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Medical Bastardry

April 9th, 2010

I

just received a call from the mother of a 2 year old boy. This woman

has been a member of the AVN for a couple of years and is very well

informed about both vaccination and health – as are most of our members.Her son was recently hospitalised with what turned out to be

salmonella (the department of health is pretty sure that he was exposed

to this via food he was given on the airplane going on holiday

recently). As a result, he became very dehydrated and needed to be

brought to hospital.The mother was in the emergency room with him for over 20 hours

before he was admitted and by then, she was extremely tired with

looking after this sick little boy all that time.About an hour after they were brought to the hospital room, the

hospital paediatrician came in to check on the boy. The first thing he

said when he looked at the child’s chart was, “You know, if your son

had been vaccinated, he never would have gotten salmonella.”The mother was confused, as you can imagine! She was also at her most vulnerable with worrying about her son and lack of sleep.“Oh.” she said to the doctor. “I didn’t know that salmonella was part of the childhood vaccination schedule.”“Yes,” said the doctor. “It’s part of the DPT vaccine.”The mind boggles! Either this doctor really believes that DPT stands

for salmonella vaccine or he was just out and out lying to try and

bully this mother. Either way, he is being incredibly irresponsible

trying to speak in this way to a woman whose child is very ill!The mother is considering filing a complaint with the hospital about her treatment and I think she should.Just because someone is a doctor is no reason for them to treat

anyone like this. Especially when he is completely wrong in what he is

saying!