To: Tribeca Pediatrics, Michel Cohen
TRIBECA PEDIATRICS: Protect Small Babies From Anti-Vaccinators At Your Practice
Dear Tribeca Pediatrics,
Please stop anti-vaccinators from endangering the rest of us by continuing to allow them to share common areas and exam rooms with our kids.
We love you. We love our pediatrician, we love the nurses who answer our questions by phone at all hours of the day and night, and the remarkable responsiveness of staff by email. You are great in every way but this one.
There has already been a case of measles in NY, and 90 more cases of it across the country. Measles is highly contagious, life threatening, and airborne. The risk is no longer hypothetical.
Parents who choose to ignore the science disproving any link between vaccines and harm are endangering the health and well-being of their children. To allow these reckless, ill-informed individuals to also endanger the children of those of us who believe in vaccines but whose babies are still too young to be immune is indefensible.
Physicians must take a stand in support of vulnerable children, reason, and scientific fact. Some doctors have decided to drop anti-vaccinators altogether.
If you must continue to accept anti-vaccinators into your practice in an attempt to educate them, please find a way to isolate them. At the very least, limit them to a certain office location, and rooms within that location, at specified times, so that the rest of us can feel safe coming to your office.
Thank you,
Parents in Brooklyn
Why is this important?
We have a four month old son. We love Tribeca Pediatrics and are philosophically aligned with their approach to pediatric healthcare in many ways. However, it has come to our attention that over 100 active patients at the Fort Greene practice alone are anti-vaccinators. We are afraid of the risk posed to our baby by sharing space with these individuals, particularly in light of the fact that it is when babies are sick and vulnerable that they go to the doctor.
Some important context: We have raised our concerns directly with the practice. They were extremely responsive, and sympathetic to our concerns, acknowledging that there is some risk involved, but they feel they have a better chance of educating anti-vaccinators if they continue to accept them.
They also explained that the idea of separation is logistically difficult due to space constraints.
We started this petition in the hopes that if enough people express interest in their doing so, they will consider creating some system for separation, despite the logistical difficulty in doing so.
This petition was started by parents in Brooklyn, but it is an issue that affects us all. If you have a kid who goes to Tribeca Pediatrics, or simply think this issue is important and needs to be addressed, please sign.