They’re wonderful overall, but this is one issue where it seems like they’ve been brainwashed - brainwashed by an anti-vax doctor whose child allegedly was hospitalized because of vaccination.
I have all the basic ones, but not some of the later ones given to teens. My little sister who is 12 is missing the tetanus and meningitis vaccines.
I don’t think they’re evil, just misguided and brainwashed. The problem is I don’t really know much about the arguments and counter-arguments relatin?g to this issue. I just know that it’s right to be pro-vax and wrong to be anti-vax. As I said in another thread, being anti-vax is like denying climate change.
You can’t force people to change their opinions, and there’s the old saying about it being impossible to reason somebody out of a position that they didn’t reason themselves into.
I think the best approach in your situation is to tell your parents that you want to start being in charge of your own medical care, and to go to a different doctor, to get other opinions about vaccinations.
Whether they’ll let you do that, I don’t know. But it’s worth a shot.
Have them talk to people who lost family members to those diseases. (My grandmother lost a brother to tetanus when they were kids. It’s an extremely painful way to die)
Nothing bad has happened. Just because your sister is missing her immunizations doesn’t mean that she will succumb to the underlying illness.
You aren’t the parent. You have done all in your power to effect an outcome. It’s not fair that your parent’s may cause your sister pain, but you have attempted to prevent it.
I am sorry for your pain. I hope your sister doesn’t get a preventable illness.
With the doctor being anti-vax, and being the one who convinced the parents, I don’t know that a one on one with the doc will do any good. Anti-vaxxers are very sure of themselves, and a doctor antivaxxer will probably be impossible.
I might have the conversation and record it, just to turn over to the medical board and see if he can get his license revoked, but for you personal health, I would go to another doctor entirely.
Chances are, they won’t be anti-vaxx, as that is a pretty small minority of doctors.
About your sister, make your parents paranoid about rusty nails and other puncture wounds. If you see something that could possibly cause a tetanus type of wound (deep wounds that don’t clean themselves well through bleeding, mostly), make a big deal out of it, and explain that, without the tetanus shot, this thing could very well kill her. For dramatic detail, you could even describe the grisly way that she would die, in full rictus, with her muscles ripping their tendons off the bones. Do some physical graphic demonstrations, even.
Maybe they will get tired of your over reaction to every rock and stick on the ground, and give in and let her get the shot.
Probably your best bet. Facts and statistics aren’t likely to change their mind, the doctor is likely to have already convinced them against these. Talking to someone who is crippled from polio or who lost a family member from measles is “closer to home.”
Is that the case? I may have missed that the OP’s PCP is the anti-vax doctor. If so it’s more difficult but it sounds like he’s gotten some vaccinations already so being insistent might work to get the shots you want. If not, ask for a recommendation for a doctor that will give the shots. You’ll have to fight this with your parents to some degree but since you’re close to or at 18 now it’s time to take control of your own health.
I still think trying to convince your parents is the wrong approach. You don’t need to change their mind, you need to get appropriate health care.
Not as clear in this OP that "an anti-vax doctor whose child allegedly was hospitalized because of vaccination. " is also his PCP, but he had another thread a while back where he stated that his current doc was anti-vax.
Are you 18?
Can your school nurse advise you or refer you to a place where you can get yourself vaccinated?
You can’t win any discussion with an anti-vaxxer anymore than you could get them to change religions or quit smoking or drinking.
You can make your own decisions for your own health and you can get vaccinations. They won’t be free though, so know what the cost is ahead of time and pay cash.
(f you can, get the vaccinations, but don’t tell them. What they don’t know won;t hurt them. If you go your whole life being scrupulously honest with everyone, you’ll wind up looking up out of a hole yoy have dug for yourself.
There is no point alienating your family about anything so trivial. There are a lot of things about your personal life that you are not obliged to share with anybody.
I’ve not heard of any antivax physicians who’ve lost their licenses solely for being antivaccine (pediatrician Bob Sears in California faces potential disciplinary action for allegedly granting an improper vaccine exemption to a child and not conducting a necessary neurologic exam). And depending on the state, recording a conversation with the doc without permission could be illegal.
There are plenty of good resources online and elsewhere with solid evidence on the efficacy and safety of vaccination (and consequences of declining it). But you can’t force people to educate themselves beyond what they want to hear. I suggest the OP take responsibility for his own health care as soon as possible.
While you are probably correct that just being against the most effective prevention of disease known to man is (oddly) not enough to get his licence revoked, he may have some other interesting things to say. For instance, if he is advocating for bloodletting, or suggests a nice mercury tincture, the state medical board may look askance.
As far as recording, I have no idea how legal it is. I know that it should be very illegal for the doc to record you, but I think you should be allowed to record the doc. I mean, even if you aren’t trying to get him in trouble, just recording the conversation so that you remember any special instructions that he may have given you seems a good idea. And, having a record of what your doc said in case he does need to get into trouble for not being very good at his job seems like it should be something you have a right to do.
It may be a good thing to have, and useful, but it may or may not be legal depending on your jurisdiction. Laws vary greatly and few of us are in a position to know the intricacies. There’s no universal right to record another person.
Anecdotes are usually good for helping people change their minds. There are plenty of stories about mothers who used to be anti-vaccines until their kids got sick. Such as this one.
I am %100 pro-vax, because overall the advantage to the individual of getting the vaccine far outweighs the negative side, and that from a public health standpoint getting vaccinated is the correct moral decision. There is however a relatively small subset of the population the possibility of a negative reaction out weighs the benefit of the vaccination. These people should not be vaccinated.
You are in a situation where getting a vaccination has a significant probability of adversely your relationship with your family. It may be that under these circumstances the negative effects out weigh the benefits in your case.
Given the still fairly strong (although unfortunately decreasing) herd immunity we have developed it is still very unlikely that an unvaccinated individual will suffer for it, it’s just large in comparison to what for most people is a nearly negligible negative effects of vaccination. So you need to weigh the pros and cons: the likelihood of a negative effect on the relationship with your parents, the probability of coming in contact with a disease that you could have been vaccinated against, and the benefits of asserting your intellectual independence against your unscientific parents, and decide what works best for you. It may be best to just wait a couple of years until you are in college and then make an appointment with the nurse at the infirmary. Good Luck.
Maybe print it out and give it to the anti-vaxxers. Andrew Wakefield made up the “evidence” linking vaccinations with autism, etc. He later admitted to making the whole thing up. He’s a fraud. The entire anti-vaxxer movement is based on lies, hubris and ignorance.