From ABC News:

Medical experts at the annual American Academy of Pediatrics meeting said there are cases when it’s ethical and legal for pediatricians to ‘fire’ a patient who refuses vaccines.

Experts said pediatricians struggle to cope with a growing number of parents who fear a link between autism and vaccines despite adamant statements to the contrary from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Centers of Disease Control. The experts say some pediatricians face an ethical dilemma because they feel that the parental concerns about vaccines conflict with their responsibility to protect the safety of the patient and other patients in the office. In those cases, experts say it is not unreasonable for pediatricians to recommend that the patient switch to another provider.

Dr. Steven Abelowitz, director of the Coastal Kids clinic in southern California, said it used to be rare for patients to express concerns about vaccines. Now he says doctors in his clinic “deal with vaccine concerns 10-20 times a day,” with the big change coming after Jenny McCarthy appeared on TV.

Abelowitz said the major concern about keeping unvaccinated children in a practice is the risk it poses for other children, particularly for “young babies who are under the age of 2 months who are not vaccinated.”

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 1:07 pm and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, autism, medicine, vaccine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post