By: Mark Glennon*
The president of the Chicago-based American Medical Association, Gerald E. Harmon, M.D., wrote on Friday in Crain’s Chicago Business that employers should impose COVID vaccine mandates as a condition of employment.
Last week’s decision by the United States Supreme Court invalidating the Biden Administration’s attempt to force employers to do so “should not,” Harmon wrote, “prevent these employers from doing what must be done in the name of public health: requiring vaccines to protect their workers, our communities and our nation from the ravages of this pandemic.”
“Our only hope is that large employers do what’s right—not only for their own employees and their families, but for the health of our nation,” says Harmon.
If only we could hope that Harmon and his association would honor their own code of ethics. The AMA’s Code of Medical Ethics Opinion 2.1.1 says this:
Informed consent to medical treatment is fundamental in both ethics and law. Patients have the right to receive information and ask questions about recommended treatments so that they can make well-considered decisions about care. Successful communication in the patient-physician relationship fosters trust and supports shared decision making. The process of informed consent occurs when communication between a patient and physician results in the patient’s authorization or agreement to undergo a specific medical intervention.
That’s a plain statement of the informed consent doctrine, which is among the most widely recognized and time-honored principles of medical ethics here and abroad. Everybody of sufficient age and sound mind is supposed to have right to decide what is to be done to his or her body.
It’s “arguably the most deeply rooted doctrine in contemporary medical ethics,” wrote two medical ethics experts last year in the Wall Street Journal. In that column, a director of the Medical Ethics Program at the University of California, Irvine and a law professor at Notre Dame wrote, “Authorities rushing to implement mandatory vaccination protocols are ignoring available scientific data, basic principles of immunology and elementary norms.”
The AMA’s Code of Ethics is for physicians, not employers, but that’s precisely what makes Harmon’s indifference to the principle of informed consent so egregious. He is effectively calling on employers to override the physician-patient relationship entirely, thereby avoiding the duty physicians would have to honor it.
That workaround may not fly legally since employers may have a legal duty to get informed consent to coerced vaccinations, at least as some mandate opponents see things. I have no opinion on that; the point here is not about the legalities.
The point, instead, is about doing what is right and what is ethical. It’s the principle that matters, and it should matter not just for physicians. The AMA’s code of ethics properly states that principle and it is rightly applied to any person or entity, including employers, who are in a position to force medical treatment on somebody else. Harmon and the AMA apparently care nothing about that principle.
Harmon went on to cite as “evidence of a vaccine mandate’s effectiveness” the case of United Airlines, which imposed a vax mandate on its employees. That’s not scientific evidence. Harmon ignored countless studies now available addressing many points of debate about the vax.
What we do know is that experts seem to agree that the vax significantly reduces chances of hospitalization or death. But it has also become clear that the vax is of little or no value in reducing spread of the virus to others, which we wrote about last week. That destroys any rationale for mandates by employers or anybody else. Vaccinations affect only the vaccinated so the decision should be left to the individual.
The only other possible rationale for an employer mandate is the hospital and staff overload, which is real in many locations. But that overload results largely from mandates themselves, imposed on healthcare workers, many of whom have quit as a consequence. The Supreme Court upheld that mandate on any recipient of federal funding, which includes most every hospital and provider.
The load on hospitals and healthcare workers is also undoubtedly attributable in large part to the indifference of most of the medical establishments to treatments. The best, newest treatments are in such short supply that they are now rationed by the federal government. The AMA, like the federal government, systematically ignored therapeutics from the start, focusing almost exclusively on the vaccines and masks as prevention, which has turned out to be futile. Had development and distribution of therapeutics been emphasized early, countless victims might never be reaching the hospital. The AMA shares blame for that.
Finally, Harmon complained about politicized science. “It is most unfortunate that politicization of the virus and the vaccines developed to protect against severe illness and death has become a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to defeating the pandemic.”
The AMA and Harmon are perhaps the least credible voices in America to be complaining about politicized science. They have gone to truly absurd lengths inserting woke, racial politics into healthcare, as documented by RealClear Investigations in a two-part series. A lead editorial in the AMA journal’s August special issue dedicated to racial health disparities called systemic racism “a scientific fact beyond dispute and said all medical journals are morally obligated to document it in their research.”
Even The Atlantic, which is very progressive, ridiculed the AMA and Harmon for the damage their racial politics are inflicting on medical science and on the genuine interests of disadvantaged people. And dissenting from the AMA’s racial politics can jeopardize you job, The Atlantic wrote.
Let’s hope employers are more ethical than Harmon and the American Medical Association.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints
Following are some of our recent columns on COVID and Illinois:
- Why No Discussion Of COVID Treatments In Illinois?
- Running out of hospital beds is the biggest danger of Omicron? Then why has the Pritzker administration let the supply of ICU beds collapse by nearly 1,000?
- ‘Breakthrough Deaths’ After Vaccination Are Not Rare, Recently Representing Over A Third Of Illinois Covid Deaths. We Are Now Reporting Weekly Data – Wirepoints
- Indefensible: Vilification And Hectoring To Vaccinate Children Expands
- Antibody Treatments For Covid Work. Why Aren’t They Being Promoted?
You KNOW the purge is coming, in fact it is almost here, so now is time to make a choice. If there are any here reading who know the Lord Jesus Christ- please go unto the people to proclaim His Gospel unto salvation… From the book of Romans: 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10:10For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. 10:11For the scripture saith, Whosoever… Read more »
Wirepoints is 100% correct, as usual.
Disgusting slobs like this are exactly why you have a second amendment
I upvoted you because you’re right. Looks like your down votes are from Australians, or New Yorkers. The armchair Hitlers in the world are convinced they can continue to oppress “the little people” with impunity. They only respect muscle and one day soon, they’ll be hiding under their beds. Kinda funny…they created it.
The AMA’s membership represents only 15-18% of the nation’s physicians. Why? Because physicians have learned that the organization neither represents their interests nor values their opinions. If the AMA was more accountable to physicians, they would honor the ethics they prescribe. The AMA’s revenues are primarily derived from the private insurance industry. So when you hear AMA, they are not speaking for physicians. They are just another woke, politicized entity doing more harm than good.
In Japan, no vax without consent, no discrimination against unvaxxed. https://thepulse.one/2021/12/27/japan-ministry-of-health-no-vaccination-will-be-given-without-consent/
Excellent analysis by Wirepoints– again. The AMA is another example of an orgainzation that gets corrupted by federal government money. There are so many ties between the AMA and multiple subs of the federal government– like the CDC, NIH WHO, etc., that they can’t all be listed in a short comment. No wonder you get phony analysis, and abandonment of principles by what used to be an honorable organization.
Mark why do your editorials always ignore issues of injection injury and death?
You know, the other possible consequences of receiving experimental drugs and the truly horrific aspect of our government sponsored coronavirus journey?
You touch on every other justification for medical freedom but that one.
FF, fair question and I have indeed deliberately avoided it. I am assuming by “injection injury” you mean all the side effects and risks. I believe those risks are significant and maybe huge, but I just haven’t invested enough time to have the confidence to say much bout it or quantify the risk. There’s so much out there on that, and so much missing that we don’t know. It also gets complicated because so much depends on your age and risk factors. But I sure hope I haven’t implied those risks are low, and I sure don’t trust anything I… Read more »
Understood.
As slivers of honesty about the virus start to emerge from the regime while they decelerate the fear campaign in order to salvage their electoral prospects, the ugly truth about safety will hopefully emerge.
I.e., it should become clearer the number of deaths due to China virus were vastly overstated and the number of injuries and deaths due to injections vastly understated.
Unfortunately, we’ll have to look overseas for the real data on the latter. This regime has no interest in truth.
I.e., it should become clearer the number of deaths due to China virus were vastly overstated and the number of injuries and deaths due to injections vastly understated. Not sure about vastly understated but certainly understated. The China virus does make some people sick, very sick, as a result of the pneumonia that develops, and the more unhealthy one is, the higher risk they are. Covid pnuemonia is no joke and will make you sick for weeks. It could even spread to other organs according to some studies. There are certainly many vaccine injuries and deaths that have been purposely… Read more »
Myocarditis is the third leading sudden death killer of young adults and kids. And AMA wants to jab 5 year olds? Absolutists always want EVERYONE in line, just the opposite of how a real scientist would think.
Ask the AMA why trometemine was added to the kids vaccine.
Disagreements about standard of care between medical professionals are not new. What’s new is that professional agencies empowered to hold licenses hostage are promoting suppression of clinical evidence and removing dissenters from licensed ranks. Decades ago there was a dispute between neurosurgical departments at major hospitals about the use of intercranial burr holes to relieve pressure from brain swelling. One hospital had great outcomes using burr holes, the other which never used them had similar great outcomes. Data were shared, the best interests of patients advanced, everone learned something worthwhile. Decades ago, in-hospital vaginal delivery was prevalent. Then, a huge… Read more »
The medical profession needed to develop the standard of care treatment protocol to overcome the medical industry’s millennia of quackery, shamanism, and folk remedies.
Nowadays, med mal lawsuits, pharma companies and corporate overlords have taken the practicing out of medicine and replace it with a series of corporate checklists. If the patient makes it, great. if the patient dies, well too bad, we checked every box on the checklist.
Okay if you think this is a good idea AMA… then let’s start with the post office and truck drivers. You want to see what happens when all package deliveries stop AMA? You think the store shelves are empty now (which they are), just wait until your hospitals can’t get restocked.
How do you think our adversaries feel about that scenario?
Traitors in our midst.
The AMA has become as irrelevant as the ACLU, CDC, FDA, the WHO & many others…
And we do not have an impartial & robust media (present site excluded) to investigate their malfeasance…
The murderous consequences of politicized, enforced monopolies of American healthcare provision as dictacted by third party payment: taxpayers are forbidden access to provision when they refuse to bend the knee to political diktat (patients are allowed to suggest treatment options based upon tv commercials, but not upon unpopular source-cited data). Professionals requiring licensure lose livelihoods for refusing to suppress data. Monopolies granted to friends of regime (CON, GBO anti-kickback exclusion) result in absense of provision resources for innocent victims. Deregulation of medical care provision is a reasonable solution. Supply and demand would be balanced, and pricing would be dramatically decreased,… Read more »
Has anyone noticed drug commercials lately. The end of it says , tell your doctor if you have had the JAB or thinking about getting the JAB. Are they finding the some of these drugs are’nt mixing with the JAB
Our institutions are totally corrupted. The AMA is a joke to true medical professionals. Best to ignore them and the media that is their megaphone.
Corrupt indeed, all of them. FBI, CIA, DOJ, FDA, CDC, King Pritzker, Fox, Lightfoot etc….
Add the global corporations and we are fighting some battle.
Remember there is always more of us then them.
It is comforting knowing there are more of us than them, however, if we have no plan of action(s) and getting the many to work behind us, I think we loose.