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The Lack of Informed Consent in Modern Medicine
by James P. Johnston, D.O.
In medicine today, there is a crisis very similar to what Hippocrates dealt with in his culture in pagan Greece four centuries before Christ. In Dr. Hippocrates' day, a patient could rightly wonder if someone was paying their physician more to kill them than they were paying the physician to keep them alive! Doctors got away with murder, literally. Abortion and physician-assisted suicide was legal.
And doctors could lie without repercussion. Doctors acted like mini-gods and lesser people were ripe for exploitation.
Hippocrates formed a new genre of physician that would be oath-bound under God to care for patients honestly and sincerely. In time, patients voted with their healthcare doctors and doctors had to take the Hippocratic Oath or they lost patients!
Let me tell you about a phone call I had this week with an aspiring patient, and how the lack of informed consent has weaseled its way back into contemporary medicine.
A concerned mother inquired: "Doctor, I'm concerned there are some vaccines we should give our kids. There are some dangerous illnesses out there like measles and I don't want my children to get it. Even if the vaccine is more risky, is it worth the risk?"
I informed the family that measles deaths came down to almost nothing before the vaccine came out. That's a statistical fact. So it's disingenuous to claim that the measles vaccine eliminated measles. It's a respiratory virus, and vaccines for respiratory viruses like the flu vaccine, as a rule of thumb, are not very effective. The measles vaccine might be responsible for a reduction in measles infection, but the lack of measles in our culture is not good proof. Some diseases, like the bubonic plague for example, went away without a vaccine. So just because a measles vaccine was created around the time measles deaths disappeared, that doesn't mean the vaccine is responsible for it.
Moreover, the last time I checked, there was one measles' death in the past ten years in this country, but over 100 deaths attributed to the vaccine! And that's according to the governments Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), which two large studies have shown only a 1-2 % reporting rate from physicians. Which means the deaths attributed to the measles vaccine could be 50 to 100 times higher!
So when you weigh the risks and the benefits, the measles vaccine appears much more risky than beneficial in today's environment. Why then is it so strongly recommended and presented as something that is more beneficial than risky for your kids?
It's simply a dishonest representation of the fact, or an honest person sincerely repeating someone else's dishonesty.
The truth is, those mandating the vaccine, and the physicians or physician supervisors who mandate it for their practices, have a secondary aim: eliminating the disease from society. They will recommend a vaccine for your child even the risks are far greater than the benefit because they have a social mission they aren't informing you about.
If they were honest, they would counsel parents: "This vaccine is far more risky than beneficial in the present environment in America for your child. But I recommend you take 'a hit for the team' so to speak. Measles still exists in the world, and we don't want measles to creep its way back in our population, so we need to keep the herd immunity high to do that. That's why I recommend the vaccine."
But they don't do that! They pretend its beneficial for each child, while lying about the facts or at least ignorant of the facts I believe they have a duty to know. The lack of informed consent is pathetic and unethical, but it has become the norm.
Another example: I had a patient who contacted me about a cut in his foot and he was worried he needed to get a Tetanus vaccine. He'd had a shot within ten years so I informed him that he had good immunity for 10 years. But he knew that if he would go to the E.R. the E.R. doctor who give him a tetanus vaccine and he asked me if I would recommend that. He thought that if tetanus infected this cut, the tetanus vaccine would offer him protection against that infection, even if he had never been vaccinated!
I then informed him that's not the case at all! First of all, vaccine against a pathogen is far less effective than immunity provided by infection with the pathogen. If you had tetanus in the wound, it's true you have a 11% chance of dying because of the immunity provided by previous vaccination, whereas you'd have a 22% chance of dying if you'd never been vaccinated, but, if you went to the E.R., the tetanus vaccine they'd give you would offer ZERO protection against tetanus if indeed his wound was infected.
Why? It takes two weeks before the tetanus vaccine creates a protective immune response by creating antibodies against tetanus. The first symptom of tetanus (jaw spasms) would begin at about a week after infection, before the vaccine had made any difference! The vaccine in the E.R. would have created far less immune response than actually getting tetanus! In other words, the tetanus vaccine offers no help at off if your foot is infected with tetanus. If the E.R. doctor believed you had tetanus, they'd offer you tetanus immunoglobulins, not tetanus vaccine.
Well, why do they give the tetanus vaccine? Well, to give you future protection against any future tetanus infections. It has nothing to do with protecting against present infection.
And for another reason. One of the reasons they'd done away with the Tetanus-Diptheria vaccines in the E.R. and in doctors offices all across the country is because the Pertussis vaccines aren't that effective and Pertussis (whooping cough) has about 50,000 cases a year. It's mostly risky in young children with smaller airways. So to protect those children most at risk from pertussis, they did away with the Diptheria-Tetanus vaccine recommendation and are now boosting everyone in the E.R. and in doctors' offices with the Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis vaccine to try to create better herd immunity against pertussis in the culture. .
The problem is about half of the pertussis infections are in vaccinated patients! The pertussis vaccine, like the influenza and COVID-19 vaccines, are not simply that effective. Thus the need for boosters.
But when you get your shot in the E.R. for a cut in the foot, do they tell you that? No. There's a pathetic lack of informed consent and an insincere and hypocritical berating off non-vaccinators.
Not at Your Home Medical Care! We respect patient choice when it comes to vaccines, and will never berate you if you don't get all the shots the CDC recommends. You can read my article "Which Vaccines Should I Give My Children" here, which sorts through the pros and cons of the recommended pediatric vaccines. Our philosophy is not anti-vaccine, but "educate before you vaccinate." We have some patients who give their children all the shots (I got them all!) Yet many families who for different reasons don't want all the shots, and unlike Novant and Atrium doctors and nurse practitioners, we will not kick you out of our practice if you don't get all the shots. Medical practitioners like us who respect your personal healthcare decisions are becoming more and more rare unfortunately.
If you appreciate our perspective and our care, please sign up for our practice. If you're already a member, please continue being members.
Pray for us. Pray that we will continue to meet the needs of our patients in a way that is honest with the scientific facts and in a way that pleases the Lord.
James P. Johnston, D.O.,
YourHomeMedicalCare.com
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