Some doctors helping anti-vaccine parents get medical exemptions
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Alyssa Hernandez often worries about her 2-year-old son, Noah, when they leave their Sacramento, California home. The little boy, who had a liver transplant when he was 6 months old, cannot get vaccinated against a number of diseases, including highly contagious measles , because his immune system is suppressed due to the transplant.
“I’m scared to take him out,” Hernandez said. “I’m scared to have him go to school, because you don’t know what’s around.”
As parts of the U.S. experience some of the worst measles outbreaks in years — largely due to parents who don't vaccinate their children — that fear is understandable. The World Health Organization has ranked resistance to vaccinations as one of the top 10 threats to public health in 2019.
In California, an increasing number of parents are finding ways to avoid immunizations for their children, with the the surprising assistance of medical doctors, a recent study found.
Despite a California law passed after the 2015 Disneyland measles outbreak that got rid of the "personal belief" vaccine exemptions for children entering school, pockets of low vaccination rates have developed in the state. A number of counties are reporting rates lower than 90 percent, the number needed to achieve herd immunity , which occurs when enough people are vaccinated against an infectious disease to protect others in the community who are not.
That is likely due to a surge in medical exemptions— a doctor's note allowing a child to go to school without the required vaccinations, according to research published October in the journal Pediatrics . In some schools the medical exemption rate is as high as 20 percent, according to the California Department of Public Health.
California parents opposed to vaccinations have found a way around the law, with help from doctors willing to write medical exemptions for kids who don’t need them. The Pediatrics study found some medical exemptions were being given with inadequate justification, such as “family history of allergies and family history of autoimmune disorders.”
'SELLING' MEDICAL EXEMPTIONS
The study revealed that the exemptions were being generated by doctors who don’t normally treat children and were “coming from physicians who were charging fees.”
While some doctors appeared to charge a single fee for a permanent exemption, the researchers discovered that some were giving temporary exemptions, say for three months at a time, and then charging a new fee for each additional exemption.
State Sen. Dr. Richard Pan, a pediatrician who represents California’s 6th district, blames a “handful of doctors” for eroding the impact of the vaccination law through the exploitation of a loophole.
“To grant a medical exemption, you don’t actually have to give the very specific reason,” Pan explained. “You have to cite which vaccines you’re giving the exemption for, and the period of time the exemption actually lasts. We’ve known people to call some of these doctors who don’t even require an exam or evaluation. You pay the money and they will give you the medical exemption.”
Even when specific reasons are provided in the medical exemption, the conditions cited don’t jibe with the science on vaccines, said Dr. Erica Pan, interim Alameda County Health Officer and a clinician professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco. Pan is not related to Dr. Richard Pan.
When vaccination rates fall , children like Noah Hernandez who can’t get their shots either because of compromised immune systems or young age are at risk, she said. In the case of whooping cough, “infants don’t get fully vaccinated until after infancy,” Pan said. “They are at the highest risk for hospitalization or even deaths. They need for the general community to be protected.”
Richard Pan doesn’t mince his words when he talks about the doctors “selling” exemptions: “The thing we need to recognize is that many of the physicians who have broken their oath, they’re doing it for their own pocketbook. It’s not based on their expertise. They’re monetizing their license,” he told NBC News.
An internet search found a number of physician sites aimed at parents opposed to vaccinations.
One listed “vaccine choice doctors by state,” while others invited parents to learn more about exemptions.
A site run by Dr. Kelly Sutton claims: “Finally…The Step-by-step Program to Help Protect Your Child from the ‘One Size Fits All’ California Vaccine Mandate!”
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I don't know what I find more amazing about this story. The stupidity of supposedly smart people, that they believe a debunked British study? The selfishness that they could be hurting someone else's child? The ends they will go to, to get around the law, (which seems to me like it should be illegal)? Or the fact that they are risking their own children's lives? What the heck goes on in California?
Vaccination is a victim of its own success. Today's parents in industrialized nations have never had reason to fear their child ending up in an iron lung, or dead from polio, or born with severe birth defects because the mother was exposed to rubella during pregnancy. We're so pampered that we have to invent dangers, and end up allowing our imagination and others' manipulation of it to endanger our kids.
I have to agree with that.. the problem is the danger is very real now.
Some time back there was a episode on ''Law and Order'' when a parent refused to get their kid vaccinated and it caused an outbreak of a disease and a few children died. They pressed murder charges against the parent that refused to vaccinate their kid.
I know it's fiction, but it certainly does open an avenue in real life.
I would have to agree. These vaccines work because of herd immunity and these idiots are endangering all of us.
I recall a story from a number of years ago in Canada about parents who were of a certain religion refused to have their child vaccinated and the child died of a disease that would have been prevented by the vaccination. What they said afterward was that it was God's will.
That's just as bad as parents who refuse medical intervention for their kids because of their religion. They think prayer cures illness and whatever happens is because of God.
This goes right along with this story to come out this weekend -
People have forgotten that measles kills. 1 in every 20 children gets pneumonia and swelling of the brain. Death rate even with the vac, is about 100,000 children a year under the age of 5 in the western world.
IMO, these doctors are practicing fraud and should be prosecuted.
And it sounds to me like California needs to tighten their exemption rules. I wouldn't see a doctor that would give out exemptions willy nilly
Have to agree with that
I caught measles as a baby before I was old enough to be vaccinated. I believe Mom said I was 7 months old. I was exposed to a family friend who had measles, but didn't have any signs yet. When my fever got high, my doctor had me admitted to the hospital undiagnosed (no rash yet). So I was in the hospital nursery with a bunch of other unvaccinated babies until I developed a rash and was diagnosed. Then I was isolated, but it's hard to tell how many babies were exposed to measles through me, because somebody who should have been vaccinated wasn't.
Even the mumps is not a joke. I got the mumps when I was 3 because there was no vaccine yet. My cousin was living with us at the time and I gave it to him. He had low sperm count because of that.