Do no harm?
When my uncle Seymour was 10 years old he contracted polio. This was in the 1930s — there was no polio vaccine at that time. My grandparents sought treatment for him in the U.S. with no success. They traveled to Europe to seek a cure when fascism was taking hold but could find none. Seymour spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair — unable to walk.
An infectious disease can be unstoppable once it starts to spread. Some people will be permanently disabled and some will die. When access to vaccines is limited or even denied, this can happen again.
For New Hampshire, our governor chose not to join the Northeast Public Health Collaborative because she did not want to “politicize healthcare” — but she is politicizing it and is limiting healthcare choices. New Hampshire now follows confusing unscientific CDC guidelines for vaccines, especially for COVID. A friend under age 65 recently tried to get a COVID vaccine. The pharmacist publicly interrogated her by referring to a list of “qualifying diagnoses.” This wouldn’t have happened if New Hampshire had joined the collaborative.
It appears that human suffering or even death doesn’t matter to the Trump administration or to our governor. Severe cuts to medical research, Medicare, Medicaid and healthcare funding will harm the American public.
The core principle of medicine is “do no harm.” The current state and federal administrations are not following that core principle. We need to speak out against this. Healthcare choices need to be made available and affordable to those who want them.