I am not sure what to make of this story about a doctor who took his own life possibly because of regrets that he had provided parents with fraudulent documents that their their children were vaccinated when they were not. These were parents who wanted their children to be vaccinated but he had decided in the last decade of his life that vaccinations were harmful and unilaterally pretended to vaccinate them.
A doctor who took his own life in Chicago left a note suggesting he had become “averse” to vaccinations and may have falsified records.
The doctor, Van Koinis, may have left children unvaccinated, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office said.
Van Koinis expressed regret for his actions but his note was ambiguous.
Officials are investigating if the much-loved paediatrician forged records so that anti-vaccination parents could obtain documents required for schools.
Dr Koinis reportedly wrote that he had become averse to immunisation in his last decade of work.
“He was incredibly regretful for what he did and it was the only thing he mentioned in the suicide note. It was this and only this,” Chicago Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told US media, adding that the note was “cryptic”.
“The biggest issue is parents who are under the impression their children are immunised when they are not,” Sheriff Dart told the Chicago Sun-Times.
I can sort-of understand parents who have been misled into thinking that vaccinations are harmful and will got to great lengths to avoid vaccinating their children. Parents are easily scared about bad things that can happen to their children and fearing that something bad will happen because of something they did (vaccinating) seems to instill a bigger fear than something bad happening because of something they did not do (not vaccinating).
But a doctor who decides on their behalf, without their knowing? That is carrying one’s convictions to the extreme.
The parents of the children are now scrambling to find out if their children have beem vaccinated or not, something that is not apparently easy to determine for some vaccines.
My question is, “Would vaccination a second time be harmful?” I suspect that it would not. If that is true, why don’t these parents just have new vaccinations done just to cover the bases?
Mobius,
Would Insurance pay for them?
It makes me wonder if he thought he would be caught and his career was over.
It’s bad enough when fanatical parents withhold children from vaccination, but for an alleged medical professional to falsify records and enable is unconscionable.
I don’t know if this is a case of the God complex, extreme conservatism or what, but if I were to bring a child to be vaccinated I’d insist on observing the procedure, verifying the vaccine and maybe getting a follow-up blood test from an independent lab to check for antibodies.