Vaccination conundrum

Saw this come up on my reader today:


Vaccine requirement

It talks about pediatricians who are turning away patients who are not vaccinated. To be honest, I don't know how I feel about this.
On the one hand, I am thrilled that someone is standing up to the people who think vaccines are more dangerous than, say...whooping cough (perhaps my favorite example because I work on its cousin). On the other hand, I'm a little taken aback by the idea of turning patients away.

I understand the reasoning behind it - they don't want to jeopardize the health of the other patients coming in by mixing vaccinated children, children who may carry vaccine-preventable diseases because their parents thought they didn't need to vaccinate their own children, and children with other problems who are medically unable to receive vaccines. If someone who was not vaccinated passes, say whooping cough, to even the aunt or big brother of an infant who has not yet received the full vaccine course, that infant can easily become infected and die. All because they were in the same waiting room as someone who had whooping cough. Read about strategies to prevent this.

I use whooping cough as an example, not only because I work on it, but also because, in older patients, like the aunt I described earlier, it would present more like a cold or flu. Give it to an infant, and suddenly it actually looks like whooping cough, and the baby basically coughs itself to death. I attended a Bordetella conference (whooping cough is caused by Bordetella pertussis or Bordetella parapertussis) last year, and at least two or three presenters forced us to listen to a baby whooping - it may be one of the saddest sounds ever recorded. Whooping cough is also a re-emerging pathogen, which means it's coming back, partly because newer vaccines with even fewer small side effects probably need more boosters to keep immunity high, partly because a closely related bacteria can also cause whooping cough symptoms and doesn't respond as well to the vaccine, and probably partly because many people have stopped vaccinating their children.

However, I am not convinced that blocking unvaccinated children from being their patients will solve the problem they claim. The other patients of these doctors could run into unvaccinated children in daycare, at the mall, or on the playground. But, if their point is to bring awareness and force some kind of consequence on people who choose not to vaccinate their children, then I guess I say "well-played."