Leading Dental Group Says It’s Okay to Refuse Treatment for Unvaxxed

The nation’s oldest and largest dental association says it stands behind a white paper, authored by its ethics council, which argues that dentists have the right to know their patients’ vaccination status and to refuse treatment for the unvaccinated.  

The American Dental Association’s Council on Ethics, Bylaws and Judicial Affairs (CEBJA) acknowledged the ethical quandary dentists face in considering treatment refusal and admitted the hardships it might cause.  Still, the group maintained that dentists have the right to deny treatment to any patient who is unvaccinated.

Members of the council emphasized that their position wasn’t limited to the Covid-19 vaccine.  They argued that dentists are within their rights to know their patients’ vaccination status in relation to any communicable disease, and to refuse treatment of any patient who is unvaccinated against any disease for any reason.

“The focus is not on one vaccine in particular but on the process of vaccination more generally,” the members wrote.

Council members acknowledged that dentists have a responsibility to protect their patients from harm and that refusing to treat patients because the patients are unwilling or unable to be vaccinated “may actually cause that patient harm, especially if precautions can be put in place to mitigate the risks posed by the patient’s vaccination status.”

The ADA council admitted that a refusal to treat “might also have longer term repercussions causing the patient or potential patient to lose trust in the provider as well as the profession which might result in an unwillingness to seek care in the future.”

Members of the council appeared to justify their harsh stance toward the unvaccinated by claiming that patients have an obligation to protect other patients “who may be unable to be vaccinated and have health conditions that make them vulnerable to vaccine preventable illnesses.”  In describing this scenario, the council made no distinction between vaccines, like MMR, that provide sterilizing immunity, and those, like the Covid-19 vaccines, that are non-sterilizing.  The latter are not capable of halting either infection or transmission.  Even while Ebenezer Fauci pretends otherwise and spoils everybody’s Christmas, most real doctors and scientists recognize that the Covid-19 vaccines play no role in protecting others, including any vulnerable individuals who are unable to be vaccinated. To the extent that they offer any benefit at all, non-sterilizing vaccines only help those who take them.  

Nor did the members of the council acknowledge the serious risks associated with vaccination in general and the Covid-19 vaccines in particular.  The United States Supreme Court acknowledged the general risks of vaccination when, in 2011, the court affirmed the constitutionality of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which created a no-fault compensation program “to stabilize a vaccine market adversely affected by an increase in vaccine-related tort litigation…” In its majority opinion, the court cited the United States Congress, which had justified the need for the law by proclaiming all vaccines to be “unavoidably unsafe.” [1]

Sidebar:  Many people are under the mistaken impression that the Covid-19 vaccine makers are uniquely protected from personal injury lawsuits because they enjoy special status under Emergency Use Authorization.  In reality, vaccine makers are protected from most lawsuits for all licensed vaccines that are sold in the U.S., due to this 1986 law.   (Correction: All licensed vaccines that are sold in the U.S. and recommended for children. As Robert Kennedy Jr. noted in a recent interview, the vaccines have to be recommended for children to be protected by this law. Once they are recommended for children, the vaccine makers are protected even when adults take the vaccine. This is why the feds are pushing the Covid-19 vaccine onto children.)

It is the height of hypocrisy that pharmaceutical companies are given a permanent liability shield for all vaccines because government officials have determined that all vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe.”  Yet those same government officials then turn around and demand that we take the vaccines because they are “safe and effective.” It seems to me that every government official and CEO that promotes or mandates vaccines while proclaiming them to be “safe and effective” can and should be sued for false advertising, at the very least.

Rather than affirm the intensely personal nature of the decision to accept a medical intervention that is “unavoidably unsafe,” the ADA’s ethics council instead argued that everyone else – dentist and patient alike – has an obligation to accept the risks of vaccination, regardless of how minimal the benefits to them personally may be, in order to protect vulnerable people who cannot be vaccinated.   

Meanwhile, where exactly are these vulnerable people who cannot be vaccinated?  I have heard many cases in the past year of doctors having their medical licenses threatened for writing medical exemptions for their patients.  Hospitals, universities, and other businesses have been refusing to recognize most medical as well as religious exemptions. I even have heard first-hand accounts of health care providers and schools refusing to authorize exemptions for the second and third shots after patients suffer a serious adverse reaction to the first shot.  

Furthermore, rather than advise cancer patients and others with serious underlying conditions not to get vaccinated against Covid-19, the CDC has been recommending extra booster shots for these immuno-compromised individuals.[2] I have even read reports of patients who are literally on their death beds still being administered a Covid-19 vaccine.[3]

In reality, other than children under the age of five, for whom serious complications from Covid-19 are extremely rare, at this time everyone who wants a Covid-19 vaccine can get one. The most fragile and vulnerable among us are being either strongly encouraged or required to get vaccinated.     

In response to the ADA’s position paper, I sent the association these questions:

·       What if all dentists decided to refuse treatment for those who are not vaccinated against Covid-19 (or any other disease)? Then unvaccinated persons, who may be unvaccinated for many different reasons, would have no access to dentistry.  Does the ADA support this possible outcome? 

·       Already, many rural areas of the country are experiencing severe shortages of providers.  Even one dentist taking such a position [against the unvaccinated] in a rural area could mean that many unvaccinated adults and children would effectively have no access to dentistry.  Does the ADA support this possible outcome? 

·       Every vaccine carries risks as well as benefits.  The Covid-19 vaccines are causing more severe adverse events, including death, heart attack, blood clots, stroke, and neurological disorders, than all vaccines combined for the past 30 years, according to the CDC's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Why is the ADA still advocating these vaccines for dentists and patients?

This was the ADA's reply:

“The American Dental Association stands behind the white paper authored by the Council on Ethics, Bylaws and Judicial Affairs (CEBJA), and respectfully declines to answer the questions you have posed.”

This ADA’s white paper also encouraged dentists to take an active role in promoting vaccines to their patients, despite the fact that most dentists have little or no formal training in vaccinology or immunology and may also lack basic knowledge of their patients’ medical histories.   The council noted that, under an emergency directive, dentists and dental students are authorized to administer Covid-19 vaccines. The council also cited a study that concluded parents are “comfortable having discussions about HPV [human papillomavirus infection] and the vaccine in the dental setting, especially with dentists.”   Since parents are comfortable having these personal discussions with their dentists, the council argued, dentists should not hesitate to do so.

I followed up with a question regarding the association’s funding sources.  I was particularly interested to learn how much funding the ADA may be receiving from the vaccine makers themselves as well as government agencies that promote vaccination.  I received no reply. Nor was I able to find a list of the ADA’s major grants and donations through simple Google searches.

The organization’s refusal to answer basic questions about its discriminatory attitude toward the unvaccinated, combined with a general lack of transparency about its funding, is deeply disappointing.  Sadly, however, it is no longer surprising.  In the past two years, we have seen such behavior from nearly every major institution – public as well as private – that has ever professed to care about our health and well-being.   

You can read the ADA’s white paper here: https://www.ada.org/-/media/project/ada-organization/ada/ada-org/files/about/the_ethics_of_vaccination.pdf

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[1] 09-152 Bruesewitz v. Wyeth LLC (02/22/11) (supremecourt.gov)

[2] Staying Well During COVID-19 | Cancer Survivors | CDC

[3] COVID-19: Homebound, hospice patients struggling to get vaccine (wisn.com)