Posted on 02/15/2012 1:10:19 PM PST by FewsOrange
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.
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, and a recent survey of 909 Midwestern pediatricians found that 21% reported discharging families for the same reason.
By comparison, in 2001 and 2006 about 6% of physicians said they "routinely" stopped working with families ...
Most pediatricians consider preventing disease through vaccines a primary goal of their job. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and AAP issue an annual recommended vaccination schedule, but some parents ask if their child's immunizations can be pushed back or skipped altogether, pediatricians say. While rates for several key inoculations in young children rose between 2009 and 2010, according to the CDC, lower immunization rates have been blamed as a factor in U.S. outbreaks of whooping cough and measles in recent years.
Parents often voice concerns about autism or that their child's immune system may be overwhelmed by too many vaccines at once. Worries about a link between vaccines and autism arose because some parents noticed their children regressed, or lost some skills, around the time of their vaccinations at two years of age. Another concern centered on the former use of mercury as a vaccine preservative.
Numerous studies since have dispelled these concerns among scientists. Rather, scientists say, it is more likely that autism symptoms begin showing up around the same age children are vaccinated.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I liked the Monopoly-grid features of Oklahoma City and Broken Arrow, although it was more scenic up to the north where you are.
But frankly I tell everyone....you don't want to move here. The wild hogs are everywhere...
The chiggers are like the size of small frogs, the ticks are the size of mice.
The weather is horrible....colder than a whores heart in the winter...and hotter than the Sahara during the summer.
Nothing grows in the red dirt! Twisters and earthquakes every time you turn around....
DON'T MOVE HERE!!!
LOL! Come on, couldn’t we be “repatriated”? Don’t you need more Republican voters?
The Scout camps at Zink Ranch over west of Tulsa got peacocks to eat the ticks. Of course, they still had tarantulas as big as my hand and numerous as army ants.
We were out there once and the Cub Scouts found a tarantula. Before the adults realized it, my then 2-year-old (Sally, an Oklahoma native) had picked it up and was petting it. “Nice spider! My nice fluffy spider buggie!” She made friends with a scorpion on another camping trip there.
Ha!!
I hate scorpions....They give me the creeps. I sat in a nest of them this last hunting season......Never got bit, but I killed a few of them buggers. Ha!!
Best FRegard's...........
“I’m just curious to know if any of you have a limit.”
30 shots between birth and age - what? 18?
If that’s what the best medical science recommends for kids to avoid life-threatening illness, I’m comfortable with that.
Let me turn it around....on what basis do you recommend a different course of vaccination than that recommended by medical science (recognizing that science changes based on available data) for life-threatening illnesses?
From the pro vaccination organization Immunization Action Coalition.
Why was the U.S. polio immunization recommendation changed from OPV to IPV?
The change to an all-IPV schedule in the United States occurred because the few cases of polio that were occurring (8-10 per year) were caused by the OPV vaccine itself and not the wild virus.
But, as I asked, how many more would you be willing to go along with? Suppose the number reaches 40? Or 50? The point is, everyone has a limit.
Let me turn it around....on what basis do you recommend a different course of vaccination than that recommended by medical science (recognizing that science changes based on available data) for life-threatening illnesses?
I don't recommend a different course of vaccinations, nor do I try to discourage anyone from being vaccinated. People are free to make their own informed medical decisions (as long as they're not denying medical care to a child who actually does have a life-threatening illness or injury).
For the record, I spent the past year as practically a full-time patient myself. My team of doctors is top-notch, and I did almost everything they wanted me to do. But, in the end, this body is mine (as one surgeon pointed out), so I have to weigh the options and make the decisions. Sometimes doctors disagree with each other, and we, the patients, have to decide whose advice to take. Sometimes good doctors are wrong - no one is perfect - and through the years, there have been times my children have been misdiagnosed and/or have received the wrong treatments. So, we as patients and parents need to ask questions because the decisions are ours to make. (BTW, ironically, with the latest change in the vaccine schedule, my kids received all of the shots except for a couple of booster shots, plus a couple of vaccines that were not required until recently, anyway.)
I never claimed medical science is infallible.
It just uses the best data it has.
With Vaccines, much of the variability is due to statistical analysis, modeling and such. They shoot for some level of immunity in the general population with a certain course of shots. Sometimes they find that the immunity is better than predicted, sometimes they find certain vaccines are more effective than others, etc.
If you’d have them ignore that data, fine, but it is the right thing to do, in my opinion, to keep studying and make adjustments when data says you can meet the same goal of immunity with a different course of action.
As for the rest of medicine, much of it is of the “lookup table” variety, not requiring a huge amount of creativity - match the symptom with the pill. But it’s the stuff that doesn’t fall into that where they earn their money - and surgeons - well they earn their money with a trail of success.
I do not advocate anything but vaccines for life-threatening illness. I generally do not get flu shots - because the flu, for me, isn’t life-threatening. I didn’t get my kids the chicken pox vaccine - because it’s life-threatening in only very unusual circumstances.
The childhood diseases that can be vaccinated against should be - and unless you have something better on your side, you should just follow the vaccine schedule. The risk of complication for shot vs illness is ridiculously one-sided in favor of vaccination.
All of the doctors we have worked with so far have no problem with the fact that we do not vaccinate...and they even comment when they see our children that they are some of the healthiest they have seen.
How would you ever know? Medical records are supposed to be private. My experience has been that the un-vaccinated tend not to need doctor care as often as those that are vaccinated (from conversations with parents). I would think that you would have more contact with un-vaccinated folks at schools, stores, sporting events, church, etc...would you take you business elsewhere?
I don’t know what I don’t know...can’t make decisions on what I don’t know...no point in worrying.
Hypothetically, I might know by the doctor’s stated policy.
I sure can’t do much about the herd, so I don’t worry about that, either.
Live and let live, as much as possible.
As well as diseases carried by vaccinated children...
I have never heard of a doctor who has stated that they do not advice vaccination (but their might be a small quantity out there)...so yes you would most likely never know...so your original statement really is a none starter.
“...so I don’t worry about that, either.”
Being on the other side of this conversation I would agree...I cannot change the full herd so it is not something that I should worry about. My biggest concern of one of my children becoming ill happens when we go to the doctor office...where the majority of the people are vaccinated...and yet still need the doctor's help...
First of all, I hope I am interpreting your question correctly.
That said, here goes: A doctor's office is uniquely different from establishments like the “local Walmart, bank, church” etc; in that it is for the express purpose of providing for the medical needs of the community. You cannot receive these medical services w/o visiting the office of a doctor or similarly licensed health professional.
Many people who are chronically ill w/certain types of diseases; or, those who require immunosuppresive drug therapy (such as transplant patients), cannot be effectively immunized; therefore, they must rely upon “herd immunity.” So, if someone arbitrarily refuses to be vaccinated they create a greater risk of infection to those who have suppressed immunity.
I am not a physician; however, I would imagine that any doctor who takes his/her Hippocratic Oath seriously (i.e.: “above all do no harm”) would strive to provide an office environment that was as safe as reasonably possible for their patients.
If a physician knowingly allowed a patient with suppressed immunity to be exposed to individuals who were not properly vaccinated that might constitute an ethical violation. In addition, I would imagine that in our highly litigious society, no doctor wants to place himself/herself in a position that would create a significantly greater risk of being sued for malpractice.
Take care,
-Geoff
I understand the difference of the doctor office but those same people that go to the doctor normally also go to the bank, walmart, and church...making contact with the same people that they would make contact with at the doctor office...a lot of the people leave the doctor office and go to walmart to fill the prescription.
The main part of my question was actually about the assumption that the un-vaccinated are at the doctor office do to an illness that they could have been vaccinated for. People go to the doctor office for several reasons...some of them go to get vaccinated...which be the way means they are not vaccinated at the time they are sitting in the waiting room.
“Many people who are chronically ill w/certain types of diseases; or, those who require immunosuppresive drug therapy (such as transplant patients), cannot be effectively immunized; therefore, they must rely upon “herd immunity”
And do most of these people become ill with exposure to illness that we have vaccines for...or is a common cold more commonly the larger danger. If so, wouldn't a better solution be separate waiting rooms for people in this condition?
Especially the unvaccinated dead ones.
Agreed. The medical community has a responsibility to provide us with the latest information.
I do not advocate anything but vaccines for life-threatening illness. I generally do not get flu shots - because the flu, for me, isn’t life-threatening. I didn’t get my kids the chicken pox vaccine - because it’s life-threatening in only very unusual circumstances.
Right there, it sounds like you've been doing exactly what many of us on the other side of the debate have been doing. More below...
The childhood diseases that can be vaccinated against should be - and unless you have something better on your side, you should just follow the vaccine schedule.
The doctors around here would say that your kids are not fully vaccinated - because they didn't have the chicken pox shot. The chicken pox shot is the one doctors have lectured me about. They seem to forget it wasn't even required until recently. (Ironically, I have agreed to the chicken pox shot, so there's at least one shot you've declined that I've agreed to.) Other parents are just doing what you and I have been doing - listening to what the doctor says, considering all of the information, and then making their own informed decisions.
Lately, I've noticed even more shots have been added to the immunization schedule - such as Hep A and Rotavirus. I just counted - there are now 28 shots recommended for children just between birth and age 6. And 25 of those shots are given before age 18 months. That's why parents are starting to balk:
As a side note, I went along with whatever the doctors advised until one day: One doctor (and the nurses) had been assuring me my children were caught up on all of their immunizations. Then a second doctor in the same office told me they weren't and tried to insist on giving them more shots before I checked with the first doctor. That's when I finally put the brakes on.
Correction on my last post #238: I counted again - it’s actually now 29 vaccination shots by age 6, not including the flu shots which are also recommended.
That's not how science works. You can't separate the good effects from the bad effects of vaccines.
Nobody is suggesting that the smallpox and polio vaccines didn't work to minimize these diseases. The question is at what cost, and is the cost sufficient to try for a vaccine against sniffles.
We know that things like mercury and aluminum in the body have downsides. We know now that there are bacteria as small as viruses that cannot be filtered out of vaccines. We know via mouse experiments that giving vaccines to very young mice can eliminate any defense against later infection, rather than enhance it. What we need now is a much better view of what the risks are before we start bombarding new--borns with lots of vaccines.
You can't point to one accepted fact like vaccines eliminated smallpox and project that onto the question of what the cost/risk is for vaccines and how that compares to the risk for getting a vaccine against sniffles.
There have been vaccine shortages because some makers ran afoul of government quality rules. Let's hope the next vaccine you get wasn't made the day before such a shutdown.
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