With millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses already plunged into American arms and hundreds of million more doses on the way, can healthcare professionals confidently receive the vaccines themselves and also recommend them for patients?
While responses to this question often involve important emotional factors that need to be addressed, this article focuses on three rational considerations: safety, efficacy and ethics.
Read MoreSince the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our society has had to adapt to unprecedented restrictions and limitations. During this trying time, it has been difficult to find points of optimism. The rapid development of vaccine candidates utilizing varied techniques remains encouraging.
Read MoreIt has been over a year since the first diagnosis of COVID-19 in the United States. Due to this pandemic’s effects, our society has experienced limitations in personal freedoms to a level we have never known. Social interactions and work environments have been changed by social distancing, masks, hospital and nursing home visitation restrictions and working from home. Freedom of movement about our communities and the nation has been limited by “stay-at-home orders” and mass travel restrictions. The availability of vaccines provides a sliver of hope but also raises many questions. Issues our society must address include prioritizing equitable vaccine distribution and the potential for coercive mandates on vaccine use.
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Position & Public Policy Statements Ethics statements deal with ethical issues. They are drafted by the Ethics Committee of the Board and the final version has to be approved first by the Board of Trustees and then by the House of Representatives representing the CMDA membership. These statements can be based on biblical, scientific, moral and social principles. They are not binding on CMDA members…
Read MoreIn the spring 2021 edition of CMDA Today, CMDA published an article that examined the ethical basis for taking a COVID-19 vaccine. The goal of the article was to reassure CMDA members of the good reasons to utilize the COVID-19 vaccines produced in the last year. Since the article’s publication, several members have written with ongoing questions and concerns about the ethical status of the vaccines due to their association with abortion-derived fetal cell lines. The purpose of this blog post is to address those concerns. An update on the safety and efficacy of the vaccines will be addressed in the future.
Read MoreCMDA Senior Vice President for Bioethics and Public Policy Dr. Jeff Barrows and I recently wrote a piece for The Public Discourse, “Is Receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Ethical?” that suggested principles to consider as we navigate ethical issues related to COVID-19 vaccines. I’ve included brief highlights below; more from the original article and also new observations will be published in an upcoming edition of CMDA Today (previously known as Today’s Christian Doctor).
Read More“I’m still a zero’: Vaccine-resistant Republicans warn that their skepticism is worsening”) that examined the vaccine hesitancy of conservatives.
Read MoreLast week, a friend asked me, as a family physician knowledgeable about COVID-19, to speak to a group she belongs to of community leaders, here in northeast Louisiana. I spoke about the current status of COVID infections in our area and the need for vaccination. The vaccination rate is low in our area—currently only 37 percent are fully vaccinated in our parish.
Read MoreIn a weekly column on Sunday, August 29, Evangelical attorney David French declared “It’s Time to Stop Rationalizing and Enabling Evangelical Vaccine Rejection.”
Is that really a thing, you may ask?
There certainly is some evidence for that. Among those who have already been vaccinated against COVID-19, white Evangelicals trail the national average by 10 percent. A significant difference, but not a dramatic difference. In fact, the majority are vaccinated, according to this tweet displayed in the article.
Read MoreWhen COVID-19 began sweeping around the globe in early 2020, career healthcare missionaries were faced with the option of staying in their countries of service to weather the storm or evacuating back to the United States before the borders closed. Without sufficient quantities of protective equipment for staff members, would rural mission hospitals be able to survive the pandemic? In countries where the medical infrastructure is limited at best, would there be enough resources? What about food and other supplies to help to meet the day-to-day needs if the airports closed?
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Letter to the Editor of CHEST (American College of Chest Physicians) opposing physician-assisted suicide in response to article by Attorney Kathryn Tucker’s article pushing physicians to help patients dye.
Read MoreI have a soft spot for public health. True, I’ve been a family physician for 32 years, and have touched many people’s lives, but decisions made by public health practitioners have an outsized impact on health.
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A 2023 report by Pew Research Center reported that 13 percent of Americans reported attending in-person worship services in the summer of 2020. I was not one of them. Until we had a vaccine, I did not want people gathering in groups.
Read MoreAs the medical system groans beneath the burden of the pandemic, conversations have appropriately turned to burnout among healthcare professionals. Most dialogues point to external systems, e.g., the shrinking workforce, limited supplies and political contentions over vaccines. While these forces exert significant influence, and indeed pose a crisis in many parts of the U.S., deeper and more personal dynamics are at play.
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As I write this, I am on Day 8 of a self-imposed quarantine for COVID-19. Dr. H and I managed to come down with it at almost the same time; so have several of our family members. No one seems to know just who gave it to whom, but at this point it doesn’t much matter. All of our happily vaccinated and boostered selves are doing better now, by God’s grace, and we are very thankful about it.
Read MoreAs organizations representing over 25,000 medical professionals, we would like to correct the errors and assumptions of the recently released joint statement from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and Physicians for Reproductive Health (PRH).
Read MoreAs representatives of over 30,000 physicians who practice according to the Hippocratic Oath, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), the American College of Pediatricians, Christian Medical & Dental Associations, the Catholic Medical Association, and the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons decry the call to continue elective abortion during the COVID-19 pandemic made by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and others which falsely characterize elective abortion as essential healthcare.
Read MoreAs a Christian healthcare professional, have your colleagues ever looked down at you for refusing to prescribe the morning after pill? Or have you ever been punished for maintaining your religious beliefs instead of believing in evolution? Or have you ever been harassed by an attending trying to force you to perform an abortion?
If you’ve experienced any type of hostility or discrimination like this, then you know how important it is for healthcare workers to protect their right of conscience. Right of conscience is defined as the right to practice healthcare in accordance with your deeply held religious, moral or ethical convictions.
Healthcare professionals are being pressured and discriminated against by employers and colleagues because of their deeply held religious or moral beliefs. Almost one in four faith-based professionals state that they have been discriminated against by employers, educators or others in the healthcare system. Nearly two out of five have been pressured to violate their beliefs by referring, writing a prescription or doing a procedure.
Abolishing the right of conscience is dangerous. It’s not just dangerous for the physicians and healthcare workers, but it’s also dangerous for our country, our healthcare system and every patient. In a recent survey of more than 2,800 faith-based doctors, pharmacists, physician assistants and nurses, 95 percent of them said they would quit medicine before violating their conscience.
CMDA is committed to providing the most up-to-date information on the legislative, ethical and medical aspects of the fight to protect the rights of medical professionals. We’ve compiled a great number of resources that you can use to educate yourself and others about this important issue. So get involved today: talk about the issue with your friends, write your senators and send a letter to your local newspaper to let others know how important it is to maintain the right of conscience.
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Member Awards One of the highlights each year during the CMDA National Convention is the presentation of the Servant of Christ, Educator, Missionary and President’s Heritage Awards. You are invited to nominate CMDA colleagues for three of these four awards, while the Missionary of the Year Award is selected by a commission. A one-page summary of the person’s achievements and why they should be considered can…
Read MoreA webinar series hosted by Christian Medical & Dental Associations and The Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. Through The Convergence, CMDA joins together with The Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary to discuss topics important to today’s leaders in healthcare and in the church. Each webinar includes a panel of experts to discuss topics such as the beginning of life, pregnancy after Roe v….
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CMDA Today is a full-color, quarterly magazine devoted to today’s issues in healthcare, including inspirational testimonies from fellow Christian healthcare professionals, public policy updates, glimpses into the future of healthcare and examples of how to integrate your faith into your practice.
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We are excited to release the new CMDA Today, formerly Today’s Christian Doctor. In this edition of the magazine, you can learn more about the ethics of the COVID-19 vaccines. Plus, get a firsthand look at the recent CMDA member survey, earn continuing education credit on the topic of human trafficking, learn how to start a local ministry and more.
Read MoreI remember early on hearing in the news about a virus causing problems in China. It wasn’t long before we heard news of it spreading. As it began to spread, we were busy planning for March, our busiest month of mission trips. We send the most teams in the month of March, which gives mission opportunities for various schools during the annual spring break period. We sent our first two teams out before countries began closing their borders. While these two teams were still out of the country, we began cancelling our remaining trips. First it was for the month, then it became two and on through the summer. Before we knew it, we had cancelled every single remaining mission trip scheduled throughout the remainder of 2020—all as a result of COVID-19.
Read MoreMy husband and I had just moved from Michigan to Texas for my first year of medical school at the University Health Science Center San Antonio. We walked up to the door of a house we had never visited, hand-in-hand wondering what the evening ahead would hold, with unfamiliar people, in this unfamiliar part of the country. As we arrived at the front door, we could hear the sounds of conversation mixed with laughter inside, along with the delicious aroma of cooking pizza tantalizing our taste buds. Another couple our age greeted us warmly while handing us an apron, sending us toward a buzzing kitchen to begin creating our “couple pizza” for the pizza bake-off contest! Wow! It was a Texas size welcome.
Read MoreWhen 2020 started, I had a plan. A plan to follow God’s leading to serve on a mission trip in Southeast Cambodia. Like everyone else, those plans were completely changed when the pandemic hit.
But God.
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