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Sunday, January 19, 2003To which the ethicist replied: You are not being asked to endorse the president's Iraq policy but to decide if vaccination is called for in your circumstances. Believing as you do that there is no medical necessity, you have no ethical obligation to be vaccinated simply because the president urges it. As a doctor, you can judge the risks of vaccination. As a citizen of a democracy, you must decide if the president has made a persuasive case that a smallpox attack is likely enough to justify that risk. If you and your colleagues overwhelmingly reject the president's call, this may indeed be interpreted as a rebuff of his policy, but that should be a byproduct of your decision, not your reason for making it. This is precisely what is so bothersome about the campaign that many in the public health field have waged against the smallpox vaccine program. From leaking the IOM report on the vaccine to the media before giving it to the CDC or the HHS, to statements by former CDC head Jeffrey Koplan to the New York Times that “reports that secret stocks of the smallpox virus were held by such countries as Iraq and North Korea were not enough to warrant” vaccinating people, the actions and words of the public health community have been riddled with their personal politics. It doesn’t do much to bolster confidence in them. The other thing that’s worrisome about the letter to the ethicist is this: the writer, a specialist in infectious diseases according to his online resume, gives the impression that he needs to be vaccinated to care for people who have had side effects from the vaccine. He seems to suffer from the impression that the vaccine is just as contagious as smallpox. He doesn’t, and it isn’t. There’s a lot of hysteria and misinformation out there about the infectious nature of the vaccine, most of it coming from the public health community. This, too, does little to bolster confidence in them. posted by Sydney on 1/19/2003 02:36:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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