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from the and-the-oscar-for-vaccine-education-goes-to... dept.
Catherine Saint Louis reports at the NYT that according to a survey of 534 primary care physicians, a wide majority of pediatricians and family physicians acquiesce to parents who wish to delay vaccinating their children, even though the doctors feel these decisions put children at risk for measles, whooping cough and other ailments. One-third of doctors said they acquiesced “often” or “always”; another third gave in only “sometimes.” According to Dr. Paul A. Offit, such deference is in keeping with today’s doctoring style, which values patients as partners. “At some level, you’re ceding your expertise, and you want the patient to participate and make the decision,” says Offit, a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases. “It is sad that we are willing to let children walk out of our offices vulnerable to potentially fatal infections. There’s a fatigue here, and there’s a kind of learned helplessness.”
Part of the problem is the lack of a proven strategy to guide physicians in counselling parents. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a solid evidence base in terms of how to communicate to patients about vaccines,” says Saad Omer adding that although he does not sanction the use of alternative vaccine schedules, he understands why primary care physicians keep treating these patients — just as doctors do not kick smokers out of their practices when they fail to quit. Dr. Allison Kempe, the study’s lead author and a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Colorado, thinks the time has come to acknowledge that the idea that “vaccine education can be handled in a brief wellness visit is untenable” and says that we may need pro-vaccine parents and perhaps even celebrities to star in marketing campaigns to help “reinforce vaccination as a social norm.” "Whether the topic is autism or presidential politics," says Frank Bruni, "celebrity trumps authority and obviates erudition."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2015, @12:59AM
"But, they don't get to go to school with my kids until they're vaccinated."
Take your kids and move to some hellhole where human rights are not respected then. Mexico is close and you will love their vaccination laws.
On the other hand, if you prefer to enjoy the benefits of living in a free country, there is a price to pay for that - respecting the freedoms of others.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by KilroySmith on Thursday March 05 2015, @02:03AM
"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.", Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
When your children become a clear and present, and easily resolved, danger to my children, we have a conflict. When all of civilized society except for a small cadre of either ignorant or bellicose people (see what I did there?) pose a danger to the rest of us (and there?), civilized society has the right to ostracize that cadre. I will not tell you that you must vaccinate your children; I will tell you that not doing so is foolish and ignorant, is a danger to them and others, and that you are wrong for not doing so. I will agitate to keep that hazard out of the public schools used by my children and the others of civilized society.
You are welcome to disagree with me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2015, @08:03AM
For your context there's no significant danger to your kids assuming your own kids are vaccinated before they go to school.
The danger is if your children aren't old enough to be vaccinated AND are exposed to the disease. It's not really analogous to fist swinging, and closer to drinking alcohol and drunk driving.
Assuming you vaccinate your kids as per schedule, I'd say your children have a higher chance of being killed/crippled by a drunk person than by disease spread by an antivaxxer. And yet alcohol consumption is still legal. Same for other legal but potentially dangerous stuff.
So unless you show me evidence/proof that the risk to children of vaxxers is higher from antivaxxers than from other idiots allowed to do legal stuff I'd say antivaxxers should be allowed the freedom to be idiots just as other idiots are.
Otherwise you're being just as irrational over the safety of children as the antivaxxers are.
As far as I'm concerned there are already 7 billion people on this planet. So a small percentage of children dying isn't a huge problem, especially if they are mostly from the antivaxxer groups.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 05 2015, @01:10PM
So unless you show me evidence/proof that the risk to children of vaxxers is higher from antivaxxers than from other idiots allowed to do legal stuff I'd say antivaxxers should be allowed the freedom to be idiots just as other idiots are.
An excellent example of both the Shifting The Burden of Proof and False Equivalence fallacies. Well done!
Two logical fallacies in one sentence. What do you do for an encore?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2015, @12:14AM
For your context there's no significant danger to your kids assuming your own kids are vaccinated before they go to school.
Some people have genuine medical issues that prevent them from being vaccinated, and for others sometimes the vaccine just doesn't take, this is why herd immunity is important, and anti-vaxxers contribute to weakening or even breaking of herd immunity.
As far as I'm concerned there are already 7 billion people on this planet. So a small percentage of children dying isn't a huge problem, especially if they are mostly from the antivaxxer groups.
Personally I rather that children didn't suffer because of their parents stupidity.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday March 05 2015, @03:50PM
"When your children become a clear and present, and easily resolved, danger to my children, we have a conflict."
But these children are not a 'clear and present danger' - they are healthy children and your only objection is that they have not been vaccinated against some rare diseases that you are irrationally afraid of.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2015, @08:26PM
It is not an irrational fear, or has the measles outbreak totally slipped past your attention.
Your kid can get sick with measles and be spreading the disease to others before anyone has any idea that he is sick. That is a fact.
I dont really care of your kid gets vaccinated, if he/she gets sick and die it is completely your fault. I do not feel you should be allowed to send these kids to public schools though. Especially during an outbreak!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2015, @09:13PM
If you're afraid of the measles, you should be unable to move about on or near public streets for fear of being one of the 40,000 yearly fatalities.
Since I presume you do expose yourself willingly to the dangers of the public roads, your fear of rare diseases is indeed irrational.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday March 06 2015, @10:34PM
From the CDC: "During 2001–2012, the median annual number of measles cases reported in the United States was 60 (range: 37–220), including 26 imported cases (range: 18–80). The median annual number of outbreaks reported to CDC was four (range: 2–16)."
(http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6236a2.htm)
The only mention in that document of fatalities is negative, that is to say, it appears that between 2001 and 2012 the fatalities from measles were zero.
Again from the CDC: "For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die from it."
(http://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/complications.html)
So with our median 60 cases a year, and figuring one or two as 1.5 (probably too high) we get *9/10ths _of a percent_ chance* of a single fatality each year.
The USA population in 2012 was 314.1Million, which means your chances of infection would be approximately 1.91E^7:1 and the chances of dying from it approximately 1.72E^8:1.
Now compare this to driving. In 2010, there were an estimated 5,419,000 crashes (30,296 fatal crashes), killing 32,999 and injuring 2,239,000 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year.) The same math yields a chance of injury in a car crash at about 7.24E^3 and chance of death in a car crash about 1.05E^4, which is to say that your chance of death in a car wreck is an incredible FOUR ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE greater than the chance of dying of measles.
Heart disease is actually the most likely cause of death in the US, at least another order of magnitude more likely than a car crash. You (and your kids) are FAR more likely to die from poisoning, or complications from surgery, accidental drowning, a deadly assault, or any number of other things that we do not normally worry very much about, than measles.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?