Jess Brownsberger intended to vaccinate her baby, just like her parents had done with her.
Then the Tennessee mother saw how her daughter — who was born with a heart defect — experienced body rashes following some newborn shots. A rash can be a normal reaction to vaccines, but it spooked Brownsberger given her daughter’s medical diagnosis, which would later require open heart surgery.
Brownsberger, a self-proclaimed “MAHA mom” who tries to avoid toxins in her food and products, told her pediatrician she no longer wanted shots. Her doctor, according to Brownsberger, warned that she would need to seek care elsewhere if she chose not to vaccinate. Brownsberger viewed it as an ultimatum and found someone who was willing to delay vaccinations.
Five years later and now with three children, the 30-year-old Brownsberger chooses not to vaccinate any of her kids. She visits a nurse practitioner who she calls “vaccine friendly” — terminology used interchangeably in some online spaces with “vaccine neutral” to describe medical professionals who will care for children irrespective of parents’ vaccine views. Brownsberger found her on a site that advertises alternative medicine and maintains a list of preferred practices by state.
right, but people don’t get socialized or educated by their doctors, doctors are like gatekeepers for medicine and surgeries that you get to see in very short windows of time once a year … withholding access to medicine and surgery is not going to help the situation
right, but the flip side is that you’re OK with foregoing the individual’s right to opt in or out of a medical procedure … I haven’t read enough bioethics to arrive at some kind of position on this, but I don’t think either side is obviously right - on the one hand individual liberties being protected results in more overall harm and deaths from fewer vaccinations; on the other hand ignoring individual liberties is authoritarian and can create medical trauma, as well as may backfire and result in greater resistance.
Either way, we need to solve this on a societal level through education, developing greater trust in biomedicine, and probably by penalizing the grifters who profit from promoting anti-vaxx anxieties.