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Comment & Response
November 2018

Dismissal Policies for Vaccine Refusal—Reply

Author Affiliations
  • 1School of Nursing, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  • 2Center for Healthcare Ethics, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  • 3Department of Philosophy, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan
  • 4Bioethics Center, Children’s Mercy Hospital, Kansas City, Missouri
  • 5School of Medicine, University of Missouri, Kansas City
JAMA Pediatr. 2018;172(11):1101-1102. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2018.2666

In Reply Marshall and O’Leary’s thoughtful response to our article1 suggests that dismissal policies are ethically justifiable because they might induce parents to immunize their children. This outcome is conceivable, but we have only anecdotes about how often it occurs. Such evidence became the thin reed on which the American Academy of Pediatrics rested its new policy of tolerating the practice of dismissing vaccine-hesitant parents.2

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