BECAUSE MURDERERS DON'T HAVE A RIGHT TO AN ACCOMPLICE:

The Doctor Is Out—to You: Pediatricians are encountering parents who refuse vaccinations for their children, prompting the doctors to show them the door (David E. Gumpert, 5/16/07, Business Week)

Shirley Reese, a mother of six, was thrilled last fall when she learned that her small town of Iron Mountain, Mich., was getting a full-time pediatrician. She quickly made an appointment to bring in her oldest son, nine-year-old Samuel, because of some concerns she had about his performance in school, as well as problems with his tonsils and adenoids.

By the time she left the appointment, she recalls, "I was crying." It had nothing to do with the pediatrician's assessment of Samuel. Rather, it was because Samuel's tenure as the pediatrician's patient had lasted less than an hour.

The pediatrician, Alexis Wolfe, had told Reese she should find another physician for Samuel because she refused to accept the doctor's recommendations to administer several vaccinations for the boy. Reese says she has another son who is autistic, which she thinks may have been brought on by vaccinations. "I'm not going to brain-damage any more of my children by having them vaccinated," she says.

Reese isn't alone. While no one knows exactly how many doctor-patient relationships are going up in flames, the number appears to be growing, and seems most commonly to be occurring among pediatricians over the issue of vaccination. In a survey of 302 pediatricians published a year-and-a-half ago in Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, 28% "said that they would ask the family to seek care elsewhere" for "refusing specific vaccines," and 39% said they would do so for families refusing all vaccines.

The brain damage appears to be a hereditary matter.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 15, 2007 12:00 AM