Feel free to jump to the heading "Safety Net #4" below, everything stated until then is a repeat of what was written on the first post.

When it comes to products that are available for purchase, there are many safety nets that are established, to protect consumers from dangerous products, and to ensure that products are designed, manufactured, and distributed in such a way that potential harms can be more easily minimized, and/or identified more quickly once in distribution. Unfortunately, there are shortcomings in many of these consumer safety nets, or industry has found a way to bypass some of those protective measures. As a result, unsafe products continue to be made and distributed widely. What’s more unique to vaccines though, is that every single safety net that was established to protect people and ensure product safety, all those protective measures have actually all been neutralized by the pharmaceutical industry. This neutralization has happened either by direct financial funding from pharma, or indirectly through Governmental conflicts of interest that affect internal policy, bureaucracy, and legislation. But before explaining how the consumer protective safety nets have been neutralized when it comes to vaccines, I’ll first list what those protective measures were, or should be. (Bolding in the list below denotes which topic point will be discussed in this article).

The consumer safety nets for vaccine products are:

1. Government and our political leaders who represent the people

2. Federal agencies that oversee vaccine regulation, research, safety, and distribution: These agencies include: Health and Human Services (HHS) The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), The Institute of Medicine (IOM). Yes, these agencies are all based in the United States, however their policy are often adopted on a global scale.

3. Scientific research and medical journals

4. Our doctors and the institutions where they are educated and employed

5. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)

6. The media

7. The legal system
    

Safety Net #4: Our doctors and the institutions where they are educated and employed.

In this article, we will be discussing how our doctors play a role in protecting the public, and how our doctors' intent, to do right by the public they serve, has been compromised by pharmaceutical financial influence.

What Doctors are Taught About Vaccines

When doctors realize there is more to the vaccine story than what is presented by media or the Health Authority, they often state that their shock and anger lies in realizing that the education that they paid a lot of money to receive, that education was woefully misleading and inadequate. Every doctor I’ve ever heard speak about medical school and their vaccine education, said that IF there was instruction given about vaccines, that education focused solely on the benefits of vaccination – such discussion was summed up as vaccines prevent illness, vaccines are miracles and that the creation of vaccines was the greatest achievement in medicine in the 20th century.  Here and Here

These doctors have shared that their education involved memorizing the vaccine schedule, with instruction emphasizing the need to stick to the schedule. Many informed doctors today express their concern, that today, vaccine lectures are focused on teaching physicians how to persuade patients to accept a vaccine, even when the patient is hesitant, instead of informing their patients about the benefits, risks and alternatives to this medical intervention. By only explaining the benefits of this procedure, such action is in direct violation of "informed consent," which is one of the medical ethical principles established from the Nuremberg Code. Those principles are explained in greater detail in Safety & Efficacy - 22.

Dr. Paul Offit is recognized as an official vaccine expert, and he is the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. During a Q&A, Dr. Offit explained that many medical institutions do not provide any education on vaccines. He stated that the university where he teaches now offers two lectures on vaccines, only because he requested to offer those lectures. In several of Paul Offit's interviews, he states there isn’t a single good reason to not vaccinate, and based on that statement it seems reasonable to assume that in his vaccine lectures he provides zero discussion about well-founded vaccine safety concerns.

To quote a published study titled Pharma influence widespread at medical schools, the study explains that medical students are not taught how to evaluate how pharmaceutical influence is affecting medical institutions, medical research and health policy. The research explains:

Medical students aren’t given enough instruction in the types of conflicts of interest and their implications, warn some physicians.

Recent research has revealed widespread pharmaceutical influence and weak institutional safeguards in Canadian medical schools. But lecturers, medical students and ethicists are far from united on the extent to which relations with industry are acceptable and what role universities should play in preparing students to withstand influence.

Shnier thinks all lectures — offered by external experts or faculty — should be free of industry ties. “There are enough independent researchers and independent physicians who are knowledgeable about the topics that are taught in medical schools.”

She adds that “schools could agree to only present evidence that’s independent of drug company material,” although she recognizes companies would necessarily be the source for clinical trials of new branded drugs.

Threatening a Doctor's Medical License

As stated in Safety & Efficacy – Part 20, doctors face having their reputations destroyed, if they question vaccination practices or push back on vaccination policy and practices. In that article, I provided four examples where medical doctors faced disciplinary hearings, and sometimes lost their medical licenses. Three of the doctors I mentioned in that article were completely exonerated, after they proved that the medical board was completely wrong for questioning their professional conduct.

To quote Robert F Kennedy Jr from an interview he gave in episode three of the documentary Vaccines Revealed (Link Here), he said:

And doctors won't come out. Doctors lose their licence if they talk about this.

Financial incentives for Pediatricians to Fully Vaccinate Patients

In addition to those realities, is the situation where some insurance plans operating in specific US States offer financial incentives to pediatricians for fully vaccinating their patients (Pdf) (I’m unsure if this happens in Canada - this may only happen in the US)

… insurance companies pay pediatricians massive bonuses based on the number of children who are  vaccinated by age 2.

So how much money do doctors really make from vaccines? The average American pediatrician has 1546 patients, though some pediatricians see many more. The vast majority of those patients are very young, perhaps because children transition to a family physician or stop visiting the doctor at all as they grow up. As the table above explains, Blue Cross Blue Shield pays pediatricians $400 per fully vaccinated child. If your pediatrician has just 100 fully-vaccinated patients turning 2 this year, that’s $40,000. Yes, Blue Cross Blue Shield pays your doctor a $40,000 bonus for fully vaccinating 100 patients under the age of 2. If your doctor manages to fully vaccinate 200 patients, that bonus jumps to $80,000. 

But here’s the catch: Under Blue Cross Blue Shield’s rules, pediatricians lose the whole bonus unless at least 63% of patients are fully vaccinated, and that includes the flu vaccine. So it’s not just $400 on your child’s head–it could be the whole bonus. To your doctor, your decision to vaccinate your child might be worth $40,000, or much more, depending on the size of his or her practice.

On Ask Dr. Sears website, he addresses this reality, explaining that he was surprised to learn that this style of incentive program is actually offered in some States. He goes on to explain how such incentive programs like this can actually harm the doctor patient relationship. Dr. Sears explains that some physicians are willing to give up their bonuses, to practice medicine for all families that come into their office, even to those families who don't vaccinate. Dr. Sears explains that it's unlikely that most doctors would be willing to do that though and research from 1999 corroborates his assumption, showing that when doctors are offered bonuses, most take the necessary measures to be able to receive that bonus.

And even if there weren't bonuses offered to doctors, different actions taken by insurance companies still have a direct financial affect on physicians. Dr. Paul Thomas explains how this happens, as follows:

We have these things called "quality measures" for doctors. So in pediatrics, most insurance plans will rate you based on your quality measures, and in pediatrics oftentimes it's how well you vaccinate. That's considered a "good doctor" who vaccinates well. In other words, I'm doing a good job telling you, my patient, to get all these vaccines, because that's the right thing to do, because the CDC and the AAP said so.

So, they look at my two year olds, what percentage are fully vaccinated. Well, it's zero. There's no way I'm going to promote the hepatitis B vaccines for newborns, etc, etc. Right. So, it's not that I'm anti-vaccine, but I'm telling the truth. And once you tell the truth and give enough information, intelligent parents make the decision, and now I'm a bad doctor [according to CDC and AAP recommendations], I'm getting dropped by insurance plans, it's a disincentive for doctors to step forward and do the right thing.

Unfortunately, many mechanisms operate within medical institutions where our doctors are taught and employed. These mechanisms ensure that doctors stick to the vaccination schedule and never question vaccination practices. A doctor's vaccine education is focused solely on learning the benefits of vaccination. Doctors are never taught about the potential harms of vaccination, and they are not taught how to critically review and evaluate the pharmaceutical influences that affect the medical institutions, the medical research, and health policy. Once the doctor is working, some States offer substantial benefits to doctors who do not question current vaccine practices. These doctors receive significant financial compensation for doing so. If a parent doesn't want to follow the schedule, those doctors often fire those families from their practice, so that their bonuses are not affected. In contrast, at other clinics where doctors are questioning vaccination practices and begin offering true informed consent to their patients, those doctors are often dropped from insurance plans, they are kicked out of multiple-doctor clinics, they are sometimes disciplined, and sometimes stripped of their medical license.

Article Sources:

• Doctors speaking out about how biased and inadequate their vaccine education was in medical school Here and Here

• Dr. Paul Offit explaining that many medical schools teach nothing on vaccines Here

• Widespread pharmaceutical influence and weak institutional safeguards in Canadian medical schools Here

• Financial incentives to pediatricians for fully vaccinating their patients (Pdf) Article about it Here

• Dr. Sears explains he has learned some health insurance plans in some States do offer bonuses to physicians Here

• Research - Bonuses work at encouraging doctors to fully vaccinate their patients Here

• Dr. Paul Thomas explains how insurance plan quality measures often result in doctors being dropped by insurance plans, acting as a disincentive for doctors to do the right thing  Here

Continue to the next article in this series: Here

You are currently on Part 9 of a 14 Part Series.

View a Post in the Series Using the Links Below:

Part 1: Consumer Safety Nets Here

Part 2: HHS

Part 3: The FDA Here 

Part 4: The CDC Here 

Part 5: The DHHS & IOM Here 

Part 6: Scientific Research Here 

Part 7: Scientific Research Corruption Here 

Part 8: The Medical Journals Here 

Part 9: Our Doctors (You are on this page)

Part 10: Doctors Responsibility Here 

Part 11: Medical Institutions Here 

Part 12: VAERS Here 

Part 13: The Media Here 

Part 14: The Legal System Here