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Nurses In Australia Face Punishment For Promoting Anti-Vaccination Messages Via Social Media (medicalxpress.com)
HughPickens.com writes: Medical Express reports that nurses and midwives promoting anti-vaccination messages in Australia could face punishment including being slapped with a caution and having their ability to practice medicine restricted. Serious cases could be referred to an industry tribunal, where practitioners could face harsher penalties such as having their registration suspended or cancelled. The Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia released the vaccination standards in response to what it described as a small number of nurses and midwives promoting anti-vaccination via social media. The statement also urges members of the public to report nurses or midwives promoting anti-vaccination. Promoting false, misleading or deceptive information is an offense under national law and is prosecutable by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. "The board will consider whether the nurse or midwife has breached their professional obligations and will treat these matters seriously," the statement said. However Dr. Hannah Dahlen, a professor of midwifery at the University of Western Sydney and the spokeswoman for the Australian College of Midwives, worries the crackdown may push people with anti-vaccination views further underground. "The worry is the confirmation bias that can occur, because people might say: 'There you go, this is proof that you can't even have an alternative opinion.' It might in fact just give people more fuel for their belief systems."
Good.
Implement this in more countries please.
There was actual harm done because of the sticky stupid of antivaccine activists, so of course their Board will purge in response. People who make themselves allies of the first Horseman of the Apocalypse (Pestilence/plague) do not belong in the healthcare business.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
WTF is the point of spending years training to become a nurse / midwife if they just decide to ignore evidence of the efficacy of vaccination and promote woo? Anyone pushing antivax nonsense should be barred from practicing as a nurse or midwife. It should be that simple.
When you say we can't trust any vaccines, that's not a sound professional opinion. However, when you jump into attacking people who don't want to get Gardasil (which is far less safe than most vaccines) or Anthrax (many military veterans have had serious problems with it) because we can trust the Polio and MMR vaccines you're even worse than the anti-vaxxers. Know why? Because all it takes to disprove an anti-vaxxer is show the real harm that the core vaccines that are battle-tested prevent. Some science popularizing elitist wingnut who borrows from the legitimacy of those vaccines to hound people who don't accept that vaccines as a category are safe (because no medicine as a category, is categorically safe) is directly tying the reputation of proven medicine to unproven medicine.
To quote Isaac Asimov who put it more eloquently than I can: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
I'm actually getting sick of these anti-science whackos like you that think scientific discussion should only be what YOU approve. If you can't defend your position with scientific proof, you don't have a valid scientific position and are a fraud depending on censorship and name calling instead.
I think the idea is what the organization licensing and paying for said nurses to be licensed approves of. They can say whatever they want, just not as a representative of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia. Free speech changes quite a bit when you are representing more than your self.
We have this idea in free society that people are entitled to their own opinions and the government should not force people to believe one thing or another. And it’s not like we lack precedents where totalitarian governments actively suppress ideas that might disrupt their regime. So we do need to keep in mind that indvidual people should be free to be wrong and be assholes. That kid in the gorilla costume at Tennessee State was an asshole, but should he be brought up on criminial charges? We need to ensure that “assholes” are not summarily suppressed. Richard Dawkins acts like an asshole but he’s still right about evolution.
Now, when it comes to these nurses, the situation is entirely different. They are entitled to their *personal* opinion. But this is a matter of professional activity. In their capacities as nurses (even on their own time), they represent their employers. As a CS professor, I could be dismissed for a wide range of inappropriate behaviors in my “personal life,” including hooking up with an undergrad and making offensive and racist statements on social media. I can maintain my right to express an opinion, and my employer can exercise their right to not be associated with someone who does not represent their core values. (Although, I will say that I’ve heard that BYU won’t grant tenure to anyone who they see as not sufficiently “Mormon,” and I think that’s reprehensible, so there is some room for debate on this, which is why we have courts.)
There’s also not much room on this subject for “personal opinion.” Science doesn’t have answers for everything, but all attempts to show a solid link between vaccines and autism have failed, and those attempts have been numerous. This isn’t based on a single publication with no replication studies. This topic has been beaten to death. It be shown that their statements are factually wrong. They are also not researchers in this area. If they were, then they would be in a position to conduct further studies to see if they could prove a link. Instead, they are just talking out their arses.
Even more important, they are putting people in danger. And that’s what this is all about. The benefits of vaccines are not in dispute, and the risks are minimal and nebulous. When your scientific illiteracy puts people in danger, you need to be stopped.
Are you or have you ever been an anti-vaxxer? If yes, you are blacklisted.
Sounds like you think resorting to McCarthism is ok as long as you agree with the reasons for it.
Its "McCarthyism", and such an interesting term since the head of the anti-vaxxer movement is one Jenny McCarthy, a woman who isn't a doctor, and her main claim to fame is that she has photos taken of her while not wearing clothing.
You mistake politics for science. "McCarthyism" was a modern day witch hunt, using early cold-war paranoia about communism to advance a political carreer. It destryed the lives of a number of people, including it's perpetrator.
Anti-vaxxing is an unscientific plan to take advantage of the emotional aspects of children with disabilities by blaming it on an unrelated activity. Oddly enough, it ignores that unvaccinated children sometimes die as a result of its adherents.
It isn't politics - its science.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Have you ever seen scientific study of the full schedule of vaccines in a double blind?
No and you haven't either. Conducting such a study would be hugely unethical because it would involve exposing large numbers of people to preventable diseases with known means of prevention. Double blind studies are ideal when possible but there are plenty of other valid means of studying diseases without resorting to double blind studies.
A vaccine may be safe, but the full schedule of vaccines has NEVER been studied.
Not true at all. It has been studied extensively. Furthermore there is substantial empirical evidence than any safety concerns about the full schedule of vaccines is a very small effect if it exists at all.
Now, tell me. where is the actual science on the full schedule of vaccines?
In the clinical studies for each and every vaccine and diseases that could conceivably be related to their administration. I suggest you go speak to an epidemiologist since you are in need of a clue about this. I'm sure they'll be happy to fill you in.
In other words, do you have scientific proof that a full vaccine schedule is safe. Until then, you're just sciency not scientific.
Yes we do have proof that a full vaccine schedule is safe. Scientific proof in the form of a measurably healthier populace and hugely reduced incidence of disease with barely any measurable side effects despite copious studies about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.