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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: 2) by Leebert on Thursday March 05 2015, @02:51PM
Indeed. I'm by no means an anti-vaxxer, but I routinely refuse the flu vaccine because of how I react to it. Once or twice I can dismiss as anecdotal, but I worked for a hospital for years where flu vaccines were mandatory, and I'd invariably spend the following couple of days feeling miserable. In some cases, it was every bit as bad as actually catching the flu, so it seemed fairly pointless.
That said, I did recently make the decision that I'd go ahead and give it a try next year since it's been probably 15 years since I've last tried it.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 05 2015, @07:28PM
I haven't had the flu vaccine in years because most sources seem to say that it doesn't really work because the strain that ends up going around isn't the strain that was in the vaccine for that year. Plus I'm healthy and rarely get sick.
However, I did get the flu vaccine several times in my late teens, and I remember one time I got it and promptly got horribly sick, with a fever. I lied down, and then about 3-4 hours later, I felt fine. I guess my body thought it had caught the flu and reacted accordingly, until it realized the virus was dead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 05 2015, @07:50PM
Maybe try the live-attenuated vaccine FluMist instead. Maybe the typical inactivated egg-origin vaccine is the problem.
If you interact with any elderly family or friends, then maybe you should weigh dealing with a bad reaction with the risk of infecting them.
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Thursday March 05 2015, @08:04PM
Hence my statement of deciding to try it again next year. I decided to take an altruistic approach instead of a self-defense approach. We'll see how it turns out.