Honesty, Please.

There's a lot of talk about how stupid anti-vaccinationists are putting everyone's lives at risk. Conversely, there's a fair bit of mud-throwing at the money-hungry medical establishment dictating what we should do with our children's bodies. Suppose (for a moment!) that vaccines are generally a good thing. "You" are "the medical profession" and you would like lots of people to consent to vaccinating their children. How do you do it?

Is the way to do it to make it "mandatory" so that parents feel forced into this decision? Or let the parents decide, knowing that they may make the "wrong" choice and children will die? Ah, it's a free country, so let's decide to use force. Let's just state that "these are the shots Janey needs today" as a fact and don't allow any input into the matter. Best of all, tell the parents that "Janey needs these shots" and then present them with a consent form, never mentioning that the parents are allowed to say no. It's just a form they "have to sign." Parents are a pretty bewildered and stupid lot in that they trust you almost implicitly.


Years ago, activists started talking about thimerosol in the vaccines. How should you get people to comply with the vaccine schedule? Listen or circle the wagons? Your decision was to erect a huge "vaccines are safe and effective and we are not listening to a fringe group la la la" shield around the issue and continue to compel vaccines. I suppose you could have said, well, we think it's pretty safe but we're going to listen to the consumer, because it's important to us to have most people vaccinate, and we're going to change the shots. But you didn't, and it took about forever to get you to listen so that now most vaccines no longer have thimerosol. Meanwhile, more people began to question what you were telling them about the safety of these vaccines.


You admit in tiny print on the papers parents receive that yeah, it's a really really really really rare thing, but their kid might die. But you care! You wanted the vaccine companies to keep making vaccines cheap, and so you support the VAERS reporting system so parents can't sue the drug manufacturer when something goes wrong. Thanks for advocating for the average parent! Mwaa! And speaking of advocacy, you're able to claim that you're following law. You don't make law. (Shh... your organizations LOBBY for law, and you're rich and powerful, but you don't MAKE law... Be sure to act indignant at this idea, as though the parents are ignorant and stupid because they can't separate doctors from politicians in their teensy brains.)

How about you negotiate with insurance companies for BONUSES for pediatricians with good vax rates? The result would be one of two things: bullied parents or disenfranchised parents. Better yet, let's allow pediatricians to send letters barring from our practices the patients that don't follow every "recommendation" we give them. That will teach them that they'd better trust us next time. We know that this will also help bolster immunization rates.

When you meet with parents who have objections, be sure that you have a condescending tone and refer to "science" continually. It doesn't matter if the patient knows 200 people who experienced adverse effects. If it isn't in a scientific journal that you or your colleagues got paid to write, it doesn't count! (Shh... but be sure to go into great detail about that one kid you knew who died a horrible death from pertussis "because" he wasn't vaccinated. But tell them deaths after vaccinations are almost always something that would have happened anyway!)

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Our pediatrician sent us a certified letter quite suddenly telling us to never come back. No reason given, but at the previous appointment I was LITERALLY cornered by the doctor and nurse and asked to have my children submit to a series of shots. I did try to explain my position. I'm ok with shots, but the kids can only fight three things at once. So the DTaP would be all for today, thanks. They tried to force me to sign papers saying it's all my fault if my kids die. I'm sure it's no coincidence that, if the pediatrician wants his grubby bonus money from MY INSURANCE COMPANY, the way to do it is to kick ME out because I have a bunch of kids and that's why I received this letter. Great. MY money, working against me.


So guess what? Now I'm going to one of the few doctors in the area who will take us on our insurance given that I want to slow down the shot schedule and omit three of the 98 million "mandatory" shots. He's a regular physician and does not carry immunizations at all because he deals only with adults usually. Do you think I'm now magically "on schedule" with my immunizations? Did the treatment I received from this medical "professional" convince me to get more rather than fewer shots for my children? Do you think I'm going to go to the county health center with the interesting people so I can pay full price for the shots (they don't deal with ins. companies except Medicaid) AND wait three hours? Yeah, that's happenin'. Not to be snotty, but the behaviour I see there leaves MUCH to be desired. And that includes mine and my family's after we've been waiting forever. I think we come out with more bugs than we've prevented.


If you're accepting that shots are a "good" thing, I think the way the medical establishment markets itself is pretty crummy. How about listening to the people? How about some honesty?

If I've made factual errors in my post, I'm happy to correct them IF I receive comments that are respectful in tone and I consider the commenter to have any authority whatsoever. If my post has gotten you angry or annoyed, this probably doesn't include you.