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Doctors "Fire" Vaccine Refusers
phantomfive writes "In a study of Connecticut pediatricians published last year, some 30% of 133 doctors said they had asked a family to leave their practice for vaccine refusal. Pediatricians are getting tired of families avoiding vaccines, which puts their children at higher risk of disease. From the article: 'Pediatricians fed up with parents who refuse to vaccinate their children out of concern it can cause autism or other problems increasingly are "firing" such families from their practices, raising questions about a doctor's responsibility to these patients.
Medical associations don't recommend such patient bans, but the practice appears to be growing, according to vaccine researchers.'"
Don't like my medical advice? Fine, go somewhere else. Seems perfectly reasonable and rational. If I were these doctors, I wouldn't want to feel responsible for the health of a child whose parents were demonstrably not interested in keeping their child healthy.
If some anti-vax moron doesn't want to use the help provided by the doctor, then the doctor doesn't need to keep them cluttering up his clinic.
That's his right.
It's also the right of the anti-vax moron to die faster, so hopefully they'll be weeded out in short order and we can get back to living better with medicine.
No. Really. You anti-vax'rs are morons. Self-indulgent, blinded, murderous morons.
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FYI not all hippies are against it. I'm an old hippy, and I think people who are refusing them are goddamned idiots.
If they're making an offer that cannot be refused without an adverse threat, such as this one, it's not voluntary. Not only has the doctor done harm by removing them from their practice, they are in a worse situation where the terminated party has fewer and lower quality options (if any).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Tin-foil comes in maroon? Can I get it in purple instead?
On a side note, I agree that it's the doctors' right to see what patients they want (as long as the decision is not based on certain criteria like race/color/religion/gender/etc). Stupidity is not a protected group.
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
I'm always torn on this kind of stuff.
On one hand, I think parents should be able to chose what is best for their children. Doctors and the medical community have been wrong before, and while I doubt that is the case here, I don't think parents should be forced to submit to whatever the doctor says.
On the other hand, parents are making decisions which are very likely not in their childs best interest, which isn't fair to the kid (and arguably, not fair to other kids/people/society in general in this case).
I'm not a parent or a doctor, so at least my opinion on this is largely irrelevant.
I think it's more of a Doctor desire to not work with idiots, and to instead save room in the schedule for the parents actually concerned with their kids' health.
There are free vaccine clinics EVERYWHERE due to the fact that there are WAY more than enough vaccines to go around. My family has even used them a number of times. I'm sure the doctors are not concerned with the $10-15 per shot they would get since there are easy ways to vaccinate your kids and not have to pay it anyway.
Its not different than a tech support company refusing data protection to customers not using anti virus
Doctors aren't always right (like anybody in any profession), but this isn't about the doctors themselves. It's about the science.
And the scientific evidence has shown time and time again that there is no link between vaccinations and autism, and that the benefits of eradicating these types of diseases far outweigh the potential mild side effects of taking them.
As such, I have no problem with the idea of doctors who practice said science turning away patients who want to be in denial about it.
No Shirt, No Shoes, No Vaccine: No Service. Go waste some other doctor's time. It's hard enough for doctors to make a living with Medicare cutbacks, insurance cuts, etc.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
I think vaccine deniers are dangerous fools, and I wish I were religious if only for the comfort of believing in a Hell waiting to accept "Dr." Wakefield.
But before we jump on this particular bandwagon, perhaps we ought to ask:
Can a doctor "fire" a patient for continuing to smoke?
For continuing to drink? How are we defining "drink?"
For continuing to overeat?
For continuing to eat lots of red meat? Fried food? Salt?
For not being on the caveman diet?
You should have said "Goodbye, cruel world".
brandelf -t FreeBSD
Perhaps, they think this will help convince the family that the vaccines really are important. They're choosing to make this choice in face of losing long-term profits. That points to a deliberate ethical decision, and not grubbing after a $40 fee.
It's more along the lines of a doctor NOT wanting to be blamed for a more serious illness down the road that could have been easily prevented by one of these "useless vaccines." In such a litigious society, it's called "covering one's ass."
"Oh, little Jimmy got sick, even though we were religiously going to the doctor? IT'S HIS FAULT! SUE! SUE! SUE! SUE!
If pharmacists are allowed to refuse to dispense birth control based on their convictions, and churches can refuse to cover it due to their convictions, doctors should be allowed to refuse to treat idiots based on their convictions. Welcome to the free market, bitches.
The unfortunate thing is the kid doesn't and really can't have any say in it.
Once your an adult.. fine.. wanna refuse chemo because you've discovered the healing power of celery colonics, it's your health! The poor kid is at the mercy of the parents, and while the idea of the authorities dictating how a child is raised makes me very uncomfortable.. that's almost what I'd like to see.
What if I refuse just this one vaccine? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16109424
If hundreds of studies that there is no negative affect in a test group receiving 27+ vaccines vs the control group who receives none, then yes you are an imbecile. And the doctor's argument becomes moot when you can get the vaccines from a free clinic.
Maybe it's the difference between the US and Europe, but here in Europe, not all doctors recommend all available vaccines. I wouldn't trust my doctor if he would recommend that I (or my children) get a vaccine against flue for example.
I try to avoid drugs as much as possible because I think most non-severe illness (headache, flue, etc...) can just be cured by getting some rest and trusting your body. From my experience, the people I know that take the most drugs are the ones that are the most ill (and I'm talking non-server illness here, of course I'd take drugs if I had a cancer). I don't now if there is a causality, but I would tend to think so.
So yeah, I have kind of the same approach to vaccination : I take vaccine for sever illness, but I would never vaccine against flue before I'm 90 years old.
Now, I've lived in the US for some time and I've been shocked by the amount of drugs people take everytime they feel somewhat bad. I think there is a middleground between the "listen to your body, it will cure cancer by itself" bullshit and the "omg, I have a headache, let's eat these 3 pills". Same for vaccine.
Has any study yet been done on autism rates in the unvaccinated children of antivaxers?
Note that by "antivaxer" I mean those concerned about long-discredited hoaxes that claimed vaccines might have certain side effects which we now know they do not. There are other groups who don't vaccinate for other reasons, like the Amish, and some of them do indeed show lower autism rates. But AFAIK, in all known cases of such groups, there are far too many other variables in play to simply infer that these low rates are due to lack of vaccinations: they lead lives so different from the "typical" American public that any number of factors could be contributing, and that needs to be accounted for.
A person who thinks a vaccine causes autism is liable to start blaming their doctor for whatever other ailments crop up in their kids life. Which is only no big deal if you don't have a family yourself or reputation.
Why would any doc want that?
I'm fairly certain several types of doctor can discriminate against patients by sex.
Vaccine refusal for standard childhood vaccines could be considered child neglect.
There are parents who don't want their children to have the chicken pox vaccine and then expose them to chicken pox. That's child abuse. The vaccine is far lower risk than actually getting the disease.
If somebody doesn't trust vaccines, why are they going to a doctor in the first place?
The sound science behind vaccinations is by and large the same sound science that doctor is going to be using when he diagnoses you and prescribes a treatment. You can't reject one without rejecting the other.
I think people today are generally spoiled by good customer service at large retailers like Amazon or Best Buy, where the business writes off 1-2% of asshole customers who consume most of the customer support resources as the cost of doing business.
The problem is, that doesn't extend to small businesses, where one bad customer can quite literally eat up a majority of the proprietor's time and energy, and the business doesn't have the depth to just send the customer free stuff to make them happy. Had that happen with a scout troop I volunteer for a couple times, where one obnoxious parent consumed hundred of hours of volunteer time before they were told to leave.
If I were a physician, I'd certainly trade one marginal (in the economic sense) customer for the freedom from losing sleep at night about whether their child is dying from one of any number of untreatable disastrous diseases. If my patients are going to argue with me about whether vaccines are, in fact, the greatest medical development for humanity in the past two centuries, how on earth am I supposed to be able to get them to consent to any other medical science?
Now if only we could get the kids taken away from dumbass parents who won't properly care for them.
anti-vax morons "Boys who did not receive the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine during the mid 1990s are now collecting in large numbers in secondary schools and colleges and this provides a perfect breeding ground for the virus" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100330082722.htm
I think what the parent post meant is that all vaccines have some percent of people who don't have the desired antibody response, so you want to keep the unvaccinated numbers as low as possible in order to protect them. There are also the populations of very young/very old/immune compromised who can't be vaccinated. It's these groups most at risk from the willful vaccine refusers.
"Stupidity is not a protected group" Wait, I thought you said they couldn't/shouldn't discriminate based on religion.
I'm not so sure about that. The problem with this behavior is that it creates a sizable market of very, very stupid parents who have trouble finding reputable doctors willing to care for their children. Please don't make me explain the varied and sundry ways a market like that could be prayed upon; one might be able to argue that parents in that situation would deserve what they get, but their children certainly don't.
. . . patient stupidity.
If a doctor recommends a vaccine for a child, and the parents refuse the vaccine, then the child catches the flu and dies. Guess what? The doctor is open to litigation. It is a sad state of affairs, but the end result of that lawsuit is probably either settlement out-of-court or a judgment against the doctor. After all, why didn't the doctor educate the parents how they were wrong about autism risks? Why didn't the doctor show studies to the parents so they could have made a more educated decision? The fault will not be on the parents' heads -- at the very least the doctor will have to pay an attorney to defend from the inevitable lawsuit.
Why should a doctor saddle up with 1) Patients that refuse care and 2) Legal risk. If I were a family physician and I had people putting themselves or dependents at risk against my medical advice (A.M.A.), I would "fire" them, too. In the end, we aren't talking about emergency care here. We are talking about medical maintenance, and they can find someone else.
My family doctor will give new patients 6 months to stop smoking or he refers them elsewhere. His line is that his job is to keep patients healthy and that he can't do that if they are smoking. These are caretakers, and they will inevitably come to care about their patients. If they wanted to make money, they would have gone into a specialized field.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
This sounds perfectly good to me. If someone has voluntarily chosen to become an infectious disease vector I'd consider it a positive if my doctor barred them from their practice.
Should we fire doctors who refuse to be vaccinated with Tamiflu? ... even though it's now been largely shown to have been an engineered media scare to sell a premature drug for which little clinical evidence existed and for which side-effects and complications are now becoming apparent?
I'm not saying people shouldn't get vaccines. But doctors blindly trusting 'current empirical practice' to the extent they're penalising patients for not 'getting on board' makes me a bit sceptical. At the very least they should be attempting to educate their patients in an intelligent (read: not patronizing) way -- and in the process educating themselves with the updated literature. For the most part, I doubt most doctors have read basic research dealing with the ongoing controversy around many vaccines (no, I'm not referring to the autism scare).
I had a mumps vaccine about a year ago, in the form of MMR (I had the two components already, but it turns out mandatory mumps vaccination wasn't policy in australia in my day, and previous vaccination for other two components isn't a contraindication for the combined vaccine). I developed parotitis shortly afterwards, which is a recognised complication of the mumps component. (So is orchitis, btw, carrying a risk for sterility). I then decided to read some of the literature on mumps. Turns out that, while it's not necessarily condemning of the mumps vaccination, there *are* legitimate concerns about risk of complications vs probability of contracting the disease in the first place, and vs severity or even potential *benefits* of contracting the disease naturally compared to vaccination, etc. I would have had the mumps vaccine anyway (not least because the health check for my new job demanded it). But still, I wish people had flagged, and related these facts to me, at the very least so I could know what I should expect and give proper informed consent to my treatment; rather than go with the whole "WHAT? You want to know more about the vaccine!? Why, I bet you're an ignorant redneck! Go find another doctor!"
As for the people who are too eager and quick to assume the majority of these parents are simply ignorant rednecks who don't give a shit about their children's health, I'd tell you to get out of your self-righteous hole and re-examine the situation. Many spokesmen are either educated people, who have legitimate reasons to be concerned, or people who have been disappointed by the slapdash nature of healthcare services once or twice before and wish to be less passive in their health management. While that doesn't automatically put them in the right, it doesn't mean they should be automatically humiliated, vilified and punished either.
Chicken pox is a mere "nuisance" to most people, for some it can be dangerous.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
If you are willing to let your children die, and possibly infect and kill other children, that are not yours, and are too young to get vaccinated, you are to be both pitied and feared.
It's also arguable that the antivaxxers are goddamn assholes, and I believe it's perfectly acceptable to refuse service to those you find to be goddamn assholes.
The doctor is a highly trained expert providing a service. When faced with people who refuse to acknowledge that expertise (whether it's refusing vaccines or blood transfusions or whatever) I think they're perfectly within their rights to say "you're a pushy asshole, and if you won't let me do my job properly then GTFO."
Porquoi?
Having a "flu" is not like having a cold. Flu can and does kill children and the elderly. The flu shot is very safe because it contains no live viruses. The only problem is in people allergic to eggs.
Having unvaccinated children come in liability issue.
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/keyfacts.htm
btw: If you had said no chickenpox vaccine I would have agreed with you.
Kids are dying all the time these days from diseases they could have been vaccinated against. The idea that they're extinct, or nearly extinct, is a lie invented by people who need to make themselves feel better about a lousy decision.
Things like whooping cough are on the RISE right now because of the idiotic parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids.
As someone who has suffered through the abject horror of shingles, I assure you that varicella zoster virus can be much, much more than a nuisance.
The problem is a thorny one of liability and ethics. Being forced by law to take responsibility for a patient that specifically refuses to take your medical advice is not a solution.
I have had (dental) patients in the past who give me a list of requirements on their first visit - no x-rays, no fluoride, no amalgam, etc. Those patients are gently shown the door. I may not necessarily disagree with their reasoning but the trust necessary for an effective doctor-patient clearly does not exist from the start.
And who knows what cockamamie lawsuits they'll file? I've actually had patients insinuate that they will sue if treatment doesn't happen exactly as they expect. Buh bye.
Not worth the headaches.
One would think your pediatrician would just check your scheduled vaccines, and skip any which contain eggs and have no non-egg substitute.
As others have said here, if your doctor isn't willing to do that, you need another doctor anyway.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Actually it's more dangerous when you are an adult then when you are young.
"Adults have the greatest risk for dying from chickenpox, with infants having the next highest risk. Males (both boys and men) have a higher risk for a severe case of chickenpox than females. Children who catch chickenpox from family members are likely to have a more severe case than if they caught it outside the home. The older the child, the higher the risk for a more severe case...." http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/chickenpox/possible-complications.html
You stereotypers are all the same...
It's not unreasonable to decide that the vaccine risk (yes, there is risk) isn't worthwhile. It's not unreasonable to notice the political aspects of vaccines, with all the industry lobbying, and decide that the pro-vaccine messages are inherently untrustworthy.
Yes. Yes, it is.
It's unreasonable because the vaccine risk, while not zero, is negligible -- especially when weighed against the damage caused by illness. And the lobbying money spent by drug companies doesn't make a disease suddenly vanish off the face of the earth. Whether the pharmaceutical industry spent $10 or $10,000,000,000 on lobbying last year, there were still infectious disease which were vulnerable to vaccines. Using your child to make a political statement is not only moronic, but also self-centered.
Their "poor, unhealthy life choice" puts them at risk for communicable diseases. If you then contract these diseases, you endanger others around you who are at risk, such as infants (pre vaccination age), the sick (weakened immune response), or the elderly (decreased antibody effectiveness).
Other lifestyle choices that affect health (smoking, overeating, not enough exercise) have non communicable repercussions. Obviously second hand smoke is another issue, but the direct diseases smoking causes are not contagious.
Why shouldn't a doctor be able to fire someone who doesn't listen? The doctor has the background and training to make him a domain expert. If the patient thinks he knows better than the trained professional, why is he even bothering going to the doctor in the first place? Or, if it's simply one point he disagrees with (albeit, an arguably big point), then the patient really should find a doctor who's practice aligns more with himself. Of course, for this particular discussion that leaves few options. I sure as hell wouldn't trust any doctor who advocated against vaccines, but to each his own.
I love my endocrinologist. I have diabetes and she's superbly competent at helping me manage it.
However, her initial speech to patients is fairly straightforward.
"We'll discuss alternatives and your specific circumstances. Then I'll tell you what to do. You'll do it. I'll know if you do what I tell you because you'll bring in your meter and I'll download all the info in it at every checkup. I'll do the blood work. I'll know if you're following my directions. If you don't follow my directions, you won't have to worry about disappointing me. You'll just have to find a new endocrinologist because I'll fire you as my patient."
I appreciated the straightforwardness. I think some patients would be mighty put off but that's why some doctors and some patients are a bad mix and should go their separate ways.
Tin-foil comes in maroon? Can I get it in purple instead?
On a side note, I agree that it's the doctors' right to see what patients they want (as long as the decision is not based on certain criteria like race/color/religion/gender/etc). Stupidity is not a protected group.
No less, it's reasonable for a doctor to be able to refuse to treat a patient who continuously refuses treatment. At that point, the doctor is simply saying, well, if you don't want me to treat you, then I won't treat you.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
You should read "The Panic Virus" by Seth Mnookin. It starts off with a tale of how a young child dies from Whooping cough, one of those "Extinct" diseases. The truth is that they can and do re-appear, often with catastrophic results.
The fact is that vaccines have probably done more to extend life spans in the 20th century than any other medical advance.
I would call parents who elect to not vaccinate their children "idiots" and child abusers.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
Stop showing everyone how naive you are by posting links to infowars. It's fucking stupid.
It's not that simple. Research is showing a correlation to the large number of vaccines as a child and autism. We don't know for sure
No.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO CORRELATION between vaccines as a child an autism
I suggest you read any of these reports and studies to see for yourself and stop spreading lies.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090130093407.htm ScienceDaily (Jan. 30, 2009) — An extensive new review summarizes the many studies refuting the claim of a link between vaccines and autism.
http://www.bmj.com/content/322/7284/460.short Conclusions: Because the incidence of autism among 2 to 5 year olds increased markedly among boys born in each year separately from 1988 to 1993 while MMR vaccine coverage was over 95% for successive annual birth cohorts, the data provide evidence that no correlation exists between the prevalence of MMR vaccination and the rapid increase in the risk of autism over time.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/285/9/1183.short Results: Essentially no correlation was observed between the secular trend of early childhood MMR immunization rates in California and the secular trend in numbers of children with autism enrolled in California's regional service center system
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0003140 This study provides strong evidence against association of autism with persistent MV RNA in the GI tract or MMR exposure.
And the article countering this "study":
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/vaccine-schedules-and-infant-mortality-a-false-relationship-promoted-by-the-anti-vaccine-movement/
I think you left part of your comment in the subject field. You might want to keep that shit together in the comment body - where it belongs.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
There have been many situations where vaccines were introduced to a large population without any statistically detectable negative effects. There have been a handful of cases where vaccines were pulled for safety reasons (contamination or spoilage) without any statistical positive effects. There have been studies of hundreds of thousands of children (in the Netherlands primarily, where medical records are more easily accessed for research purposes) that show no differences between immunized and nonimmunized children when it comes to any of the hypothetical vaccine related disease (of course, there are serious and significant differences in the rate of diseases that the vaccines prevent). The research that originally ignited the controversy has been refuted dozens of times by hundreds of other researchers, to the point where the publishing journal issued a retraction of the original article, something that is almost unheard of except in cases of outright fraud (which the original paper is).
why should I take even the tiny risk of having a vaccination to protect some idiot who refuses to get vaccinated themselves?
Simple - some people are unable to be vaccinated due to perfectly valid medical issues. They still benefit from herd immunity as long as the herd actually has it.
One person might be highly allergic to eggs and might not be able to get some particular vaccine as a result. However, if everybody around them isn't allergic to eggs wouldn't it be nice if they were vaccinated, thus greatly reducing the chance that any of them will get sick?
Some medical issues really do involve a tragedy of the commons. One is vaccination. Another big one is antibiotic use.
An item you linked to:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/vaccine-schedules-and-infant-mortality-a-false-relationship-promoted-by-the-anti-vaccine-movement/
Your link does not support your conclusions.
Unless they're idiots who still believe Jenny was right. These are parents who didn't listen to their doctors vs a quack and a playboy playmate. I'd presume they'd be lousy customers too.
There's an argument that mass vaccination of a populating is largely responsible for making those risks low.. which is reasonable. If most people are vaccinated, the disease can’t spread to a point where catching it would become statistically significant.
In other words, deciding something is a low risk, then using that decision as a basis to eliminate the thing making it a low risk, might turn it back into a medium or high risk!
(I doubt that would happen.. as we aren’t talking about a large number of people refusing vaccinations here.. but it’s still a thought).
Yeah it really takes alot of expertise to prescribe a vaccination....
True, expertise may not be required to prescribe a vaccination. Expertise really comes into play when you have to know when NOT to prescribe a vaccine due to various reasons.
"That's the rub though- vaccines used to be for life threatening diseases like polio and smallpox but are now more and more prescribed for things that are merely a nuisance(chicken pox anyone?)."
Chicken pox vaccination is still worthwhile. From the link, before introduction of a vaccine chicken pox was annually responsible for 150 deaths, 11,000 hospitalizations, $330 million medical costs, and $1.5 billion in societal costs. Further the virus can later (even decades after initial infection) cause shingles, which typically involves a painful skin rash lasting several weeks but can also cause residual nerve pain lasting months or even years. Shingles is pretty common too, I found incidence rates of 2-3 per thousand per year, and you're at increased risk of developing shingles as you get older. Additionally you can have shingles more than once.
Sure, this is a liberal problem isn't it?
http://blogs.plos.org/thepanicvirus/2011/05/10/and-the-winner-is-fox-news/
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1206813,00.html
Or perhaps you missed many conservatives like Michele Bachmann rail on and on against HPV and other vaccines.
No, this a religious problem. Every motivation for the vac-fraks stems from it, and it's desire to abolish science.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
It's funny, one of the first things you learn in a statistics class is that statistics are very dependent on how they're collected, determined, and described. You can make statistics to mean a lot of different things. I'm not judging the content of your link (I didn't read it), but saying that there is a statistic so it must describe the truth without any other information is just dumb.
I don't have time to make a sig
I can see this as nothing but a good thing for a doctor.
I've always wondered why dentists give away toothbrushes. You'd think they would hand out candy after the visit.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
BTW, some of these diseases really are quite extinct in the US.
And that's why US children no longer get a smallpox or polio vaccine. When the disease has been eradicated, we don't vaccinate against it anymore. However, the stuff we're still vaccinating for is still kicking, and that's why we still vaccinate for it!
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
I always wonder if it's because these new parents from late Generation-X/early Generation-Y have enjoyed the benefits of vaccination and become complacent...
Either way, it's comforting to know the stereotype is false.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
Unquestioning obedience? Some do, most don't.
However, you have hired the doctor to provide his (or her) medical expertise to keep you or your kids healthy. If you're unwilling to cooperate, you are hampering his ability to do that. If you're not going to let him assist you, I don't see why there's a problem with his focusing his energy on patients who will let him use his judgement to provide the best care that he can.
Note that I said cooperate---this doesn't mean blindly obey his every command. Medical care, especially for children, is something where one should be involved in the decision making. However, not /every/ choice is reasonably up for debate based on your gut instinct. Refusing to see patients who refuse vaccines basically says the doctor considers the vaccination so critical to proper care that if you're not going to cooperate on that, he cannot provide you the standard of care that he is required to provide.
If you have this much of a philosophical difference with your doctor, you don't want to be seeing him anyway, so this isn't a grave injustice. If all the doctors react this way, you might want to consider whether you are the problem.
I don't see any reason to avoid a doctor who behaves like this unless you specifically disagree with vaccination. The doctor is not under an ethical obligation to be a hero to protect every patient who walks in the door, and he may quite reasonably feel that he can do more good by working with cooperative patients than by wasting time with patients who won't let him do his job. If I had an employer who would task me with solving a problem, then discard my solution, I'd be inclined to look for work where my efforts could have more impact as well.
My mom is a nurse, and her best friend was paralyzed from the flu shot. How's that instead of a @#$@ three days of down time?
And for every person paralyzed by the flu shot a greater number have been saved by it. No one is saying vaccines don't have risks, but that the benefits outweigh those risks. There's a reason we look at statistics instead of anecdotes.
Do you have any idea how many children and others were killed by these virulent diseases? To put this in perspective, before vaccinations the list of top ten killers in this country was entirely populated by diseases which today have vaccinations. That same list today is comprised of heart disease and cancer instead of measles and mumps. These diseases kill, and when they don't kill they maim severely, or sterilize, or blind, or like polio make you paraplegic including freezing your lungs so that you have to spend the rest of your life in an Iron lung or you die.
Of course there is a higher mortality, some of the side effects of vaccinations are death. You CAN get real polio from the vaccine. But the odds of a side effect or getting the actual disease are incredibly small, in the range of 1 in a million or billion. But the odds of catastrophic results from not getting the vaccine are FAR higher. With all these vaccination avoiders there is going to be an pandemic some day and all those people who didn't vaccinate their kids are going to be burying them. Almost every one of these childhood vaccinations are diseases that kill adults that get the disease. We've already had several major outbreaks of measles that have killed a significant number of people, I vaguely recall one in a nearby state that killed nearly 700 people. If the CDC and state health officials hadn't quarantined people it probably would have went pandemic. Herd immunity is gone at this point, if you are relying on it to protect your kid you have no idea how many people are refusing vaccines.
The link you should be look at (past all the anti-vaxxer dribble) is this one - http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/vaccine-schedules-and-infant-mortality-a-false-relationship-promoted-by-the-anti-vaccine-movement/.
Horseshit.
The doctor who made that claim has been shown as being fraudulent.
There is simply no reputable evidence to believe this. But it's still propagated by people who refuse to accept that the evidence was fabricated -- but now that people believe it, you can't get rid of it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"My mom is a nurse, and her best friend was paralyzed from the flu shot."
Thousands of people's lives are saved from the flu shot and one person had an adverse reaction and suddenly it's bad?
Show me the statistics and I'll give you an answer.
Now if they find a way to genetically test if you'll have bad side-effects, I could see having that done before getting a shot.
Because willfully endangering other people to eliminate a tiny, tiny risk of discomfort to yourself makes you, basically, a selfish dick.
Not only that, having chicken pox means you can get Shingles later which if you ask anyone who has suffered from it is not a "nuisance".
Since you can be vaccinated with far less risk than actually getting infected it makes no sense not to get vaccinated.
It can also be deadly. A friend of mine gave me the Chicken Pox which, within 2 weeks, lead to bacterial endocarditis, spinal meningitis, pneumonia and Reye's syndrome. Note that the US didn't start using the Chicken Pox vaccine until 1995; it hit me in the 1970's. Fortunately my parents found the doctors I needed and I'm alive today.
I wonder how many children die every year because their parents don't want to get them vacinated.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
If that is a verifiable, true, fact then the doctor would be a fool to allow you to take a vaccine. There are exception to vaccine guidelines to account for people with weak immune systems, allergies, etc. People like you and your children should hope that people like me get all of our vaccines and keep them up to date. Our herd immunity protects you. When people like me, and the vast majority of the population for whom there is no health risk to vaccination, avoid getting vaccinated we are hurting you. There are exceptions to every rule, and people with allergies and reduced immune systems are the exception to the "everyone should be vaccinated" rule. This article isn't about people who refuse vaccines for legitimate reasons.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Are you refering to the Amish? Because they get vacinated.
http://autism.about.com/b/2008/04/23/do-the-amish-vaccinate-indeed-they-do-and-their-autism-rates-may-be-lower.htm
The idea that the Amish do not vaccinate their children is untrue," says Dr. Kevin Strauss, MD, a pediatrician at the CSC. "We run a weekly vaccination clinic and it's very busy." He says Amish vaccinations rates are lower than the general population's, but younger Amish are more likely to be vaccinated than older generations.
People aren't forced to take the vaccines and doctors aren't forced to treat patients who won't follow their directions. Sounds like a good bit of personal freedom going on to me.
This is just the doctor version of no shoes, no shirt, no service (or rather no shot no service). For the record doctors fire patients for other reasons as well, sometimes because they are drug seekers, sometimes because they don't pay, sometimes because they won't take their meds and sometimes because they constantly threaten lawsuits when they aren't able to get in touch with the doctor 24/7.
Isn't this how it's supposed to work? We come to some sort of agreement to trade goods or services and as long as it's beneficial to both parties we do business. When one party finds it no longer beneficial the relationship is severed?
They tend to "know better what is right for my child" on many
other issues. Their children come in sicker than others because
of the herbal remedies they try first and fail. "I thought
I'd clear up the pneumonia with elderberry extract"
I do not think you are the target problem group here. I assume you are talking about an egg albumen allergy, since most vaccines are made that way, with a few made in horse serum.
I have an albumen allergy in my gene pool, so we were very cautious about vaccinating my children. Thankfully it appears they do not have the allergy. That said, I do not like the vaccine regimen used in the US, where we combine many different vaccines into one shot MMR, DTaP|DTP so I opted out of the traditional vaccination program. I discussed this at length with the pediatrician, and gave my reasoning for it (too much to hit a young immune system at once with, etc.). In the end, while it means more shots, she agreed, and my kids received their vaccines over a prolonged period. Their reactions were almost non existent, whereas with normal shots a high fever is common, as is other flu like symptoms for a couple days.
As to those who do not get vaccines for no good reason (parent, has a good reason) all I have to say is this:
If you accept *every single case* of something bad that happened to a child that *anyone* attributed to a vaccine (Autism, severe reaction causing brain damage, death, etc.) at face value and compare that to the infant and childhood mortality prior to these vaccines being widely available it is still beneficial from a risk perspective to get your children vaccinated. If you remove just the obvious nutjob correlations of vaccine related issues then the risk to reward ratio is so big that the bad stuff is lost in sampling noise.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Chicken pox tends to be more severe the younger you get it.
Screw Chicken Pox, I'm worried about whooping cough, which is on the rise in the US since 2004, no doubt due to people refusing vaccines. Ten California infants died in 2010 from whooping cough even though we've had a vaccine for whooping cough since the 1920s.
The man that started the whole "vaccines kill", Dr. Andrew Wakefield, lost his medical license when it was discovered Wakefield was paid by lawyers who wanted to sue vaccine manufactures to publish a fake report claiming vaccines kill children.
Parents refusing vaccines are misinformed. Doctors are asking parents to do something to save their children's lives and protect their other patients and the parents refuse. I'd tell them not to come back too.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
You have that freedom. And the doctor's have the freedom to not deal with you if you choose to go against their best medical judgement.
Are there risks with taking vaccines? Yes, slim risks. Are there risks with refusing vaccines? Yes, BIGGER risks. Less risk = better.
You lament that your kid feels bad for 1-2 days after receiving a vaccine? How do you think she'll feel after developing polio or meningitis?
It can also be deadly. A friend of mine gave me the Chicken Pox which, within 2 weeks, lead to bacterial endocarditis, spinal meningitis, pneumonia and Reye's syndrome. Note that the US didn't start using the Chicken Pox vaccine until 1995; it hit me in the 1970's. Fortunately my parents found the doctors I needed and I'm alive today.
I wonder how many children die every year because other parents don't want to get their children vacinated.
Dear parents, please stop fucking with herd immunity!
As someone who HAD the chickenpox as an adult, I ended up in the hospital with lesions on my lungs and most of my mucosal tissue. I had them under my eyelids, on the bottoms of my feet, under my toe nails -- in fact, there was just one place I did *NOT* have them -- and for that I am eternally grateful.
Actually, while I was sick with them (106 fever), I saw on the news the NEW Chickenpox vaccine announced. I threw my shoe at the TV.
They ARE dangerous and potentially deadly.
I.E. if someone else was to get sick via a non-vaccinated person then in theory they were also NOT vaccinated. Hence they only people suffering would be those who chose not to get the shot.
BINGO, you just proved you know next to NOTHING about vaccines. It is common knowledge that vaccines are not 100% effective, estimates are usually in the 80% or so range. The way it WORKS is that if a high percentage of the population (say 80%) get the vaccine, then an estimated 64% are *effectively* immunized. This prevents the spread of the virus and causese it to die out (see smallpox, etc). I wish that second 80% were higher, but unfortunately some people are legitimately *unable* to get the vaccine due to egg allergies, compromised immune systems, recent surgeries, etc. The more people that "opt-out" of the vaccine, the LOWER that second 80% gets. Let's say that 10% of the population decides to opt-out, that brings the second 80% to 70% and the final effective immunity drops to a dismal 56%. ouch.
Refusing to get vaccinated is like an appartment owner refusing to install smoke detectors because they contain radio-active components (I know old ones did, not 100% sure on the new ones).
ok, I'll do the straight-line for you:
"no true gynecologist would see a scotsman"
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
And people have died from bad batches of apple juice and lettuce, are you going to stop drinking juice and eating salads now as well?
Let's make it a law because after all we wouldn't want people to believe they own their OWN bodies, and actually have the temerity to say what does or does not go into it.
Yes. I want this. I want to live in a society where people are forced to give up this bullshit "freedom" to refuse vaccines. I'll vote for that all day long. If you don't like it then I don't want you living in my society. Go somewhere else. Assuming we have vaccines that are scientifically vetted and tested I'd be happy to live in a society where vaccination is mandatory. Maybe you think my opinion is strong but THE FUCKING IDIOTS WHO REFUSE TO VACCINATE THEIR CHILDREN ARE MAKING THE WORLD LESS SAFE FOR EVERYONE ELSE. They're the selfish bastards...
I.E. if someone else was to get sick via a non-vaccinated person then in theory they were also NOT vaccinated. Hence they only people suffering would be those who chose not to get the shot.
You're a fucking idiot. You don't understand "herd immunity". Infants can't be vaccinated immediately, but they're susceptible to disease. Some people have health problems that prevent them from being vaccinated. Sometimes the vaccines just don't work. When the vast majority of people (the "herd") are vaccinated then enough immunity exists to prevent the disease from gaining a foothold and spreading. As soon as there are enough people who aren't vaccinated herd immunity breaks down and the world becomes unsafe for infants, those who cannot be vaccinated, or the unlucky few who the vaccine doesn't work on. If my child died as a result of a preventable disease that they contracted while too young to be vaccinated and I found out they were infected by an the child of an anti-vax nutjob I think I'd have little choice but to kill the anti-vax parents. I'm quite sure I'd have a hard time staying my hand. People who are that anti-social and selfish don't deserve to live.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
It is true that there are a very small few who shouldn't be vaccinated, for whatever reason. They don't prove vaccines are dangerous though, they're actually precisely the reason the rest of us should get vaccinated, to keep the herd immunity strong enough to protect them.
That said: egg allergies in particular are increasingly not a legitimate reason to skip being vaccinated. Manufacturers are making great strides in reducing the egg protein levels in their product (1-2 orders of magnitude in the last couple years alone). Doctors are also developing procedures for safely determining whether patients can handle them, and even when they determine they can it's standard to administer it within spitting distance of all the care needed in case of a reaction -- just to be safe.
It's important that the rest of us who can tolerate vaccinations keep the bigger picture in mind, because what's good for public health is good for all of us. Nobody will have a good time in an epidemic of some deadly disease, and knowing that disease is preventable would only add insult to injury.
Porquoi?
", the natural way is 100% life long."
no, it isn't. It's high, but 'the natural way' leads to more nutrition;which means more strains which your immune system isn't ready for... and some people do get it twice.
"The bad news is the anti-bodies are less effective from the vaccine and the benefits don't get passed on to the fetus like the natural way does."
that is nonsense.
Getting chicken pox:
Can kill you
reduce herd immunity
impacts people who the vaccines isn't effective against; as well as the elderly, and infants prior to their vaccine
Cause more mutation
Get fucking vaccinated, get your kids vaccinated.
and stop spreading your shit.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes most schools require it, but I believe you're allowed out of them for religious reasons which was the BS reason my uncle gave his son's school as to why they didn't have him vaccinated. (The real reason being they wanted an 'all natural' child. This poor kid got a concussion a few months ago and they refused to take him to the ER). School's aren't allowed to verify that one, and I imagine most parents who are against vaccines for stupid reasons use this get out of jail free card.
I have them here on my desk.
The shot makes extremely few sick, and NO ONE sick with the flu. That is NOT possible
few get sick even when the get the shot because :
A) The had already been exposed a few days prior to the vaccine
B) The get something beside influenza
C) Yes, sometimes it on'y [partial immunity because the strain is off. But it isn't that often and it certainly is a stupid reason not to get the shot.
"Vaccines only work if you irradicate the virus from the population"
Nope. If it's eradication the you no longer need the vaccine. Why do you think high level vaccination make things go away with time and not mutate?
"
Don't iradicate it, it mutates and your vaccine becomes useless AND your body can't do anything about it either."
COMPLETELY FALSE. Vaccinated people are NOT a vector for mutation. People who are not VACCINATED are a vector.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wow, you're remarkably ignorant. You'll notice the we haven't eradicated most of the diseases for which vaccines exist (smallpox is really the only eradicated disease), and yet the old vaccines remain effective. It's almost like, by reducing the number of people who can be infected, you're reducing the opportunity for mutations conveying increased virulence to occur. It's also worth pointing out that mutations don't magically make pathogens super powerful. A mutation that enables a bug to evade an existing immune response might well compromise its fitness in other ways that make it less effectives in unprotected hosts. Further, for bacterial diseases, vaccination greatly reduces the need to treat with antibiotics, which are a much more potent driver of resistance than vaccination is. If you have any actual evidence showing the flu vaccination increases the intensity of flu viruses, by all means, provide it. Of course, you point out that the virus changes with time, so it's not really clear to me how flu virus X gets worse due to vaccination for flu virus Y (technically possible, but not particularly likely). Whether seasonal flu vaccination is worthwhile outside of high risk populations is a topic epidemiologists are divided on, but pretty much everything else about your post was bullshit.
Yes there is. IN this case, people are bring in non vaccinated children into a population of sick children,. It is a high risk of illness to all there other patients, and society.
I'm sure of a child showed up in need of immediate emergency care, they would get it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
and shunned.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If my child died as a result of a preventable disease that they contracted while too young to be vaccinated and I found out they were infected by an the child of an anti-vax nutjob I think I'd have little choice but to kill the anti-vax parents. I'm quite sure I'd have a hard time staying my hand.
Wholeheartedly agree with the above
People who are that anti-social and selfish don't deserve to live.
I just felt a shudder in the Force as millions of slashdotters were suddenly silenced
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
Nice straw man.
According to Wikipedia, "On average 41,400 people died each year in the United States between 1979 and 2001 from influenza."
I'll suppose I can be a little more civil in my tone. This "issue" really peeves me, as you probably saw.
Vaccination has risks, but it also has great rewards. Your child might've died if he'd received an egg-based vaccine (or, he might've never developed an egg allergy to begin with... but that's a different debate with different science behind it). The published rates of vaccine reactions, combined with the reward for the individual and society, make me put my money on vaccination.
If your child ends up being unable to receive vaccinations I do hope that he's not horribly disfigured or killed later in life as a result of others not vaccinating their children.
Having a child means accepting risks. Living in a society that receives the benefits of vaccines and herd immunity, to me, means accepting the risks. I find it unfair to parents who accept vaccines (and expose their children to the risks) when anti-vaxers seek to be relieved of the risk by eschewing vaccines. They erode herd immunity and endangering those who legitimately cannot be vaccinated while, at the same time. They receive all the rewards of vaccination (at least, until herd immunity breaks down), are exposed none of the risks, and are actively hurting society. They are anti-social, selfish people who deserve no place in a civilized society.
The benefits to the individual and society outweigh the risks, to me, I accept that the risks are part of having a child. I'd gladly vote for legislation that made freeloading, anti-social anti-vaxers go live somewhere else.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
Part of this is also because adults don't get their recommended booster shots. The whooping cough vaccine wears off after about 20 years, as I learned when I was 26 and came down with it. Oh my goodness, that was miserable. I would feel normal for 10 minute stretches. Then I would cough violently for a minute straight, and then feel fine for another ten minutes. The recommended adult booster shot is the TDaP, which includes tetanus, diptheria, and pertussis (whooping cough.)
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Since you clearly have never read the oath, here is the relevant line:
"I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism."
Since the patrinet parent will not allow the doctor to apply the measures needed, it's the parent not allowing the Dr,. to carry out their oath.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm filing this under "textbook strawmen".
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Allergies can be overcome...
Quite often by death.
Many allergies start because of overexposure, and adding even more exposure will make the allergies worse, not go away. That belief borders on homeopathy. And homeopaths walk like a duck and talk like a duck.
A friend of mine in junior high school was killed during a baseball game. He pitched the ball, the batter hit it back, he got hit in the temple, he lapsed into a coma and died. Clearly, this means that baseball is an extremely dangerous sport and should be banned entirely.
Either that or my friend had a one in a million event happen and the entertainment benefits of baseball outweigh the tiny risk. Just as the health benefits of vaccination vastly outweigh the tiny risk.
(In case you're wondering, that story is true, by the way.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Actual recall by Ford for certain Ford and Mercury models.
I've done an initial search to attempt to validate this claim, however I can't seem to find anything readily. If you wouldn't mind providing a link to it so that I can evaluate it.
But is it reasonable for the doctor to say "you won't let me treat you for a potential X, so I refuse to treat you for an actual Y or Z either".
As long as Y and Z are not life-threatening conditions. Yes. If you refuse well-supported medical advice, then they should be under no compulsion to continue treating you.
Calling vaccines the equivalent of welding something shut so that it can't open, so that it can't fall on someone is entirely inappropriate. Vaccines are known to be effective, and the risks from side-effects are minuscule compared to the risks from what they are vaccinating against. And if you fail to acknowledge something that is harming not only yourself, but the entire population, then what good are you? How does he know if he recommends taking your antibiotics until they are exhausted, rather than just until you feel well, that you will actually take your antibiotics appropriately. How does he know that when he prescribes vicodin or oxycodone with directions not to take it with tylenol that you won't disregard his advice, and shut down your liver from an acetaminophen overdose?
It's like the brown m&m's clause from Van Halen... if you're not going to take overwhelming medical advice seriously, then why the hell are you going to go to a doctor in the first place?
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
I would love to have more clients who completely disregard my advice. People who sign contracts without reading them, people who blab their hearts out to the police and who consent to searches, people who drink and drive over and over and over again. Clients like these are my bread and butter. What's not to like?
Blow it out your ass. Chicken pox is not a required vaccine. The required ones ARE for diseases that are deadly, like Mumps which used to kill about 140,000 people each and every year.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
A doctor is going to be aware of these problems if you have albumin (or whtever it is) vaccinations. This is not what they are talking about.
They are talking about teeth-grinding retards who think exposing their children to whooping cough etc is an acceptable risk because vaccinations can cause magical autism SOMEHOW.
If you actually have a genuine medical reason ,and they do exist, for not vaccinating, then no responsible doctor would turn you away for that.
But if your unnecessarily exposing his practice , which might include immunocompromised (HIV, lukemia etc) people, to pathogens purely because of negligent stupidity, then no, the doc doesnt have to put up with that shit.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
You are unfortunately right. My father had a really nasty bout of shingles that laid him low last fall. I didn't see him for a couple of weeks during the worst of it, but he took a photo of what his shoulder looked like with the lesions and the discoloration caused by the silver-based topical medication prescribed by his doctor. I don't think a zombie ever looked as bad as that.
It laid him low, and he hasn't ever quite recovered. Chicken pox was nothing compared to this.
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
What the link doesn't tell you is that for models produced in 2000, the fix is to replace the struts with static ones. Which admittedly work perfectly fine for the purpose of preventing the injuries.
Link is strictly for 2002 models, and explicitly states that the intended repair is to replace the strut and hinges. No mention of welding is indicated.
Only if you don't factor in the risk of deadly super-strains having free reins because vaccination regimes suppress all the more benign strains who could out-compete them.
Except that vaccines work quite efficiently, and are simply our own immune system being trained to fight them. Smallpox is eradicated, and polio is pinned down to only the poorest of countries. Vaccines if applied appropriately can wipe out a virus population, and we're essentially done dealing with it.
I honestly don't expect to see a more virulent strain of smallpox popping up in 500 years, because it's been eradicated.
... [it] still doesn't give vaccination proponents the right to call all vaccination opponents crackpots. Some are, but some arrive at their conclusions from quite different reasons and perspectives.
True, however, the reasons you are presenting are irrational and unrealistic though. It's like saying that killing making mammoths extinct will result in a super-mammoth appearing in the future. No. It's extinct.
The reason that we can't pin down all diseases like we have with polio and smallpox, is that not all diseases are exclusive to humans. That makes it difficult to contain, because vaccinating wild animals is unrealistic.
That being said, Japan went on a concerted effort to eradicate rabies from their islands, which was really only practical, because they are on islands. There is not a chance that Japan will have a super rabies pop up, because there is no rabies to evolve anymore. It's gone, poof.
Or, to put it another way, I do not want cattle and fish fed antibiotics as a preventative measure, even if it saves some cows' lives right now.
The use of antibiotics for anything but medical need for treatment of medical conditions is just a bad idea, whether it is in animals, or anti-bacterial soap.
For the exact same reason, I do not want mandatory inoculations either. Use them when needed to fight actual epidemics, but no more.
That is not how vaccines work. Vaccines train our immune systems which are adaptive systems. Two people with the same vaccine will not produce identical antibodies. And the antibodies don't kill the virus anyways, they only identify the virus for the white blood cells to attack. As a result, there is an evolutionary disconnect between the antibodies attaching, and the death of the cell. As such, the evolutionary response to the human immune system is muted.
And even if vaccines were able to produce superbugs, it would be an inevitable case then, because as the human population is killed off by a super virus, it breeds an immunity, or resistance in hosts, thus resulting in the entire domain of hosts being inhospitable towards the super virus.
However, you seem to be having a fundamental misunderstanding about the mechanism that vaccines work, and attempt to analogize it with antibacterial usage, which is not actually analogous. (It's like saying cars should be worried about crashing into mountains, because planes crash into mountains.) In the same way, use of bleach will not breed bleach-resistant super bugs. It's just not how their mechanism of action works.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Sorry to hear that.
Its funny. The AC and others will think that this is a minor aliment, yet, they do not think about the fact that money was spent on this virus for a reason. Basically, it has a very high cost to society in terms of health care as well as pain and suffering. Oddly, even children can suffer from it, but rarely do. But adults? They ALL suffer from it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm unaware of people with egg allergies being allergic to the minute amounts of egg proteins present in the very few vaccines that actually have it.
The correct fix for the problem you outlined would be better allergy detection, not destroying herd immunity and letting idiot parents endanger their kids and the kids of others through self-righteous "I AM PARENT! I KNOW ALL!" arrogance. Yes, you had a kid, no you are not a doctor.
Last year when there was the final nail in the coffin of the fraud of the medical doctor who said that vaccines caused autism my youngest had his 3 month shots and checkup. So while the doctor was checking him out I started talking to him about the vaccine "issue". At first he thought I was one of the nut job anti-vaccine people as they are the only ones who typically ask about vaccines but I think he was pleased that I wasn't after the discussion got started. One of the more interesting things I found out was that the state of Minnesota tracks and scores doctors, especially pediatricians. One of the important factors that the state uses is percentage vaccinated and that a number of pediatricians were starting to refuse patients who would refuse to have their children vaccinated because it would lower their score which I guess has some effect on their reimbursement rate from the state. He also mentioned that he didn't turn anyone away even the anti-vaccination patients because for a number of his patients he was the only pediatrician near by and their kids wouldn't get any medical services if he turned them away. He still tries to convince each of the anti-vaccination patients that they really should be vaccinated but said it is difficult when you have celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, Oprah (a real powerhouse in shaping women's opinion) and others saying the exact opposite. I guess this is why celebrity endorsement works in advertising.
I have also seen people in this thread mention that public schools won't allow a kid in who hasn't had their vaccines. The truth is they will but it takes some doing and they really want all kids to be properly vaccinated for the reasons mentioned elsewhere in this thread. It is the state that sets these requirements so it takes a waiver from the state to get out from under them. Also schools are breeding grounds for disease, the kids are like little filthy plague rats
Time to offend someone