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Indiana Nurses Fired After Refusing Flu Shots On Religious Grounds
Hugh Pickens writes writes "ABC News reports that Indiana University Health Goshen Hospital has fired eight employees after they refused mandatory flu shots, stirring up controversy over which should come first: employee rights or patient safety. The fired nurses include Joyce Gingerich and Sue Schrock who filed appeals on religious grounds. 'I feel like in my personal faith walk, I have felt instructed not to get a flu vaccination, but it's also the whole matter of the right to choose what I put in my body...' adding that she has not had a flu vaccine for 30 years as a result of a choice she made because of her Christian faith. Over the last several years, hospitals have been moving toward mandatory vaccinations because many only have 60 percent vaccination rates says Dr. William Schaffner, chair of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Schaffner adds that nurses in particular tend to be the most reluctant to get vaccinated among health care workers, 'There seems to be a persistent myth that you can get flu from a flu vaccine among nurses,' says Schaffner. 'They subject themselves to more influenza by not being immunized, and they certainly do not participate in putting patient safety first.' But Jane M. Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, says the scientific case for flu vaccine mandates is very weak and that there is no evidence showing that vaccinated workers are less likely to transmit virus. 'The scientific and religious concerns are in a sense backward,' says Orient. 'Advocates of the mandate are full of evangelical zeal and are quick to portray skeptics as wicked and selfish. It's like a secular religion, based on faith in vaccine efficacy and safety.'"
I had to pee in a cup to get my first job. I didn't like it but I wanted the job.
> But I'm just not seeing the connection to TECHNOLOGY on this story.
Medicine is technology.
Deal with it.
Furthermore, there are different types of nerds. There are medical nerds too, just as there are astronomical nerds, chemistry nerds, and computer nerds. Would it be nerdy to have a tattoo of caffeine on your arm if you're a pharmacy tech, student, or registered pharmacist? You betcha.
There are model railroad nerds too.
Nerds are everywhere.
OB Topic:
If you are a nurse, your first priority is to not harm patients. This means you should prevent yourself from being a carrier of diseases that can kill, and the flu kills thousands of people every year. There is no excuse except actual allergy, and if that's the case, you should be assigned to push more paperwork as an RN during flu season (LPNs aren't allowed to push as much paperwork).
The accusation that flu vaccine proponents are "just as evangelical" as the anti-vaxxers is an IKYABWAI argument better left for the elementary school recess playground.
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BMO
Is Dr. Orient wrong? Is there evidence that immunized workers are less likely to transmit the virus.
'Flu is transmitted (among other routes) by airborne water droplets. It also causes the sufferer to cough and sneeze (thus spraying such droplets).
It's hardly conclusive, but based on those facts I find it a little hard to believe that the vaccine (which will prevent the coughing and sneezing) has no effect on transmission...
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People say that you get the "flu" from the flu vaccine because "flu" has become such a generic term for being ill. People say they have the "stomach flu" when they have norovirus or food poisoning of some kind. They say they have a "touch of the flu" when they have a cold. They don't realize that influenza is a specific illness that has a very specific set of symptoms. This is a pet peeve of mine.
That being said, many of the symptoms of the flu or a cold are caused by your immune system's own response to the virus rather than the virus itself. A vaccine causes an immune response too. Some people really do feel slightly unwell after getting a flu vaccine or any other vaccine. This is why they say it gives them the flu: because they don't define the flu properly, and because the vaccine really does make them feel under the weather. If you look at the side effects of the vaccine, they do somewhat resemble the flu (although they're much milder):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_vaccine#Side_effects
I don't personally get the flu shot because I don't get the flu that often anyway, and I figure I'll just take my chances. But it's completely reasonable to expect healthcare workers to be vaccinated when they're dealing with some groups of people who are particularly susceptible to the flu.
The language is a bit archaic; but Locke really nailed it in his 'Letter Concerning Toleration':
"In the next place: As the magistrate has no power to impose by his laws the use of any rites and ceremonies in any Church, so neither has he any power to forbid the use of such rites and ceremonies as are already received, approved, and practised by any Church; because, if he did so, he would destroy the Church itself: the end of whose institution is only to worship God with freedom after its own manner.
You will say, by this rule, if some congregations should have a mind to sacrifice infants, or (as the primitive Christians were falsely accused) lustfully pollute themselves in promiscuous uncleanness, or practise any other such heinous enormities, is the magistrate obliged to tolerate them, because they are committed in a religious assembly? I answer: No. These things are not lawful in the ordinary course of life, nor in any private house; and therefore neither are they so in the worship of God, or in any religious meeting. But, indeed, if any people congregated upon account of religion should be desirous to sacrifice a calf, I deny that that ought to be prohibited by a law. Meliboeus, whose calf it is, may lawfully kill his calf at home, and burn any part of it that he thinks fit. For no injury is thereby done to any one, no prejudice to another man's goods. And for the same reason he may kill his calf also in a religious meeting. Whether the doing so be well-pleasing to God or no, it is their part to consider that do it. The part of the magistrate is only to take care that the commonwealth receive no prejudice, and that there be no injury done to any man, either in life or estate. And thus what may be spent on a feast may be spent on a sacrifice. But if peradventure such were the state of things that the interest of the commonwealth required all slaughter of beasts should be forborne for some while, in order to the increasing of the stock of cattle that had been destroyed by some extraordinary murrain, who sees not that the magistrate, in such a case, may forbid all his subjects to kill any calves for any use whatsoever? Only it is to be observed that, in this case, the law is not made about a religious, but a political matter; nor is the sacrifice, but the slaughter of calves, thereby prohibited."
Someone who exercises state power('the magistrate') may not either enforce or forbid specific religious practices without doing unjust violence to the religious liberty of others. However, merely attaching the stamp of 'religious practice' to a given action does not render it immune from magisterial power, so long as that power is exercised uniformly, and for the purposes that the magistrate is justly responsible for.
In this case, it would be clearly unjust(and unconstitutional, since the intellectual grunt work on the constitution was mostly done by Lockeian enlightenment types) to, say, suppress the 'Christian Scientists' for their curious abstention from most modern medicine. However, it would in no way be unjust to impose a uniform requirement on all medical workers in close contact with patients that they be immunized against common and dangerous infectious diseases, regardless of whether their objections are religious or otherwise.
Strawman/car analogy FAIL There ARE laws against driving in a such a way to "infringe on the rights of others", so nobody is allowed to drive a car that way.
There SHOULD be laws against religion having any kind of sway over the science that is healthcare. If your religious views conflict with that, drive a bus.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
A good point well made. Many people treat these questions as if they have obvious answers, but they don't.
However, I would like to add my voice in favour of mandatory vaccinations. This may seem like a severe position to take, but I simply do not see any rational argument for allowing someone to refuse it.
- Vaccines work. Nobody can deny this. There are years of data in various countries showing that getting your flu shot is statistically a good idea.
- If at some point, our understanding of the subject is good enough that we can say, "don't take vaccine X if you have gene Y or condition Z", then that must be factored in. At present, if we don't have such information, the best guess we can make is that the vaccine is a good idea for the person.
- One must raise the question of whether anyone has the right to risk getting an illness themselves. i.e., can I refuse the MMR shot and risk getting measles, mumps or rubella? Me getting a serious illness, needlessly, is just a waste of resources, which could be put towards patients with unavoidable ailments. I don't see why I should be allowed, without a damn good reason.
- Is there any good reason? The article says that the vaccine was refused on religious grounds. What religious grounds, exactly? "Religion" is not a method for making arbitrary personal decisions.
- Finally, if a valid argument can not be produced for why someone should be allowed to refuse it, I believe the remark:
there is no evidence showing that vaccinated workers are less likely to transmit virus
should also be considered as
there is no evidence showing that vaccinated workers are more likely to transmit virus
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