by Patrick Appel
Sydney Spiesel considers the choice that pediatricians like him face when dealing with anti-vaxxers:
What do we do about vaccine refusers? It’s a difficult question. If we don’t allow unimmunized kids in our practice, where will they get medical care? That’s the reason that many (though I’m not sure how many) pediatricians allow unimmunized kids in their practice. But others refuse to see any patients whose parents won’t vaccinate them.
Spiesel’s stance:
Personally, I draw the line at vaccines protecting against diseases that kids might catch from exposures in my office.
If parents want to withhold protection from hepatitis B or cervical and oral cancer, I think it’s not so smart, but I’ll still care for their children because not even the friskiest teen is likely to transmit these diseases in my office. Measles? Whooping cough? These are another matter. My sense of responsibility to the health of the vast majority of kids coming to see me says “no.”
I didn’t come to this decision easily. After all, it’s the parents, not the children, who make the choice to avoid vaccines—what is my responsibility to those kids? Maybe I’m deluding myself, but I sort of believe that my clear policy may be beneficial to them, too. It’s a statement of how important I think immunization is (and why I think so). It encourages families to think about responsibility to others in the community. And it sometimes provokes people to rethink the question. (I’ve had families who left my practice because of my policy, but later came back, perhaps in spite of it—or perhaps, finally, because of it.)
Recent Dish on anti-vaxxers here.
The Dish 