Tag: misinformed consent

How Do You Provide Informed Consent to Vaccination?

When you take your child to their pediatrician, you expect to be given all of the information you need to help you make good decisions about their care.

Whether it is about an antibiotic to treat an ear infection, the need for an MRI if your child is having severe headaches, or weaning off an asthma medication, etc., you deserve to be well informed of the risks and benefits of any and all procedures they have.

How Do You Provide Informed Consent to Vaccination?

Of course, informed consent also applies to vaccinations.

It's not an "informed consent form," but the Vaccine Information Statement can help you get informed consent before getting vaccines. — It’s not an “informed consent form,” but the Vaccine Information Statement can help you get informed consent before getting vaccines.

How do you provide informed consent to vaccination?

Provide the latest edition of the appropriate Vaccine Information Statement (VIS) before a vaccination is given. Although these aren’t actually “informed consent forms,” they are required to be given by federal law and because “cover both benefits and risks associated with vaccinations, they provide enough information that anyone reading them should be adequately informed”
Give parents/guardians the chance to take the VIS home to review later.
Answer any questions about the vaccine that their child is about to get.

Hopefully you always get informed consent before your child is vaccinated.

You should also get informed consent before skipping or delaying any of your child’s vaccines, as it risks their getting a life-threatening vaccine-preventable disease and puts others at risk, all without any extra benefit.

“At trial, the parent and physician both acknowledged that the vaccine was recommended, but the parent stated that the risk of death wasn’t mentioned during the discussion.”
Document ‘informed refusal’ just as you would informed consent

Believe it or not, a pediatrician in California was successfully sued after a parent refused to vaccinate their child with Prevnar and their infant died of pneumococcal sepsis, which the vaccine could have prevented.

Although they realized that their pediatrician had recommended the vaccine and they refused it, they claimed that they didn’t realize that their baby could die without it. He did…

Myths About Informed Consent and Vaccines

Not surprisingly, many folks get the idea of informed consent to vaccination wrong.

For one thing, unless it is required by state law, no one has to sign a consent form before getting vaccinated. Many pediatricians and clinics do have you sign that you received the VIS, although federal law does not require this signature.

And informed consent doesn’t come from reading a vaccine’s package insert, as the parts pushed by anti-vaccine folks are just things included from voluntary reports and have not actually been proven to be caused by the vaccine.

“Now that case one is settled, I can go back to being loud and proud about my belief that every single patient should receive complete informed consent prior to vaccinations. This two-year period of silence has been tough. I will not rest until every single family has been given access to full, complete, objective, and un-doctored information that makes every parent fully aware of the risks they accept if they don’t vaccinate their child, and all the risks they take if they do vaccinate their child. Period. And I will fight against mandatory vaccination laws until they are no more. When every single person on this planet has access to informed consent, and can make a free choice, I will then be able to say my work is done.”
Dr. Bob Sears

When Dr. Bob talks about vaccines, do you think he mentions the parents who skipped the Prevnar vaccine and then successfully sued their pediatrician for not warning them that their baby would die?

Dr. Bob Sears actually reassured parents that measles wasn't deadly in developed countries, neglecting to mention the dozens of people who have died in outbreaks in Europe - another well-nourished population with lower vaccination rates than the U.S. — Dr. Bob Sears actually reassured parents that measles wasn’t deadly in developed countries, neglecting to mention the dozens of people who have died in outbreaks in Europe – another well-nourished population with lower vaccination rates than the U.S.

Overstating the side effects and risks of getting vaccinated, rarely or ever mentioning the benefits of vaccines, and underestimating the complications and risks of life-threatening vaccine-preventable diseases isn’t informed consent.

It is actually misinformed consent.

It is propaganda.

It is a tool that some folks use to scare you away from making the right decision to vaccinate and protect your kids.

Parents deserve informed consent about vaccines. Unfortunately, that’s not what they are getting from the modern anti-vaccine movement.

How Do Anti-Vaccine Folks Think?

Does it sometimes seem like anti-vaccine folks are speaking a foreign language?

It definitely seems like they misunderstand and misuse a lot of scientific terms, like evidence, research, and toxin, doesn’t it?

Anti-Vaccine Glossary

The first step to understanding someone who is truly anti-vaccine and unnecessarily puts their kids at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases, might be to understand how they misunderstand most things about vaccines…

Measles is highly contagious, which is likely why all of the Brady kids got sick. — Anti-vax folks get the message of the Brady Bunch measles episode all wrong…

For example, many of them believe that anecdotes and case studies are strong evidence and on par with the preponderance of evidence that has shown that vaccines are safe, effective, and necessary.

What other terms do they get wrong?

When you say…	Anti-Vaccine folks think…
research	I googled it and found something on an anti-vaccine website that confirms what I already thought
peer review	I had my anti-vaccine friends, some of whom are actually in charge of the journal, take a look at it
personal stories	can only be anecdotal vaccine injury scare stories, but never about regretting a skipped vaccine or personal stories about vaccine-preventable diseases
aluminum	mercury
consensus	my anti-vaccine friends on Facebook
shills	anyone who supports vaccines
pediatrician	a vaccine pusher
science	pseudoscience
learn the risk	learn the exaggerated risks of vaccines that I’m going to scare you about
expert	anyone who agrees with me
unavoidably unsafe	vaccines can’t ever be safe to anyone in any circumstance ever
toxin	anything and everything that sounds sciency
placebo	pure saline
chemical	anything that isn’t natural, not understanding that everything is a chemical
scientist	anyone who took a science class in high school or college
doctor	typically a chiropractor
medicine	non-evidence based therapies that don’t involve Big Pharma, aren’t covered by insurance, and are likely very expensive
risk	can only come from a vaccine, never from skipping or delaying a vaccine or from a vaccine-preventable disease
shedding	what happens when someone gets a vaccine
vaccine injury	anything and everything bad that happens to you in the days, weeks, months, and years after you get vaccinated or in the days, weeks, months, and years before you were born because of the vaccines your parents or grandparents received
religious vaccine exemption	I just don’t want to vaccinate and protect my kids, so will lie and say it is about religion
vaccine preventable disease	since many anti-vaccine folks don’t really think that vaccines work, they might act more confused if you use this term
informed consent	when I tell you all of the bad stuff about vaccines, most of which isn’t true, and leave out any talk of benefits
leaky gut	explains every major problem kids have after getting vaccinated
MAPS doctors	the new DAN doctors
VAERS	a list of vaccine-injuries
herd immunity	doesn’t exist, but can only happen from natural immunity
hiding in the herd	what used to protect unvaccinated kids, until more and more folks started listening to us to our anti-vaccine propaganda
package inserts	can be used to scare parents about SIDS and autism
do your research	go to an anti-vaccine forum or website
cherry picking	what does picking cherries have to do with vaccines???
natural immunity	easy life-long immunity without any consequences
vaccine choice	I want to do it my way, no matter how many choices I have
germ theory	germs don’t cause disease and if they did, vaccines didn’t stop them, it was better nutrition and sanitation
homeopathy	vaccines don’t work, weekly chiropractic adjustments can keep you healthy, and natural immunity is best, but buy some homeopathic vaccines anyway
essential oils	definitely not being sold as part of a multi-level marketing scheme
monkey pox	just smallpox renamed
Guillain-Barré Syndrome	just polio renamed
roseola	just measles renamed
SIDS	a vaccine injury
vitamin K	a vaccine to be avoided
cognitive dissonance	how we sleep at night after skipping or delaying vaccines and leave our kids unnecessarily unprotected from life-threatening diseases
Andrew Wakefield	“…Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ rolled up into one.”

Get it?

It’s why many people have a hard time talking to friends and family members who are anti-vaccine. And even visits to the pediatrician to talk about vaccines don’t always go so well.

Myths About Warnings and Adverse Reactions in the MMR Package Inserts

Have you heard that the MMR package insert “contains 42 paragraphs of warning and adverse reactions?”

And some of those warnings include “seizures, encephalitis, pneumonia, deafness, death and MEASLES?”

Measles? From the measles vaccine?

Myths About Warnings and Adverse Reactions in the MMR Package Inserts

Is that really in the MMR package insert?

Package inserts aren't so scary once you learn what's really in them. — Package inserts aren’t so scary once you learn what’s really in them.

Let’s see, 42 paragraphs of warning and adverse reactions???

Nope.

Anti-vaccine propaganda is not informed consent.

The Warning Section, which lists all adverse reactions and safety hazards that may occur after getting a vaccine and what you should do if they occur, actually only contains five paragraphs!

There are 23 more paragraphs in the Adverse Reactions section, but as most folks understand, this section includes clinical trials experience, postmarketing experience, and voluntary reports, so it is not always possible to establish a causal relationship to vaccination for the adverse effects listed here.

What does the MMR package insert say about seizures, encephalitis, hearing loss, and death?

“Measles is also known as rubeola. It is a serious illness. Measles virus can be passed to others if you have it. Measles can give you a high fever, cough, and a rash. The illness can last for 1 to 2 weeks. In rare cases, it can also cause an infection of the brain. This could lead to seizures, hearing loss, mental retardation, and even death.

Mumps can also be passed to others. This virus can cause fever and headache. It also makes the glands under your jaw swell and be painful. The illness often lasts for several days. Sometimes, mumps can make the testicles swell and be painful. In some cases, it can cause meningitis, which is a mild swelling of the coverings of the brain and spinal cord.

Rubella is also known as German measles. It is often a mild illness. Rubella virus can cause a mild fever swollen glands in the neck, pain and swelling in the joints, and a rash that lasts for a short time. It can be very dangerous if a pregnant woman catches it. Women who catch German measles when they are pregnant can have babies who are stillborn. Also, the babies may be blind or deaf, or have heart disease or mental retardation.”

So the package insert is telling folks to get vaccinated and protected to avoid seizures, encephalitis, and death. Why don’t anti-vaccine folks ever mention that part of the package insert?

Don’t listen to anti-vaccine propaganda about vaccine package inserts.

Learn the risk of misinformed consent and following bad advice – leaving your kids unvaccinated and unprotected.

More on Myths About Warnings and Adverse Reactions in the MMR Package Inserts

Learn the Risks of Falling for Anti-Vaccine Propaganda

If you are on the fence or hesitant to vaccinate your kids, it might not be easy to recognize that the vaccine information that you get on some sites is pure propaganda.

That’s unfortunate, because you can’t make an informed choice about vaccines if you are basing that decision on misinformation.

Learn the Risks of Falling for Anti-Vaccine Propaganda

Take the infographic about the number of vaccine doses children in the United States normally get. Learn the risks of following bad advice about vaccines.

It is designed into making you think that kids get 72 doses of vaccines, scaring you and trying to reinforce the myth that kids get too many vaccines.

Have you seen and fallen for that trick? Did you ever think to actually count the total vaccine doses they list? As you can see above, it doesn’t come out to 72 doses…

But why do they do it? If they really think their “vaccines contain toxic chemicals” argument is convincing, then would it matter if the number of vaccine doses was 11 or 53 or 72? Why inflate it to make it wound scarier?

Still, however you want to count the number of doses of vaccines kids get today, one thing is crystal clear – they get protection from more vaccine-preventable diseases.

In 1983, kids may have only have gotten 11 doses of vaccines, but many still died from Hib pneumonia and meningitis, epiglotitis (Hib), pneumococcal pneumonia and meningitis, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, chicken pox, and meningococcemia, etc.

“for those trained in pediatrics in the 1970s, Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b) was a horror.”

Walter Orenstein, MD

Today, unless you decide to skip or delay your child’s vaccines, they are protected from these diseases.

What about the flu? Kids still die with the flu, but it is important to keep in mind that most kids who die with the flu are unvaccinated.

That’s why it is important to get your kids vaccinated. Don’t take the risk of following bad advice.

What to Know About Learning the Risks of Anti-Vaccine Propaganda

It is important to to learn the risks of falling for anti-vaccine propaganda – leaving your kids unvaccinated, unprotected, and at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases.

Learn the Risks of Following Bad Advice

Who do you turn to for health advice?

Even if it’s your pediatrician, with the rise of holistic pediatricians, that doesn’t mean that you are getting good advice.

In general, if the advice you are getting lacks evidence that it is safe and effective, relies on anecdotes and testimonials, and is labeled as ‘alternative,’ then it is a safe bet that it is bad advice.

Learn the Risks of Following Bad Advice

Some folks seem to be drawn to this type of advice though.

Kat Von D has decided that she will be raising a vegan child, without vaccinations.

As long as they think it is natural, holistic, and is the opposite of what mainstream health experts say to do, some parents will jump at the chance of trying the latest fad, even if it has no benefits and lots of extra risks.

Take giving your kids raw milk for example. Health experts have been warning about the dangers of drinking raw milk for years and even work to keep selling it outlawed in most communities, but some parents still give it to their young children. This is despite the fact that it has no health benefits and isn’t even fortified with vitamin D!

Would you give your kids raw milk if you knew it could make them critically ill?

What’s worse than giving your kids raw milk? How about skipping your baby’s vitamin K shot? Although it has no major risks, parents of many anti-vaccine and holistic type Facebook groups on the internet are often encouraged to skip this shot.

The article, translated from Polish, describes anti-vaccine parents and their baby (Maluszek), who died of vitamin K deficiency bleeding. — The article, translated from Polish, describes anti-vaccine parents and their baby (Maluszek), who died of vitamin K deficiency bleeding because they skipped his vitamin K shot.

How come they never warn folks that their baby might die in agony if they skip the shot? After all, there is a very good reason that we started to give all babies vitamin K shots – to stop vitamin K deficiency bleeding.

Just like there is a reason that we started to pasteurize milk – to keep us all from getting critically ill from contaminated milk.

And why we take antibiotics for severe infections, and not essential oils.

“If one gets a cancer diagnosis, they need to detox the toxins that have accumulated in the body, minimize further exposure and boost the immune system to fight the cancer. This is done NATURALLY. Traditional medical approaches (drugs, chemo, radiation) only FURTHER damage the body and immune system.”

Brandy Vaughan for Learn the Risk

And why we take chemotherapy for cancer, and not coffee enemas.

Mud wraps don't cure liver cancer. — Mud wraps don’t cure liver cancer.

And why most of us don’t think to try chiropractic, acupuncture, Ayurveda, homeopathy, Reiki, reflexology, or other non-evidenced based therapies when our kids are sick.

Could someone search for advice on Google on treating a bite from a rabid animal and come away thinking their child doesn't need rabies shots from an anti-vaccine website? — Could someone search for advice on Google on treating a bite from a rabid animal and come away thinking their child doesn’t need rabies shots from an anti-vaccine website?

Can an unvaccinated child really get tetanus after a toe nail injury? Photo by Petrus Rudolf de Jong (CC BY 3.0)

Why don’t people get rabies very often any more? It’s not because folks are no longer at risk, although the risk is less because dogs and cats are now vaccinated. It is because the vast majority of people get treated if they are exposed to an animal that might have rabies.

Remember when the six-year-old boy in Florida didn’t after touching a rabid bat? He died.

It’s just like the reason kids don’t get stuck by lightning very often. It’s not because lightning doesn’t happen anymore. It’s because we get a lot of warnings about thunderstorms and we know to go inside at the first sign of lightning in the area. Lightning strikes are rare because we take steps to reduce our risk of getting hit.

Why don’t folks get tetanus that much anymore? Again, most people are vaccinated, and they get boosters if they have wounds that puts them at extra risk. While we know what happens when unvaccinated kids are exposed to tetanus and don’t get treated, that isn’t a risk that you will read about on anti-vaccine websites or Facebook groups.

They also don’t tell you that kids in the US still die of diseases like Hib and rotavirus. And there are still measles deaths in the US.

That’s why the great majority of us get vaccinated, because we understand that vaccines are safe and necessary, and that skipping or delaying any vaccines simply puts our kids at risk to catch one of the diseases the vaccines are designed to prevent.

What to Know About the Risks of Following Bad Advice

You might get lucky and have a good outcome when you follow bad advice, but you should at least understand the risks of what might go wrong if you truly think you are making an informed decision.

Was SIDS Discovered Only After We Began Vaccinating Kids?

There are a lot of myths about SIDS and vaccines.

In the 1970s, many folks tried to say that the DPT caused SIDS. It didn’t.

Rates of most causes of sudden infant death, including SIDS, have dropped since the mid-1990s.

Fortunately, because SIDS rates have dropped so much over the years, even as we have added vaccines to the immunization schedule that protect infants against more diseases, it is easy for most parents to see that vaccines are not associated with SIDS.

Well, that isn’t exactly true. Getting vaccinated is actually thought to have a protective against SIDS…

Was SIDS Discovered Only After We Began Vaccinating Kids?

The Wisconsin Coalition for Informed Vaccination is pushing myths about SIDS and vaccines.

What about the idea that infants only started dying of SIDS after more kids started getting vaccinated?

Any truth to that?

Well, let’s start with when the term SIDS was first used, in 1969, when it was mentioned at the Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Causes of Sudden Death in Infants.

So would that make 1960 the year for “the initiation of routine vaccination?”

That would be a surprise to the kids in the 1940s who were already getting DPT, smallpox, tetanus, and typhoid vaccines.

“Sudden unexpected death in infancy, or “crib death,” is probably not a new syndrome, but it is one that has been clearly delineated and brought into sharp focus during the past 10 years. The first international conference on this subject, held in 1963, did much to formulate the salient features and to suggest the major areas open to research.”

Bergman et al on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Causes of Sudden Death in Infants

So just because SIDS finally got a name and an ICD9 code in 1969, that doesn’t mean that is when it first appeared.

Dr. Kemkes investigated whether 19th century infant deaths attributed to smothering or overlaying shared the same characteristics as known SIDS cases. She analyzed data from the U.S. Federal Mortality Schedule from the years 1850-1880. She found that, just like SIDS, smothering and overlaying deaths occurred primarily during the second to fourth month of the baby’s life, were more likely in the late winter months and amongst boys, and there were more infant deaths among black babies.
The author concludes: “The study strongly supports the hypothesis that these infant deaths represent empirical evidence of 19th century SIDS mortality.”

Was SIDS the cause of infant deaths even 150 years ago?

To get ahead of anti-vaccine folks, while the smallpox vaccine came out in 1798, a similar case can be made for accidental smothering deaths in the medieval period and Renaissance – and before.

Infants have likely been dying of SIDS for ages – it just wasn’t called SIDS and was blamed on other things.

“During the night this woman’s son died because she lay on him.”

1 Kings 3:19

In fact, many people even think that “SIDS” is mentioned in the Bible and was described by the ancient Egyptians and early Greeks.

And again, if vaccines somehow cause SIDS, why have rates of SIDS dropped so much as more and more kids get vaccinated and protected?

What to Know About the History of Vaccines and SIDS

The establishment of SIDS as a medical term in 1969 has nothing to do with vaccines or the immunization schedule.

Dear Anti-Vaxxers,

As someone who has always understood that vaccines are safe and necessary, who vaccinates his children, I’m asking you to hear me out.

Dear anti-vaxxers. Vaccinate your kids.

I don’t think that you are either stupid, uneducated, crazy, or that questioning vaccine safety is always associated with believing in conspiracy theories.

I understand and appreciate that you do care about your children, that you care about their health, and that you want what’s best for your family.

I actually do get that. I really do.

But I know that while you believe that you have done years of research and investigation to help you decide that the potential benefits of vaccines don’t outweigh their risks, going out of your way to find information to support your decision and ignoring all of the rest that says you are wrong, isn’t really doing research.

Whether you have never set foot on a college campus, you have a PhD in immunology, or you are a toxicologist, I know that you are still vulnerable to the same cognitive biases, heuristics, and logical fallacies as everyone else, and those can keep you from coming to a truly informed decision.

And I know that you are mostly motivated by fear, anger, and mistaken ideas of vaccine injury, vaccine induced disease, and unexplained illness and sudden deaths.

We all care about our children and families. The difference between us is that you still believe that there are two sides to the vaccination debate.

There isn’t.

Vaccines are safe, necessary, and they work well to protect our kids from life-threatening vaccine-preventable diseases.

No, vaccines are not 100% safe and they don’t work 100% of the time, but neither are they responsible for all of the things you see in vaccine scare stories or all of the so-called vaccine induced diseases we hear about.

“What if doctors never actually learn about vaccines, their ingredients, or adverse events, in medical school? What if the medical textbooks are written with an enormous amount of funding from the pharmaceutical industry? What if the CDC owns patents on vaccines? What if the pharmaceutical industry is corrupt and funds studies which conveniently stop monitoring test subjects before adverse effects begin to manifest? What if vaccines contain toxic substances at levels which can cause chronic illness when children are repeatedly injected with them? What if we are trading temporary illness for the development of autoimmune and neurological disease later in life? What if the threat and danger of these “preventable” diseases has been inflated to push more vaccines? What if these vaccines are not even truly effective as we have been led to believe and we will always need more booster shots to try to make up for that fact? What if there is evidence for all of the above, you just haven’t seen it yet?”

Ashley Everly Cates

Listen.

If you don’t want to vaccinate your kids, then don’t.

But don’t be influenced by folks who say they have done their research and don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but use a book by Neil Z Miller as a reference and push every major anti-vaccine conspiracy theory.

And don’t expect that your vaccine choice will be consequence free, including that your child will be at increased risk to get a vaccine-preventable disease, you will be putting others at risk to get a vaccine-preventable disease if your intentionally unvaccinated child gets sick, and you may be kept out of daycare or school if you live in a state that doesn’t allow non-medical exemptions.

I hope that you will keep an open mind and genuinely take time to look into this for yourself, beyond the myths and claims of anti-vaccine heroes who ignore or are unaware of the massive amount of evidence that contradict their claims.

Please take caution and know that I don’t do this to be popular. I don’t do this to make friends, get likes on my Facebook page, or sell vitamins and supplements in an online store.

Truly. The only reason I speak out is to protect my children and your children from unnecessary harm.

After all, is it really so hard to believe that the great majority of pediatricians, infectious disease specialists, immunologists, toxicologists, and public health experts in the world and throughout history are right about vaccines?