Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Medical Sign Off proposal can seem quite reasonable at first glance due to the false assertions and assumptions made by the proponents of the bill. False assertion / assumption: There is ignorance based usage of the PE, which could be swayed in a 10 minute office visit The idea that any parent exercising a Phil Exemption (PE) is not familiar with the mainstream concepts of the purported safety, necessity, and effectiveness of vaccines is absurd. Everyone is under a constant barrage of that information, from the time they start school and ongoing through adult life in the media. No parent is thickly thinking, I have never heard of this, therefore I am not going to do it, where having the universally promoted concepts explained to them would result in an aha moment. The bulk of the parent committee testimony described parents who had started out with full faith in vaccination, and only began to question when they personally experienced or witnessed a family member or friend have a reaction to a vaccine. The exercising of a PE, and going against all of the cultural momentum is a very difficult decision to make, and not done lightly. This is illustrated by the fact that there are so FEW PEs, and that they are typically for only a single vaccine, illustrating a thoughtful approach, not an ignorant wholesale rejection of vaccination. No parent is ignorant of the represented risks and benefits of vaccines. They simply do not agree with the representations for their personal situation, either through experience or research or some combination of the two.
In summary, if the State truly considers this to be a matter of education there are much superior ways to provide that education than an HCP consultation. The information the state considers to be essential for parental review can be delivered online, by dvd or cd, or even classes at county health centers.
Consider, is this truly about Public Health? 360 Children out of 6,695 Kindergartners have a Philosophical Exemption on file. There are 273 schools offering Kindergarten with enrollments from 1 to 130. 253 schools have 4 or less children with exemptions. 134 schools have ZERO children with exemptions.
These slides are from a meeting of vaccination managers trying to troubleshoot "vaccine hesitant" parents. Their conclusion- the clinical setting is very poor for trying to educate or influence parents. So why is a Health Care Provider consult being promoted by these same people as workable? The reality is this will only result in very problematic interactions between Parents and Health Care Providers.
This slide demonstrates the difficulty of trying to have a vaccine safety conversation with a conventional HCP. Many HCPs consider questioning vaccine policy as a challenge to their authority in recommending appropriate health care. Do you want your HCP providing information, or asserting authority in directing your health care decisions? Dont these slides from CDC sources identify that the HCP sign off is not a solution, but instead a recipe for problematic HCP / patient interactions?
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In what context can too much information is a detriment?
1/3 of DR.'s feel no obligation to disclose medical errors. 40% do not feel the need to disclose financial ties to drug or device companies. Is this who we want in charge of vaccine exemptions?