Q & A: Dealing with Overzealous Doctors

Yesterday a mom on Great Mothers Questioning Vaccines posed this question:

...how do I tell the doctor I'm not vaccinating? We have decided not to but then when they asked I chickened out and simply said we were delaying them for now. What do you tell the doctor when they ask you why you aren't vaccinating? I hate feeling like a little kid in trouble and I don't know what to say!

That got me to thinking, since doctors are always complaining about having to answer parents' questions about vaccines and only having a few minutes for each patient how about if, instead of settling for the "vaccines have saved millions of lives" canned five- minute speech, we leave the baby at home and let them take about three or four hours to go over each and every vaccine. They can tell us the nutritional factors that affect each illness, the mortality declines occurring before and after vaccination, the risk groups that most of us don't fall into that worsen illnesses etc. Faced with having to spend time defending these vaccines lets see how anxious they are to continue to harass us about them.

"Vaccines, really? Lets set up a time when you can take several hours out of your day to explain all this to me."

Q & A: Vaccination Disclosure

Today's question is taken from the Agoura Hills Patch and comes from Lauren Rifenbark, who is a mother of a toddler:

Before I had my son almost two years ago, I never gave any thought to the issue of vaccinations and the fact that some parents choose not to vaccinate their children. Now that I have a toddler, who has not yet completed his schedule of childhood vaccines and does not have full immunity to many preventable illnesses, it is difficult for me to ignore recent outbreaks of measles and whooping cough. When we visit the local indoor playroom or the park, I can't help but wonder if any of the kids my son is trading slobber with is unvaccinated. This brings me to my question for the day: Do you believe that parents who choose not to vaccinate their children have an obligation (moral, ethical, or otherwise) to notify other parents of their decision?

Thanks for the question Lauren

The answer is "No". Parents who choose not to vaccinate their children do not have an obligation  to notify other parents of their decision.

As to your fears, remember, while you haven't completed the entire schedule (and due to teen, preteen and adult vaccines your child never will) you can rest assured you have vaccinal immunity to pertussis and the measles. Measles protection is purported to be very good -- so the next time an American returning from Sweden attends your play group your child will be protected. In regards to pertussis, the vaccine's protective ability is rather limited: it lasts perhaps five years.

Returning to the question of whether or not I should tell you about my child's vaccination status, the question may soon be moot. (Perhaps the government will require unvaccinated children to wear shirts saying "I'm not vaccinated" or have patches sewn on their clothing indicating the same.) But, as to the situation at hand, you have every right to ask parents and they have the right to either answer you or not. (Personally, I'd have no problem sharing that information) But, I'm curious, do you ask every adult with whom your child comes into contact with if they've had their flu shot and their adult series of boosters?

Finally, on a tangential note, what's particularly interesting about the question is that it reveals the Machine's fear mongering having its desired effect of scaring parents and creating and us (vaccinated) against them (unvaccinated) mindset