Doctors “Fire” Patients Who Refuse Vaccines For Their Children: Ethical?
The Autism News | English
Won’t get your kid vaccinated? You’re fired.
That’s the extreme step some pediatricians are taking when it comes to dealing with parents who won’t get their children vaccinated over concerns the injections cause autism or other side effects. The Wall Street Journal reports that these doctors are fed up and would rather rid the family from their practice than have unvaccinated children risk infecting other infants or sick children in the waiting room.
Dr. Scott Goldstein, a pediatrician at Northwestern Children’s Practice in Chicago, is one such doctor. He told CBS This Morning, “If you don’t believe in the fundamental thing we believe in, then you need to go somewhere else.”
Doctors to vaccine refusers: Go somewhere else
And he’s not alone. A survey by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found 25 percent of pediatricians have fired patients for refusing vaccines, according to CBS This Morning.
“Most people my age have never seen a case of polio or measles but when we ask our parents or grandparents they remember it very well,” Goldstein said. “This is the best way to protect our kids.”
But don’t doctors take an oath to help all patients? The American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines even state, “Pediatricians should avoid discharging patients from their practices solely because a parent refuses to immunize his or her child. However… the pediatrician may encourage the family to find another physician or practice.”
Dr. Arthur Caplan, professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, told HealthPop that fundamentally, this issue isn’t exactly new. Doctors have always had problems getting patients to listen, whether it’s getting them to take a medication or lose weight, and he doesn’t’ see the vaccine debate as any different. But he said since this issue involves children – often infants – then it should be an opportunity for doctors to try even harder to convince parents, rather than turning them away.
“Doctors do have a duty to try and work to improve patient behavior,” Caplan said. “But there’s a lot of bad behavior out there, you can’t walk away every time someone does something you don’t want.” He said turning away an unvaccinated child could be especially troublesome if the child lives in a town with only one pediatrician.
What about the risks for other children?
Dr. Yoram Unguru, a pediatric hematologist and oncologist at the Herman and Walter Samuelson Children’s Hospital at Sinai in Baltimore, who also happens to be bioethicist at Johns Hopkins University, knows first-hand the risks of an unvaccinated child going into a doctors office. He treats children with cancer who have compromised immune systems, so if a kid comes in with chicken pox because they’ve never been vaccinated, that could kill another child. What does he think about doctors firing patients?
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