Ban Doctors Who Disagree With Vaccines, Says Washington Post

In an article titled ‘Revoke the license of any doctor who opposes vaccination’ the Washington Post says that anti-vaccine views, even those by Doctors, are based on “anecdote, myth, hearsay, rumor, ideology, fraud or some combination of all of these”. 

They suggest that during an epidemic Doctors who disagree with the vaccine dogma given to them by big pharma companies ought to have their licenses revoked. 

The Washington Post report:

Doctors who purvey views based on anecdote, myth, hearsay, rumor, ideology, fraud or some combination of all of these, particularly during an epidemic, should have their medical licenses revoked. Thankfully, states have the right tools to do so. It’s time to use them.

But a doctor is not just another person with First Amendment rights to free speech. When a doctor tells you not to vaccinate, it is not the same as when a layperson says the same thing. And when a doctor ignores the evidence to claim that the measles vaccine will harm your child, it is not the same as when your bartender or hairdresser says so. Physicians’ speech invokes medical authority, so when they speak, patients tend to listen. Especially when they speak on TV.

Because lives hang in the balance, medical speech is held to a higher standard. A doctor must consider the public health and patient good in all that he says in his role as an expert. To do otherwise, as the ethics codes in medicine and nursing suggest, is unprofessional. It might even constitute misconduct if such talk contributed to an epidemic.

Counseling against vaccination is exactly that kind of misconduct. The science is unimpeachable: Vaccines do not cause autism; measles is dangerous and contagious; inoculating against the disease is neither pointless nor riskier than abstention. Those doctors who counsel otherwise — who distort what patients need to know to preserve their health or that of their children — have crossed a bright red line. They have violated a patient’s right to informed consent, which depends on accurate information.

When politicians ignore the evidence, fail to cite appropriate medical authorities, and rely on hearsay and rumor, with the result that people — out of ignorance or error — don’t vaccinate their children, we can and should deny them elective office. When a doctor does so, we should demand that he forfeit his right to use his medical degree to misinform, confuse or lie.

Thankfully the Washington Post don’t run the country. What do you think about their views on vaccinations? Should doctors who oppose vaccines have their licenses revoked?