill 277 in 2015 after a measles outbreak at the Disneyland resort in Anaheim, which sickened 147 people and burgeoned into a multi-state public health crisis.

This new law requires parents to get an exemption from a doctor if they don’t want to vaccinate their children.

Unvaccinated kids at risk

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that all parents vaccinate their children. The CDC recognizes that vaccines can cause side effects, but says they are mild.

However, vaccine-preventable disease symptoms could be serious or even deadly.

Even though many diseases are rare in the United States, unvaccinated U.S. citizens who travel abroad could bring these diseases back, putting unvaccinated children at risk.

The CDC says serious side effects after vaccination are “very rare.”

As of Friday afternoon, about 4,700 admirers had commented supporting Sears.

Rancho Santa Margarita resident Rachel Doroski said she considered consulting Sears for her daughter, who is now 9, after reading Sears’s bestselling book “The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child.”

Doroski says she has auto-immune issues and feared her daughter would react badly to vaccines.

“I’m not anti-vaccines,” she said. “I just wanted to do what was right for my daughter at the time.”

Many of Sears’ medical peers, however, don’t agree with his opinion that administering vaccines together would overload the immune system.

UCLA pediatrician and infectious diseases specialist Dr. James D. Cherry says the idea of spacing out vaccines, which Sears recommends, is simply wrong.

“The important thing is we know all the risks, benefits and contraindications of the vaccines we currently have,” he said. “If we didn’t have measles vaccines, we could have 3,000 deaths a year from it.

“Some people just choose to believe what they believe rather than what the facts indicate.”

Cherry said there should be consequences for doctors who “fraudulently” provide exemptions from vaccinations.

“The Medical Board should certainly investigate these cases and the doctors should be punished,” he said.

Villatoro declined to confirm whether the board is investigating more cases against Sears.