John Snyder has just joined the group blog, Science Based Medicine.
John Snyder, M.D., is Chief of the Section of General Pediatrics and Medical Director of Pediatric Ambulatory Care at Saint Vincent's Hospital in New York City. He is also Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at New York Medical College. Since 1994 Dr. Snyder has been active in pediatric resident and medical student education with a particular interest in evidence based pediatrics. His main area of interest is medical myth and the ways in which parents utilize information in making medical decisions for their children.In his first post, Snyder comes out swinging, writing about the loss of life due to parents refusing or delaying vaccines. His particular example is Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib).
Parental vaccine refusal endangers lives. Here we have a situation in which an unavoidable shortage of a vital vaccine, has combined with an irrational parental mistrust of expert scientific opinion to create a critical mass of vulnerable children. The result, so far, is four dead children. But in the absence of any shortage, vaccine myth and the poor parental decision making it breeds has already had a profound impact, with the potential for more to come. In the never-ending wake of Wakefield, measles outbreaks have occurred in pockets of under-immunized children in areas of New York, San Diego, and Milwaukee.Commenter Gwen wrote:
HiB was one of our ‘bread and butter’ diseases in the PICU where I began my career a long time ago. It left a devastation of brain damaged children in its wake. We were all so very happy when a vaccine was developed. I can’t imagine ever voluntarily going back to those awful days again!Commenter Tsu Dho Nymh wrote
I was working in large hospitals before the vaccine. Knowing that of every 10 babies you admit with HiB, 1 will leave through the morgue and of the 9 that go out the door with their parents, 3 will be starting first grade in the classes for the handicapped (blind, deaf, retarded or any combination of those) really sucks.Take that to parents who refuse or delay vaccination.
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