The Louisiana State Medical Society and eight other medical organizations are calling for an end to the politicization of vaccines in the wake of a new Louisiana Department of Health policy banning vaccine promotion and events.
“Immunizations should not be politicized. Healthcare should not be politicized. Public health should not be politicized. Your relationship with your physician should not be politicized,” the groups wrote in a joint letter released Monday, four days after the health department’s widely criticized step ending their longstanding practice of encouraging the public to get vaccinated and holding vaccination events.
The letter was signed by the Louisiana State Medical Society, the Louisiana Academy of Family Physicians, the Louisiana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Louisiana Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, the Louisiana Chapter of the American College of Physicians, the Louisiana Chapter of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Louisiana Society of Addiction Medicine, MedicineLouisiana and the Radiological Society of Louisiana.
In it the groups call vaccines “one of the most significant medical innovations of our time” and “essential to supporting healthy communities.”
They said that although doctors respect their patient’s autonomy and consent, they have a responsibility to provide them with accurate information about the increased risks of illness and hospitalizations, and the risk of harming others, if they don’t get vaccinated.
“Public health should serve as a partner to physicians by promoting evidence-based vaccine policy which is in the best interest of the patient,” the letter says, in an apparent reference to the new ban on vaccine promotion.
They added that traditional vaccinations are important for both child and adult health, noting that vaccines have “greatly impacted the spread of (and in some cases nearly eradicated): Polio, Smallpox, Tetanus, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis A, Rubella, Hib, Influenza, Measles, Pertussis, Pneumococcal Disease, Rotavirus, Varicella, Diphtheria and Mumps.”
Dr. Vincent Shaw, the president of the Louisiana Academy of Family Physicians, said he’s never seen another instance of the state’s medical groups joining together to oppose a move made by their health department.
Shaw said he feared that ending vaccine promotion could lead to outbreaks of infectious diseases that are nearly eradicated, ones he’s only seen in textbooks, like measles and rubella.
“It scares me because even though I’ve been practicing 17-plus years, there are diseases that I’ve learned about in books but I’ve never seen, nor treated, nor trained physicians to take care of,” he said. “So if these diseases start to pop up we are going to start having problems.”
Already, Louisiana is experiencing an outbreak of pertussis, known as whopping cough.
Dr. Mikki Bouquet, a Baton Rouge pediatrician who works with Louisiana Families for Vaccines, criticized the health department for what she called its “an anti-vaccine stance.” She said the steep rise in anti-vaccine politics has begun to make her patients less trustworthy of her advice.
“It's impacting how I do my job every day, and if it impacts my patients, that's where it starts to get personal, because I'm going to have patients that are going to start to get sick and die,” Bouquet said. “That blood's gonna be on their [LDH's] hands with the stance that they've made.”
Bouquet said she only has five or 10 minutes to talk about vaccine science with patients who might be surrounded by misinformation on social media every day.
“Now, parents are questioning, well, do we really need all these or which ones are the most important? And, you know, that's absurd. That's like saying: ‘Which vitamin helps your body more than other vitamins?’ You need all your vitamins,” she said.
Bouquet also works with newborns. In past years, she said she’d encounter about one mother every few months who wanted to decline the hepatitis B vaccine, which is recommended for babies within 12 hours of birth. Now, it’s one mother in every 10 births.
“It feels like they've [LDH] undermined physicians and pediatricians in particular. You know, they say in one breath, it's a doctor-patient decision, but in another breath, they mention that it's not the role of public health to promote vaccines, which is absolutely absurd,” she added. “The more that they don't show their stance on pro-vaccines, the more misinformation and anti-vaccine agenda will just propagate and affect our community.”
On Thursday, Surgeon General Dr. Ralph Abraham and Deputy Surgeon General Wyche Coleman published a statement to the Louisiana Department of Health’s website starkly condemning COVID public health measures and vaccination efforts in particular.
“Government should admit the limitations of its role in people’s lives and pull back its tentacles from the practice of medicine,” they wrote.
Abraham appears to have misrepresented his credentials in state communications that describe him as a “family medicine physician” when he is not listed as board-certified by the American Board of Family Medicine, WWNO/WRKF reported this week. Coleman was a board-certified ophthalmologist from 2014 to 2024, but is no longer certified, according to the American Board of Ophthalmology.
