As more parents have become aware of the risks and side effects of vaccines, many vaccination rates have been declining. Pharmaceutical companies and doctors alike are concerned about this awakening, so they have created training materials to help vaccine providers handle what one manual refers to as “vaccine-hesitant parents.”
When you take your child to their health care provider for a visit, you may have a list of questions to ask them about vaccines. You might be wondering about the risk of autism, the side effects of a vaccine, or the damaging effect dozens of vaccines will have on your child’s immune system.
And, your child’s doctor will have answers: the ones they are trained to give you. Organizations such as the World Health Organization and the National Academy of Pediatrics, two names you might trust but should not, have created brief manuals for doctors, nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, and even pharmacists, teaching them how to successfully deal with parents who question or refuse vaccines.  
Who Is Really Training Your Child’s Doctor?
Let’s find out who wrote these training materials.
A online publication of the journal Pediatrics instructs doctors and other health care providers how to respond to parents who question vaccination. One of the authors of that paper, Dr. C. Mary Healy, served on an advisory board for Novartis vaccines. She also received a research grant from Sanofi Pastuer. Your child’s doctor will tell you what Dr. Healy said to say, but your child’s doctor won’t tell you that Dr. Healy was under the influence of Big Pharma when she wrote the script. 
Another author of the training material, Dr. Larry Pickering, worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Emory University, both of which have strong ties to vaccine manufactures. Emory University owns a significant amount of stock in a vaccine company called GeoVax. If you want to learn more about why Emory University is a suspicious organization that should not be trusted, read this informative article. 
Another easy-to-read training publication, perfect for busy, overworked doctors who don’t have time to research vaccines in depth, was created by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO receives more funding from organizations than it does from its member nations, including the Rockefeller Foundation, which has ties to many large vaccine companies and owns more than half of pharmaceutical interests in the US. [5, 6]
What’s Inside These Vaccine-Funded Training Guides?
Your child’s doctor may have already read these publications, as they are concise and provide exact scripts, depending how you as the parent may question a vaccine. These materials also train nurses, emphasizing the important role a nurse plays in maintaining practice-wide commitment to high vaccination rates.
Both training manuals outline several similar misgivings parents may have about vaccines, including the following common objections addressed in the WHO publication, which refers to concerned parents as “fence-sitters” and “worrieds”:
- “whether each vaccine is needed
- whether giving several vaccines at one time can cause harm
- whether vaccine ingredients are harmful
- how well each vaccine works”
… and these questions parents might ask, as published by Pediatrics:
- “questions about whether vaccines cause autism
- questions about whether vaccines are more dangerous for infants than the diseases they prevent
- questions about the number of vaccines and vaccine ingredients
- questions about side effects
- questions about unknown serious events”
As you know, these concerns are valid and real, yet the guidelines written by vaccine-influenced doctors downplay parents’ unease by reducing real conversations to repartee, with answers that lack any scientific evidence.
What Is Your Child’s Doctor Trained To Tell You?
Have you asked your child’s healthcare provider questions about the risks of vaccines? Here are some of the scripts in the guide published by the World Health Organization, offering answers doctors can memorize when parents question vaccines:
Parent: “All those people that think the MMR vaccine causes autism must be on to something.”
Health care provider: “Autism is a burden for many families and people want answers—including me. But well designed and conducted studies that I can share with you show that MMR vaccine is not a cause of autism.”
Parent: “What are all these vaccines for? Are they really necessary?”
Health care provider: “I know you didn’t get all these vaccines when you were a baby. Neither did I. But we were both at risk of serious diseases. Today, we are lucky to be able to protect our babies from many serious diseases with vaccines.”
Parent: “I’m really not comfortable with my child getting so many vaccines at once.”
Health care provider: “There is no proven danger in getting all the recommended vaccines today. Any time you delay a vaccine you leave your baby vulnerable to disease. It’s really best to stay on schedule. But if you’re very uncomfortable, we can give some vaccines today and schedule you to come back soon for the rest, but this is not recommended.”
Parent: “I’m worried about the side effects of vaccines. I don’t want my child to get any vaccines today.”
Health care provider: “I’ll worry if your child does not get vaccines today, because the diseases can be very dangerous—most are still infecting children in the European Region. We can discuss the side effects right now and talk about how rare serious vaccine side effects are.”
Parent: “You really don’t know if vaccines cause any long-term effects.”
Health care provider: “We have years of experience with vaccines and no reason to believe that vaccines cause long-term harm. I understand your concern, but I truly believe that the risk of diseases is greater than any risks posed by vaccines. Vaccines will get your baby off to a great start for a long, healthy life.”
Did you notice how the doctor or nurse does not really address the parents’ concerns about vaccination?
Additional Techniques Doctors are Trained to Use With Vaccine-Hesitant Parents
Doctors are also trained to use the following strategy with parents who have concerns about vaccines. The training materials identify the four key parts of conversation with a hesitant parent:
- “patient and empathetic reassurance that you understand that their infant’s health is their top priority, and it also is your top priority, so putting children at risk of vaccine-preventable diseases without scientific evidence of a link between vaccines and autism is a risk you are not willing to take
- your knowledge that the onset of regressive autism symptoms often coincides with the timing of vaccines but is not caused by vaccines
- your personal and professional opinion that vaccines are safe
- your reminder that vaccine-preventable diseases, which may cause serious complications and even death, remain a threat”
The training materials list several other ways doctors should engage in conversation with parents and convince them to vaccinate their child. Here are more techniques your doctor may use to convince you to ignore the facts about vaccines and vaccinate your child:
- “Take time to listen.
- Solicit and welcome questions.
- Keep the conversation going.
- Acknowledge benefits and risks.
- Respect parents’ authority.
- Reduce the stress of shots.”
Additionally, doctors are instructed to share with parents that all of their own children have been vaccinated and are healthy, or to share that they have rarely or never seen a serious reaction to a vaccine in their practice, as a way to mix anecdotal stories with science.
Another tactic instructs doctors to tell parents that “most adverse events are no more troublesome than the effects of normal rough-and-tumble experiences encountered by the average toddler or school-aged child.” I would imagine that most families with a vaccine-injured child would strongly disagree with this statement.
None of the communication techniques in the training materials include the sharing of scientific facts or studies that are not affiliated with vaccine companies or their funding.
Which Resources are Doctors Trained to Recommend to Parents?
There are some websites named in the training guides that doctors are instructed to share with parents if parents have questions about research they can do on their own. Sadly, most of these sites or their parent organizations receive funding from pharmaceutical companies.
One guideline directs health care providers to share a link to the WHO website with parents. Despite its well-known status, this organization is not to be trusted, as you noted earlier in this article.
The website for the American Medical Assocation is also on the list of recommended resources for parents. This group promotes vaccination and receives funding from vaccine manufacturers.
The National Network for Immunization Information (NNii), also on the list as a trustworthy resource, is funded by affiliate organizations like the American Medical Association and other groups who receive funding and influence from vaccine manufacturers.
Another recommendation, the American Academy of Pediatrics, has received funding from Merck and Sanofi Pastuer, widely recognized and powerful vaccine companies.
The Allied Vaccine Group is another recommended website. This is a group of several pro-vaccine organizations claiming they are “dedicated to presenting valid scientific information about vaccines.” One of the members, PATH, has a highly profitable partnership with Merck and Sanofi, two huge pharmaceutical companies. 
Do you think these websites, or any of the others on the recommended list, will present unbiased information when they receive enormous amounts of funding from vaccine companies?
What Will You Say to Your Pharma-Trained Doctor?
Now that you know your child’s doctor is using a script when you have a conversation about vaccines, you know that you, too, will need your own script when they remind you that it’s time to vaccinate your child.
Intimidation, uncertainty, and worry are very common feelings for parents as they are thinking about how to tell their child’s doctor that they are questioning, delaying, or avoiding vaccines. These sentiments subside with time and research. As you become more educated in your decision, you will feel confident, empowered, and self-assured.
At your child’s appointment, you can let their doctor know that you will not be getting any vaccines at this visit, or say that you are still doing research about a specific vaccine, or explain that your child was recently ill and you will not be vaccinating today for that reason. Remember, different kinds of vaccine exemptions are available in all fifty states.
In addition, please know that well-baby and well-child visits are primarily scheduled for vaccination purposes. These visits are especially comforting to first time parents, but if your child is in good health, they may not be necessary if you are not vaccinating your child.
Have you had conversations with your child’s health care provider similar to the ones mentioned above? Do you recognize that doctors and nurses have been trained to recommend vaccination by other doctors and organizations who profit immensely from the sale of vaccines? Do you see that these tactics fail to disclose unbiased, scientific information about the dangers of vaccination?
If you want to delay or refuse vaccines, remember to practice your own script in advance of appointments with your child’s doctor.
If you want information about vaccine injuries and adverse events that have been reported to the government, you can visit the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) website and search specific vaccines. However, you must know that adverse events are highly underreported in this passive system, as admitted by the CDC, and the statistics for adverse events represent only one to ten percent of actual adverse events that occur after vaccination. 
If you want to learn real facts about vaccination that are not influenced by profit, you must discover the truth from sources that have no ties to pharmaceutical companies. You can access free, unbiased information and a list of vaccine ingredients here.
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