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>I'm wondering if a doctor would balk at signing a document of liability for {x} resulting from vaccination. If she wouldn't put her career behind her belief, s
by DenisM 13y ago
>I'm wondering if a doctor would balk at signing a document of liability for {x} resulting from vaccination. If she wouldn't put her career behind her belief, should I believe her?
For one, there is a law in the US that removes vaccination liability from doctors.
A bigger problem with your suggestion is problematic math behind it - if vaccines killed one person for every ten saved it would still be worthwhile, but your suggestion would quickly ensure no doctors ever willing to give any vaccines to anyone, ensuring higher death rate among you and your relatives. The actual incident rate is much smaller - for example between 3000 and 49000 people die of flu each year, and only about a 100 people die of vaccine complications (most of them of egg allergy, totally preventable if treated right away).
It's precisely due such poor understanding of statistics is why there are large groups if people opposed to vaccination - they fixate on a smaller probability negative outcome in the immediate future and ignore large probability negative outcome three months down the road.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoI find the fact that people die of a treatable side-effect resulting from a voluntary medical treatment to be particularly terrible. >It's precisely due such poor understanding of statistics is why there are large groups if people opposed to vaccination - they fixate on a smaller probability negative outcome in the immediate future and ignore large probability negative outcome three months down the road. No, the probability of death or injury from all diseases (for people in the US) is small. It may be relatively large compared to the probability of death or injury from vaccination, but it is still small for each individual.
- mikeash 13y agoThat small probability is largely because of vaccination. But there's a huge herd effect, so your analysis is correct for the individual, while still badly wrong for society as a whole.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago>That small probability is largely because of vaccination. That's true. But I suspect that better sanitation and nutrition played a large part as well. >so your analysis is correct for the individual, while still badly wrong for society as a whole. I know. Which is why it is important to have safe and effective vaccines.
- ceejayoz 13y ago> That's true. But I suspect that better sanitation and nutrition played a large part as well. Not in every case. Polio, for example, became a more serious problem because of sanitation. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/rxforsurvival/series/diseases/polio.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/rxforsurvival/series/diseases/polio....
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoThanks. I didn't know that.
- Fomite 13y agoI would balk at anything that, whether or not a patient could prove causality would cost me thousands of dollars in legal bills and tie up hours of my time I could better be doing other things. I don't think any professional can be blamed for not wanting to tie liability to client whimsey.
- wissler 13y ago"if vaccines killed one person for every ten saved it would still be worthwhile" Why?
- bermanoid 13y agoUmm...because without the vaccine 10 people would die, and with it only one dies. Not really rocket science...
- wissler 13y agoEvidently you're not familiar with moral philosophy, but there is a difference between taking an action that you know will kill random people vs. not taking the action and leaving things to accident. Also, there is a problem with the hypothetical, since there are other means of reducing disease than vaccination, e.g. aggressive quarantine and disinfection, trending toward telecommuting or smaller school classroom size, etc.