Medical professionals have an obligation not just to their patients, but to the defense of medical science against pseudoscience. That principle apparently was lost on demonstrators outside Mercy South on Tuesday as they protested the reported firing of a nurse for refusing to be vaccinated for flu under hospital policy.
Adults have the right to refuse vaccinations, but a hospital employee doesn’t have the right to put patients’ fragile health at further risk. It’s bad enough that a portion of the public buys into anti-vaccination hysteria. For anyone in a medical field to embrace that dangerous movement is especially disturbing.
Mercy is correct to enforce a strict vaccination policy at the St. Louis County hospital. It shouldn’t let these or other protests change that.
The miracle of vaccination is, ironically, under attack because of its very success in controlling viral diseases like influenza. Because of that success, most Americans today can’t remember when flu was the annual mass killer that every parent dreaded. Only people somewhat older than 100 would remember the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which killed at least 50 million people worldwide, including more than 600,000 Americans.
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Flu vaccines aren’t perfect; flu viruses are always changing, so coming up with the right vaccine is an annual guessing game for scientists. But even if a vaccination doesn’t ward off the flu entirely, it often lessens the severity and contagiousness. Studies show that tens of thousands of influenza deaths the U.S. still experiences annually are less from ineffective vaccines than lack of vaccination.
The misinformation peddlers of the anti-vaccination movement, though, would have people believe that vaccines contribute to conditions like autism and cancer. These falsehoods have been repeatedly debunked by medical science, but like an especially stubborn strain of virus, they won’t die. The fight against ignorance is a crucial part of battling contagious disease.
A hospital is the last place where this battle should have to be waged. Medical professionals set a terrible example when they appear to embrace the anti-vaccination movement. They also pose a literal danger to their patients. Flu is most deadly to those very young, very old or in weakened health — the very people who tend to populate hospital beds.
As the Post-Dispatch’s Blythe Bernhard reported Wednesday, protesters in support of the fired nurse said she had been given religious exemptions to the vaccination requirement in the hospital when it was St. Anthony’s Medical Center, before Mercy acquired it this year. Mercy says it does consider exemptions, provided specific conditions are met.
That’s as it should be. In truth, no medical professional who works around patients should be exempted from vaccination except those with some medical condition that precludes it. Adults are free to risk their own health in service to religion or pseudoscience, but not the health of unsuspecting patients.
