Up-tick in Measles Cases
Measles cases are on the increase with 2011 being the worse year since 1966. With a recent quarantine in Utah, who pays for parents putting their children’s lives at risk? The American public does. But it’s nice to see that pediatricians are turning away families who don’t care for their own.
At the clinical practice level, some doctors are taking a preemptive approach. Physicians Chris Harrison and Tom Tryon of the University of Missouri in Kansas City presented data from a survey of more than 900 pediatricians in nine states showing that 21 percent stopped accepting appointments from families that refused to have their children vaccinated. In Minnesota that rate was only 1 percent, but in Iowa it was closer to 30 percent, Tryon says.
Tags: Vaccine
I am NOT going down the right to choose road here and my son, with Autism, is fully vaccinated.
That said, doctors who refuse to serve children WHOSE parents refuse vaccinations is completely contradictory to their calling and oath. Punish a child with asthma who needs a doctor because his/her parents won’t consent to an MMR vaccination? To me that’s insane.
I don’t really have a problem with doctors refusing to accept appointments from families who won’t vaccinate (not talking about refusing emergency treatment). Diseases we have, or almost have, eradicated are coming back due to parents behaving irresponsibly while embracing junk science.
And why should anyone be comfortable bringing their infant (for vaccinations) into a waiting room with un-vaccinated children?
It’s a fine line. I happen to think drugs are approved WAY before they should be. SO while some medicines are tried and tested, others get FDA approval with lots of side effects. Think about what the conservatives are trying to do. If they get their legislation passed and drug companies can manufacture even more poison with less transparency, im going to hesitant about taking medicine too.
so what do you do? we cant segregate waiting rooms into “vaccinated” “non vaccinated’ i cant even bein to conceive how you’d test or differentiate. but it is almost reckless endangerment for parents with unvaccinated kids to have them in close quarters with vaccinated children.
This is a slippery slope. What about a hepatologist refusing to care for an alcholic because he/she refuses to stop drinking? The is a social cost to treating or not in this case too.
Why wouldn’t a pediatrician try to assist the child whose parents are making the vaccination decision to stay as healthy as possible to mitigate the chances of or impact of an infection sans vaccine?
Punishing the child makes no sense to me.
Why wouldn’t a pediatrician try to assist the child whose parents are making the vaccination decision to stay as healthy as possible to mitigate the chances of or impact of an infection sans vaccine?
I’m not sure how you see this conversation going, and I really have no idea what possible steps could be taken to “mitigate the chances of or impact of an infection sans vaccine.”
Do you see the doctor saying, “Well, Johnny, since you haven’t been vaccinated it’s important for you to…” I have no idea what comes next – besides the parents freaking out.
What steps should Johnny take, given that many infectious diseases are transmitted before the infected person shows symptoms?
I don’t think there are any steps in this situation – which is what makes vaccinations so awesome.
So, we agree that vaccinations work.
But little Johnny may benefit from other medicines or therapies or advice on physical fitness that the parents would concur with to make little Johnny as healthy as possible to fight off the infection that will happen due to non vaccination, thus reducing total time infected and well being of little Johnny who has been victimized by his parents’ collectively addled brains.
My point: little Johnny is a victim of a parental decision, why exacerbate it by cheering on the doctor to punch him while he’s down….
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.
I will not be ashamed to say “I know not”, nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
But little Johnny may benefit from other medicines or therapies or advice on physical fitness that the parents would concur with to make little Johnny as healthy as possible to fight off the infection that will happen due to non vaccination
I’m sorry, John, but this simply isn’t true. The only way to prevent measles is by receiving measles immunization.
I am not talking about prevention, I am talking about the next best option after the ill fated decision of the parent: mitigation or symptoms and duration by being as healthy as possible which a doctors care can help to provide. To get turned away, the parents are trying to take Johnny to the doctor. It is different than refusing vaccinations AND eschewing the entire medical profession. Turning our back on little Johnny solves nothing here….
Once a widely held scientific consensus has been established that a vaccine is both safe and effective, I think that it should be legally mandatory for parents to vaccinate their children with it. I see no virtue in protecting irrationality and ignorance in the cloak of “liberty” and antistatism when the consequences can be dangerous, even catastrophic.
“Once a widely held scientific consensus has been established”
Not to quibble, but just a couple of years ago, a PSA test was pretty much mandatory for someone of my advanced age 🙂 Now, the treatment of Prostate Cancer has pretty much turned on it’s ear. Not sure who gets to decide that something is a “widely held” consensus when the bar is always changing
As for the situation at hand, I suppose a case could be made that the physicians are acting out of safety for their patients in the office, could ban the non-vaccinated children from their office. But I agree with John about the “slippery slope”.
You smoke? No DR’s visit for you. Eat at McDonalds? No Dr’s visit for you. Don’t stand in a single file line? NO SOUP FOR YOU!! 🙂
NEXT!
Except diseases caused by smoking or eating at McDonalds aren’t communicable.
There IS slippery slope there. What about universal health care? some people will take care of their bodies…. and by extension the public investment in their health, some people will eat 7000 calories of red meat per day, and drink and smoke and use drugs. How is that fair? what about the 99% (hehe) who wont be either extreme? I dont have any answers, but im in a pot-stirring mood.
Agreed pandora, except you have no idea what strange gases come out of my body after I eat at McDonalds 🙂 Don’t know if that’s communicable or not
LOL, Mark. Mr. Pandora suffers from the same affliction.
Why should be an issue for a child to be in a room with an unvaccinated child if the vacine is given to help prevent the disease. Don’t punish the kids punish the parents