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posted by janrinok on Wednesday March 04 2015, @11:11PM   Printer-friendly
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."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday March 05 2015, @07:44PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday March 05 2015, @07:44PM (#153617)

    She shouldn't refuse to treat you just because your weight is too high, but she should warn you about it and advise you to do something about it. However, unless you're actively arguing with her and telling her that obesity is healthy and all this medical science saying people should be height/weight proportional is a big conspiracy theory by the diet food industry, that's not a reason to refuse to treat you. It's like going to a mechanic and him telling you your engine needs new rings, and you refusing because it's not in your budget; he's advising you of the best way to care for the car, but financial realities prevent that, and it might make more sense for you to just drive it this way for a while and save up for a new car, as engine work is very expensive and the car may not be worth that much. It's the same with fatness: actually doing something about it is easier said than done, requires time and effort, and worse (unlike cars where things are much more simple and straightforward than human biology) some treatments might not even work for you.

    However, if you're 400 pounds and you insist obesity is healthy, and are trying to reach 800 pounds by eating as much lard as you can stomach, I'd say that's a case where the doctor should just refuse to treat you because you obviously don't believe in their advice. Same goes for pediatricians; anti-vaxxers shouldn't even bother going to them, since they obviously don't value their expertise, and think they know better.

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