Vaccination and Informed Consent: A Clinician’s Perspective

We’re publishing an original piece today by Lockdown Sceptics contributor and retired dentist Dr Mark Shaw, giving his considered and balanced view of the vaccines from a responsible clinician’s point of view. Here’s a taster:

The problem with the Government’s strategy is that it is rolling out a vaccination programme in a blanket approach that does not allow the public to make a properly informed decision based on evaluating their own relative risk of suffering from the effects of catching Covid. A clinician should only advise a patient to undergo treatment when they have been informed of all the pros and cons – so that the clinician has the patient’s informed consent. Informed consent (in this case of the public) can only have been obtained when the relative risks have been presented in a non-biased way without frightening them.

It would be reasonable to question the speed at which the vaccinations were rolled out (can you really compress time?) and the way the vaccines were administered (strictly as manufacturers recommended or not?) and, in this case particularly, the trial numbers and age range, etc.

If we throw caution to the wind and just accept that we have to get everyone vaccinated willy nilly in order to achieve a speedy end to lockdown, then we have failed as clinicians to act professionally. We run the risk of taking a gamble (again no matter how small) of failing to provide the best care for the public and ( if that “no matter how small” gamble fails in any small way), losing the most precious value that patients place in us – TRUST.

Worth reading in full.

https://lockdownsceptics.org/