Consensual Injection

New Jerseys current vaccine policy overlooks informed consent, a patiences

authorization to undergo a medical procedure. Parents would authorize informed consent for
medical procedures on minors.
Ethics provide the raw material in building public trust. Informed consent has existed in
medical ethics for the bulk of mankinds history.
Informed consent is the process of communication between a patient and physician
that results in the patients authorization or agreement to undergo a specific medical
intervention, according to The American Medical Association.
Informed consent preserves the integrity of parental autonomy. An injections invasive
nature pushes vaccination into an ethical hotspot longing for consensus among political
exaggerations polarizing between right wing conspiracy theorists and left wing paranoid
germaphobes. The ideologies surrounding mandatory vaccinations detract from the key people
playing roles in a vaccination procedure a doctor and a patient. As with other medical
procedures, patients need dialogue.
Most patients trust the advice of their family doctors, said Michael Poreda, N.J.
employment and civil rights attorney.
Communication creates the foundation for informed consent. Health care practitioners
explain vaccination risks and benefits, while parents balance the information to produce a
decision. The process establishes a doctors credibility among his or her patients. Healthcare
workers handle informed consent through the PARQ Process: Procedures, Alternatives, Risks
and Questions.
Federal regulations require doctors to discuss risks, benefits and alternatives before
conducting a medical procedure, according to Arlan Cage, PhD in naturopathic medicine.
As an American Association of Naturopathic Physicians member, Cage follows informed
consent ethics.
All physicians should obtain signed consent from parents by providing printed
information describing the risks of the infectious diseases, the risks and benefits of childhood
vaccinations and other options. Consent forms describing such information should be provided
in a manner that would allow responsible parents to make informed decisions regarding the
vaccination of their children, according to the AANP.
N.J.s current vaccine policy hinders the traditional application of informed consent to a
medical procedure. The mandate deteriorates the appropriate dialogue between doctors and
patients in favor of regulation. The doctors sound advice yields to fallible sources distributing
misinformation. Without the information provided through informed consent, misinformation
flourishes.
Rather than engage in dialogue with parents who may have been influenced by
misinformation about the risks of adverse reactions, who distrust the government or
pharmaceutical companies that produce vaccines, the Department of Health and Senior
Services coerces fretful or suspicious parents, said Poreda.
Dialogue and informed consent protect parental autonomy while continuing herd
immunity. Opponents worry vaccine exemptions encourage parents to refuse vaccines, a
catalyst for breakouts and public health threat.
Philosophical exemptions do not threaten herd immunity, according the National
Vaccination Advisory Committee.
Society can have informed consent and respect a few refusals too. Most parents with
medical concerns, such as autism or autoimmune syndrome, hide under the religious
exemption veil to avoid mandatory vaccines. Informed consent allows doctors to address
medical concerns in an appropriate environment. Parents with true religious convictions are
fewer in number than parents using religious exemption as an excuse to opt out for medical or
philosophical concerns, according to Poreda.
Health care providers should view individuals hesitant about or opposed to vaccines
not as frustrations or threats to public health, but as opportunities to educate and inform, said
Jason L. Schwartz, professor at department of history and sociology of science, center for
bioethics at University of Pennsylvania.
A parent not consenting to a vaccine should understand the value and risk of the
vaccine and the threat level of the virus. Each vaccine varies according to the virus unique set
of DNA or RNA.
Certain vaccines, like hib and pertussis, are very important for all children who can
medically tolerate them, Poreda said. Others, like varicella and hepatitis B, are less important
for most children.
Manufacturers did not create all vaccines equally. The risks and benefits of different
vaccines require individual explanations for information consent. Parents with reservations
should understand a disease red alert, such as polio. Informed consent addresses parental
concerns before they make an uninformed jump to exemptions. A vaccines aim entails disease
prevention, not control. By using vaccines as a means to dictate parenting choices, society
drifts from the core value of immunization elimination of infectious disease. Doctors should
decide how to immunize against lethal and contagious diseases instead of politicians pushing a
full vaccine schedule on apprehensive parents. Immunization by legal coercion does not imply
health care, coercion implies control.
Keep in mind, the goal of wide spread vaccination programs was, at first, very noble
to eliminate infectious diseases and the suffering and death they caused in days gone by, Cage
said. As they have been implemented in modern times, however, most vaccinations fall short
of that goal.
Some of the N.J. mandatory vaccines fail to meet the criteria for eliminating the threat
of deadly infectious diseases the goal of vaccines. For example, hepatitis B spreads only
through bodily fluids. While the virus meets the criteria of deadly, the transmission among
children would be impossible since the disease spreads through unprotected sex and sharing
needles. The virus does not pose an immediate threat to children. A vaccine cannot eliminate
the spread of hepatitis B among children because children do not spread the virus among each
other. Hepatitis Bs low incidence rate among children nullifies the goal of eliminating the
threat of deadly disease.
The flu shot presents another example. The flu vaccine somewhat reduces the threat of
the flu, however the vaccine does not eliminate the virus threat. According to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, the vaccine for the 2013 flu season had an overall effectiveness
rating of 56 percent. The flu vaccines 56 percent rating fails to meet the goal of vaccination
eliminating the threat of deadly disease.
Chicken pox provides another example of mandatory vaccines detracting from the goal
of eliminating the threat of infectious diseases. Chicken pox easily spreads among children,
however the virus can hardly be considered deadly. Before the varicella (chicken pox) vaccine,
about 55 children died out of the 3 to 4 million cases of chicken pox each year, according to
Jane Seward, CDC Division of Viral Diseases deputy director. The vaccine fails to meet the goal
of eliminating a deadly disease.
While the aforementioned vaccines make life easier, the vaccines hardly reduce death
and suffering from once deadly and highly contagious diseases. If the goal of mandatory
vaccines provides a means to end suffering from diseases, the goal falters. A parent should
have access to vaccinations, however forcing immunizations causes the public to forget why
society has vaccines. Instead of backing parents into a corner to sign religious waivers as an
only escape route from their children having unnecessary proteins injected into their bodies,
perhaps the focus should shift to helping parents understand the most important vaccines -
once threatening deadly diseases. The overwhelming vaccine schedule causes parents to reject
vital immunizations. Parents apprehensive about hepatitis B injections opt out of entire
schedules causing children to miss vital vaccines, like scarlet fever. Informed consent would
remedy misinformation and uninformed decisions.
The common adage bears relevance: People fear what they do not understand. Care
takers must provide the information and controlled environment for vaccines, as a medical
procedure. Government recommendations based on valid research should stay as
recommendations, not mandates. The politics of mandatory vaccines produces vaccine
backlash from a misinformed public failing to recognize the original goal of vaccinations.
Mandatory vaccines deny the right to parental autonomy, thereby failing as a means to end the
threat of deadly communicable diseases. Informed consent offers the framework to educate
the public on vaccines and preserve parental autonomy.