I was happy to read that this isn't 100% comedy. Doctors are actually refusing to serve patients that won't vaccinate.

From Quartz:
If you don’t believe in vaccinations, then your doctor might not accept your child as a patient.

Some practitioners want to protect patients who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons. Others feel it’s their responsibility to mark parents’ opposition to vaccination as unacceptable.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) provides guidelines and documents to help pediatricians deal with parents who refuse to immunize their children. The guidelines include a sample letter a practice refusing to accept unvaccinated kids may share with their parents, which include very direct statements:

By not vaccinating your child you are taking selfish advantage of thousands of others who do vaccinate their children, which decreases the likelihood that your child will contract one of these diseases. We feel such an attitude to be self-centered and unacceptable.

My only complaint about this is the camera work. Otherwise, spot on.

how short our memories: https://ms10rk7.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/smoking_01.jpg

Wow, this just such bullshit. I can't believe they would produce something so utterly irresponsible. Public health is important, yeah, but this crosses a line....spoiling breaking bad is just not cool

*talks, *latenight - beautifully executed!

Adding video to channels (Latenight, Talks) - requested by Zawash.

Is it just me or does the guy at 4:33 look like Willem Dafoe? Kind of acts like him too lol.

I vaccinated my daughter, but let's not kid ourselves, *general practitioners* are not the end-all-be-all of medical knowledge and, collectively, they make wrong diagnoses and mistakes all the time. For instance, my family doctor prescribed Flovent to my daughter when she was less than a year old, yet the manufacturer's literature clearly states not to give it to children under a year of age. My father was prescribed a drug for a medical condition which should not be given to patients that have atrial fibrillation - he questioned his cardiologist about this and was told not to take the medication. Good thing he didn't just rely on his other doctor's infallible judgement (and yes the other doctor was aware of his heart condition.)

Most general practitioners are likely not at the forefront of medical research; I'd much rather trust the advice of a medical researcher or specialist in the field. I trust our well-tested vaccines, but that doesn't mean future vaccines might not carry unknown or unexpected risks (see Pandemrix).

I'm not sure how serious they were about not treating patients that refuse to vaccinate their children, but up here in Canada, I'm not sure that would fly. I'm not sure a GP can refuse to treat a parent because they refuse to vaccinate their child; it would be an interesting case to see argued in court. It has something to do with the way the Human Rights Code is defined: physicians must provide services without discrimination, which may be in conflict with their moral beliefs.

The thing is, even with the mistakes, you're still better off trusting the system.

When wearing seat belts became a legal requirement in the UK a lot of people argued that in some crashes not wearing a seatbelt allowed the person to escape the car faster and not get burned to death, or that it allowed them to be thrown from the vehicle to land safely while the car flew over a cliff and so on and so on. Yes, there will be some cases where the seat belt kills you. Every crash is different. That's not a reason to not wear a seatbelt though. In the vast majority of cases it will be beneficial to you and you don't know what type of crash you're gong to have before you have it.

Doctors make mistakes, yes. But the very fact that people are living longer and longer, and survival rates for just about all diseases are increasing shows that they make way more good calls than bad.

I understand your point that we probably shouldn't just blindly trust what a person in power tells us, but the media (ever keen for controversy) have put across this idea that the doctors have their opinion and you have yours, and they're equally valid. They aren't.

Question the doctors by all means, that's fine, but when you get an answer backed up with mountains and mountains of real evidence you need to accept it. Unless of course you can produce good quality peer review evidence to counter their evidence, then you have my attention.

The big issue here is scientific illiteracy amongst the general population. People are mislead by the press at every turn and don't understand how scientific research works. The fact that in America chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee wrote a book denying climate change is mindblowing. The message it sends about ignoring science is horrific.

I can't help but think things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. Until the press stop creating problems like the antivax movement and start reporting science properly we're just going to go further and further down the rabbit hole.

(My post is written to the world at large, I'm pretty sure Digitalfiend understands my point. I just used his post as a bit of a jumping off point for my rant!)

*controversy

Adding video to channels (Controversy) - requested by MrFisk.

Yep, I understand and agree with your comment.

I think part of the problem is that people aren't going to the source for their information regarding the outcomes of studies, etc. I think many people see click-bait and end up getting linked to sites that seem legit but almost invariably tout homeopathic remedies, have a "flu beating" supplement or book to sell you or harbour some other ulterior agenda. These sites often quote studies but fail to provide citations.

I'd further argue that since many people have a distrust of corporations/government and most have an instinct to protect themselves and their children, there is a tendency towards confirmation bias when they are doing their research.

With that said, we still need to be aware that new information from studies is surfacing all the time and questions about safety or efficacy should not be ignored.

I don't think they are refusing to treat people on the grounds of moral belief, but on public health grounds.

It's not like saying "I won't treat gay people because they're sinners" and more like saying "if you have a contagious disease, please don't come to the waiting room and spread it".

You can seek the advise of more than one GP and compare.

By their very title, GPs don't even claim to be the end all of medical knowledge They are in place to ensure the specialists (who are already severely booked) are not swamped with unnecessary work for common treatments, like vaccination.

This also isn't an issue that may vary between doctors or one they can have lack of knowledge about (like your fathers issue). This is a long standing, historically proven treatment.

I know you're not against vaccination but my point is, there's no need to muddy the issue with unrelated treatments where you weren't diagnosed 100%.

Jimmy Kimmel's Update on the Anti-Vaccination Discussion has been added as a related post - related requested by Zawash on that post.