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Many parents believe their child’s health care provider will offer sound, trustworthy advice about what their child needs to stay healthy. There are many doctors and nurse practitioners who do this well.
However, some health care professionals promote vaccination not because vaccines are safe and effective, but because of other reasons that are not in the best interests of your child.
Read on to discover eight reasons why your child’s doctor will tell you to vaccinate your child.
1. Doctors are taught in medical school that vaccines are safe and necessary.
A previous VacTruth article, Vaccines: What Your Doctors Know and Don’t Know, is an excellent resource for parents who believe their child’s doctor knows best because they attended eight or more years of medical school. Sadly, this training doesn’t give doctors the answers parents hope they will have. Medical school programs often lack adequate education about vaccines, and the information that is provided is often funded by pharmaceutical companies. [1]
Dr. Suzanne Humphries stated:
“We learn that vaccines need to be given on schedule. We are indoctrinated with the mantra that ‘vaccines are safe and effective’—neither of which is true. Doctors today are given extensive training on how to talk to ‘hesitant’ parents—how to frighten them by vastly inflating the risks during natural infection … on the necessity of twisting parents’ arms to conform, or fire them from their practices. Doctors are trained that NOTHING bad should be said about any vaccine, period.”
Dr. Bob Sears, who is known for addressing parents’ concerns about vaccines, also shared his thoughts about the lack of training in medical school:
“Doctors learn a lot about diseases in medical school, but we learn very little about vaccines … We don’t review the research ourselves. We never learn what goes into making vaccines or how their safety is studied. So, when patients want a little more information about shots, all we can really say as doctors is that the diseases are bad and the shots are good.”
Additionally, many medical schools receive excessive amounts of funding from pharmaceutical companies. An informal survey conducted by National Public Radio (NPR) showed that up to 16 percent of medical schools’ annual budgets were funded by pharmaceutical companies. [2]
When asked about the consequences of university employees criticizing popular drugs, one university researcher told NPR, “So they could potentially lose their job, lose their employment. Or if they don’t, their life can be made quite miserable in terms of receiving adequate research space, not receiving administrative support or something like that.”
A more exact study from the American Student Medical Association evaluated 150 medical schools to determine how much money and gifts they received from pharmaceutical companies. The results of their research, conducted because medical students were worried that their instructors were influenced by pharmaceutical funding, were published on Time magazine’s website and in The New York Times. [3]
Harvard Medical School earned a failing grade, due to the $11.5 million it received in one year from pharmaceutical companies, combined with the fact that 1600 of its teachers, nearly 20 percent of its faculty, confessed ties to pharmaceutical companies. Some of those connections were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
One government agency, the National Academy of Sciences, cited pages of concerns in their report about the way medical schools and continuing education are currently funded with donations and grants from pharmaceutical companies. They offered dozens of recommendations to improve the content of medical training, so that it is unbiased and free from pharmacuetical influence. [4]
Until those recommendations are voluntarily adopted or mandated, neither of which are likely to happen, parents must find other sources of information to make decisions about their children’s health, sources that are not funded by vaccine makers.
2. Doctors are subject to fee quotas.
In recent years, corporate hospitals have purchased private practices, allowing them to create a monopoly in health care. Many physicians who are employed by a hospital system must meet certain quotas for the number of patients seen and number of procedures prescribed to receive bonuses. As a result, numerous hospitals have been the subject of government investigations.
A disconcerting article in The New York Times explained how doctors are rewarded with recognition and financial bonuses for meeting targets established by their employer hospitals to boost profits and insurance payments, including admitting more patients to the hospital, limiting number of days per stay at the hospital, and seeing an increased number of patients per hour.
A number of doctors have expressed concerns and dissatisfaction, in the form of lawsuits as well as anonymous complaints, against these practices, some of which are even outlined in their contracts.
In addition, according to Dr. Janet Levatin, a medical doctor with 25 years of experience, physicians who have their own private practice may lose privileges to refer their patients to a hospital if they do not vaccinate their patients. [5]
3. Doctors feel pressured to use expiring vaccines already in the office.
Vaccines are expensive and some of them have a short shelf life before they expire and should not be used. With the exception of vaccines provided through the government program Vaccines for Children, doctors in private practice must pay for the cost of the vaccines they use in their practice.
One doctor shared her concerns about the high costs of vaccines in a recent New York Times article:
“’The security company can call me any time of the day or night so I can go save my vaccines,’ said Dr. Irvin, a pediatrician. Those in the refrigerator recently cost $70,000, she said — ‘more than I paid for four years of medical school.’
Vaccination prices have gone from single digits to sometimes triple digits in the last two decades … some doctors have stopped offering immunizations because they say they cannot afford to buy these potentially lifesaving preventive treatments that insurers often reimburse poorly, sometimes even at a loss.” [6]
Why would doctors willingly let these vaccines remain in their inventory past their expiration date, when they could recoup at least a fraction of their costs by administering them to patients?
4. Doctors are courted by pharmaceutical companies.
Many parents know that drug companies have previously given physicians trips to luxury resorts, money, and promotional items, in the hopes of increasing prescription rates for their drugs.
Pharmaceutical companies were increasingly criticized for these tactics, causing them to scale back their underhanded efforts. However, research published by the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that even a single meal costing less than $20 given to doctors by drug-pushers increased the rates at which they prescribed popular drugs. The more meals physicians received, the more their prescription rates increased. [7, 8]
Furthermore, doctors who received more than $5,000 from companies were more likely to prescribe their pharmaceuticals. [9]
A website named Dollars for Docs allows users to search its database by name to see if their doctor was given money from pharmaceutical companies. At this time, figures are available for the period from August 2013 to December 2014, and payments dating back to 2009 are available in the site’s archives. The site does not include research payments or shareholder interests, and payments to nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants are not included. Some doctors received millions of dollars in payments, and the staggering totals are also listed by state. [10]
5. Doctors think vaccine-induced injuries are part of normal child development.
Asthma, allergies, attention deficit disorder, autoimmune disorders, developmental delays, sensory issues, seizures, and symptoms of autism are often regarded as normal health challenges faced by families today. Doctors commonly see these afflictions in their practice. Sadly, these issues are nowadays regarded as normal, rather than connected to the numerous vaccines children receive by the age of two. [11]
These diagnoses are not a normal part of childhood. In the past twenty years, asthma rates have doubled, accounting for one third of all childhood emergency room visits. In a five year period, one study showed that the number of children under five years of age who were diagnosed with diabetes had increased 63%.
Currently, at least one in 68 children in the United States have been diagnosed with autism, and one in six children have a developmental disability. [12]
Multiple credible studies have shown that, compared to their vaccinated peers, unvaccinated children have lower rates of sinusitis, warts, skin problems, middle ear infections, diabetes, epilepsy, dyslexia, speech delays, anxiety, depression, bedwetting, gluten sensitivity, and more. For more information, see our article, Studies Prove Without Doubt That Unvaccinated Children Are Far Healthier Than Their Vaccinated Peers. [13]
6. Doctors who question vaccines are publicly humiliated or scorned.
At the top of this list is Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the physician who noted a connection between his patients who suffered gastrointestinal issues and had recently been vaccinated with the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination. His license was revoked and his work continues to be criticized by the masses.
However, ridicule and criticism on a much smaller scale continue to be a real concern for doctors who question vaccination.
According to Dr. Levatin, “Doctors-in-training who challenge the system or dare to think independently are often punished with more work or publically humiliated in front of their peers.”
7. Doctors are protected from being sued when vaccine injuries or vaccine death occurs.
Almost thirty years ago, federal lawmakers in the US passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 to “reduce liability and respond to public health concerns.” This program granted immunity to pharmaceutical companies, as well as doctors in most circumstances, preventing parents from suing vaccine makers for injuries or death sustained by their children from vaccinations. It was also supposed to encourage safer vaccines and vaccine programs. [14]
Since its inception, this program has awarded over $2.5 billion to individuals and families who have suffered vaccine injury and death. These awards are funded by taxes on vaccines. Ironically, families are only compensated a maximum amount of $250,000 if their child has died from a vaccine, if, of course, those parents win a claim with the program.
In addition, doctors are also protected from lawsuits if a child in their practice dies or is injured following vaccination. Parents may not sue their child’s doctor for more than $1000, unless they have first filed a claim with the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which is a very tedious process, with two out of three cases denied a chance in court. [15, 16]
8. Doctors receive bonuses for vaccinating children.
This disturbing fact is easily verified by a number of sources. Dr. Sears explained that some doctors do not want families who do not vaccinate in their practice, not because of health concerns for their patients, but because accepting patients who do not vaccinate disqualifies these doctors from receiving thousands of dollars in bonuses from insurance companies. [17]
Blue Cross Blue Shield offers a $400 bonus per vaccinated patient to providers who fully vaccinate least 63 percent of the children in their practice by age two. This amount could reach thousands of dollars in bonuses for the average doctor. [18]
A study published in the American Journal of Public Health demonstrated that bonus payments to doctors “sharply and rapidly” increased immunization rates by over 25 percent. The abstract also disturbingly noted that “physicians’ knowledge of contraindications was low.” [19]
Even the government offers physicians the chance to profit immensely from high vaccination rates. A CDC incentive program known as AFIX encourages doctors to increase their vaccination rates, offering financial incentives, scholarships, public recognition, and opportunities to receive funding from pharmaceutical companies. [20]
These bonuses may be especially enticing for pediatricians and doctors in private practice, who often lose money on vaccinating children, as reported by the journal Pediatrics. This study, conducted collaboratively with the CDC, revealed that ten percent of private practitioners have seriously considering discontinuing vaccination in their practice because of concerns about costs, in addition to ten percent of study participants who have already discontinued offering vaccinations. [21]
In a recent survey, 84% of physicians said their incomes were constant or decreasing, which could certainly encourage them to turn to incentives to boost their earning power and pay medical school debts. Nearly half of doctors admitted they would see fewer patients in the next three years, or leave their medical practice completely. About thirty to forty percent of physicians would not choose their medical career if they could choose again. [22]
Conclusion
Many parents are unaware that doctors’ reasons for recommending dozens of vaccinations may not be tied to the health of children, but to other reasons, such as financial incentives, paid meals, lack of unbiased information about vaccines, and negative peer pressure. Moms and dads trust their health care providers to help them make the best choices about their little ones’ health, but physicians are unable to do so when their job security and financial bonuses are tied to the the widespread use of vaccines.
Informed parents must take the threat of vaccine injury seriously and do their own research well in advance of their child’s doctor visit. For unbiased and scientific information about vaccines, we encourage your to download our free resources.
Missy Fluegge,
Vactruth 7 Comments [1/7/2017 4:29:02 PM]
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