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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.
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.
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.
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.
On the contrary, the doctor has avoided harm to his other patients. Every new born baby or person with a weakened immune system is at risk from the preventable infections his unvaccinated patients bring into his 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.
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?
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.
. . . 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?
What is this, The Godfather? What "adverse threat" (i.e., harm) is the doctor putting on the patient? And is that any greater or lesser than the threat the patient is putting on themselves. Pediatricians aren't putting severed horse heads in their anti-vax patients' beds. They are simply ending a relationship that is a liability to their practice, and trying to send a forceful message to their patients that they are (in the doctor's opinion) making a big mistake. If the pediatrician hasn't been able to persuade the parent that vaccines are a good idea and that Jenny McCarthy is a moron, then it is probably for the best for both parties to go their separate ways. It is not like patients are without options: "firing" is not a universal practice, nor one endorsed by the profession as a whole; there are always other doctors, and probably some more sympathetic to their vaccine concerns. We aren't talking about acute cases, either: if an emergency shows up, the doctor will still care for them.
This is not an uncommon thing among professionals: here is my advice, take it or leave it, but if you leave it, don't expect me to clean up your stupidity.
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?
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.
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...
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
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/
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.
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
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.
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.
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"?
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.
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
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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
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.
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.
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
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."
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.