55 Stories About Anti-Vaxx Patients Visiting Doctors

Friend of mine is a military OBGYN. Was at a OB appointment with the pregnant dependent and servicemember. He had just returned from AFG a few months prior.



OB mentions about follow-ups after delivery in 1st year of life, including vaccines.



Wife says: "I read on the internet that vaccines cause autism, I don't think we're going to do that"



Husband says: "I saw a lot of little graves in Afghanistan, sure as hell we are getting our kid vaccinated".

Obligatory not me but...

My favorite story along these lines involved a student doctor encountering an anti-vaxx parent with an infant while doing a supervised consultation, with a Professor of medicine present. It's a bit ethically dubious, but the ends justify the means here IMO.

The Professor basically took over and said

"Did you know that the anti-vaccination movement is a Chinese and Russian plot to weaken American health?"

The parent agreed to a modified vaccine schedule.

I’ve had several patients who didn’t vaccinate any of their kids. While many practices turn these people away, I consider it an opportunity to respect their wishes and gain their trust, but on every visit I ask them to compare data and have an open conversation about what they know. I do this in as non-confrontational and as genuine and helpful a way as possible. I’ve converted a number of anti-vaxxers in this way, while turning them away likely would never have resulted in the same outcome.

After I sent out invites to my kids birthday party, I found out one of her friends from dance was unvaccinated. My daughters best friend is in remission from leukemia and is immunocompromised. I uninvited the dance kid and very nicely explained the situation. Her mother loses it and tries to get us kicked out of the dance school they attend. The dance school owner is an older lady and had no idea there were idiots these days that didn’t vax so she implemented a new rule that students had to be up to date and the unvaxxed kid had to find a new dance school. I felt bad for the kid but her mother is a sociopath. Herd immunity saves lives when it comes to kids fighting cancer.

While discussing vaccines with a mom one time and bringing up my experience working with the immunocompromised population, she said “I don’t care if someone else’s kid has cancer. That’s their problem, not mine.” And that right there is a huge part of the problem: selfishness. I vaccinate my children not only for their own health, but for the health of others.

One of my friends is a doctor.

At his practice, if you choose not to vaccinate he will show you the pamphlets about vaccines. If there is no medical reason to not vaccinate, he will not keep you as a patient.

He basically tells them he won't allow people to put his other patients at risk by not vaccinating.

When I was a med student, I had a parent who wanted to do a ‘delayed vaccination schedule’. Basically it means that you get all the same vaccinations but you pointlessly and foolishly do it over a longer time period. The mom had read a book promoting this practice that was unfortunately written by an MD. My pediatric attending had zero chill: “Is that the book written by Dr ___? Yes? Well, then you should know that I was in the same medical school class as Dr ___ but I got much better scores than he did.”.

I was the kid without the vaccines. Mother is an anti vaxxer and I started a job as a dental assistant at 19. Standard procedure to have the hepatitis b vaccine when starting that job. Went and got it at the doctors and the doctor was blown away that this was my first ever vaccine. He very kindly and non judgementally talked to me about getting all of the others, which I did. When administering them they had to call the people that make the vaccines to see if my age meant they had to do anything different. My kids are vaccinated on schedule, and I’m really grateful to that doctor.

I was a medical student when this happened. My attending pediatrician gave me a heads up about the parent I was about to see and decided it would be best if he came into the room with me.

Four year old kid came in with a horrible cough and difficulty breathing. It was almost sure as hell Pertussis aka whooping cough. The kid was coughing so bad he vomited on the exam table. . He went on to ask about vaccinating her kid and of course she replied no even though her son was near coughing up his lung right next to her. I think my attending had seen enough and had enough of her not vaccinating her kid and had the following conversation with the kids mom

Attending: Mrs. ____ I have to ask you. Do you trust me with as your sons doctor?
Mom: Of course I do Dr. ____
Attending: Well, there’s two problems here that we need to address. One, you either think you are more knowledgeable than me when it comes to medicine, and if that’s the case I should no longer be your sons doctor. Or you don’t trust me as a physician and in that case I shouldn’t be your sons doctor.
Mom: *blank stare on face*
Attending: will you please reconsider giving your son a vaccine?
Mom: No

My attending obviously treated her kid, but after this whole ordeal resolved he fired her and her son as a patient and referred them to another pediatrician. He had enough of her. I respected the hell out of him after he pulled this move.

I’m a doc and two months ago I’m walking out of the hospital and besides me is a woman, frantically dialing a number on her telephone.

She proceeds to start yelling into her phone:

“They want to put all those nasty chemicals into him! They say if he’s going to be in the hospital he needs to be vaccinated to protect other kids! It’s poison! I’m going to take him somewhere else!!!”

When we got to the side walk she immediately reached into her purse and pulled out a cigarette and started smoking.

I just stood there watching her yell about poisonous chemicals in vaccines while she puffed furiously on a cigarette.

You honestly can’t make this stuff up.

Not a doctor, but a story I heard stuck with me. The head of pediatrics from a Toronto Hospital (I forgot which one) was giving a talk and told a story about how, early in her practice, she had a little boy in for his scheduled vaccines, and was answering the nervous mother's questions. The mother planned to go ahead with the vaccines, but had heard lots of anti-vax propaganda and so she was worried and had lots of questions. While they were talking, but before they administered the vaccines, the poor little kid suffered a grand mal seizure. It was really bad, the kid ended up getting admitted to the hospital, and suffered a fairly serious brain injury. It occurred to the paediatrician much later that if that seizure had hit 10 minutes later, or if the appointment had been 10 minutes earlier, nothing would have ever convinced that poor mother that it wasn't the vaccine that caused the siezure.

I once spoke to someone that was anti vax and also had a dog. I asked if they got their dog it’s shots at the vet. Their response was, “of course. I don’t want him to have rabies or worms!”.

Had a kid come in for generic upper respiratory virus. Asked mom if he was vaccinated, as is routine. She said no. When I asked why not, her response was "Well my boyfriend was vaccinated and he still got meningitis, so they don't even work"

I told her that's the same as saying your friend got bruised by a seat belt in a car accident, so you don't wear them when you drive.

This is cross posted from r/nursing.

I work in a NICU and occasionally float out to the Term Nursery. Our Neonatologists also work as Pediatricians in the hospital and see the well-newborns on top of the NICU kids. The Neonatologist went to see a mom who was refusing the initial vaccines. When the doc told the mom the vaccines were recommended by the AAP and asked for reasons of refusal, the mom laughed and told her to “Do your research.”

Do you research..... She told this to a doctor. Who is both a Neonatologist and Pediatrician. Double board certified. She also is our Medical Director, has a PhD in Biochemical engineering, and is a mother herself.

My eyes nearly rolled out of my head.

19 year old comes on a gurney, deep coma, respiratory depression, foam issuing from the lips. Mother frantic. EEG reveals the pattern typical of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, a sequela of common measles.

It's preventable, people. But not curable. They buried him a few weeks later.

We had a 14 year old female come in for abdominal pain one time. She weighed 80 pounds. Looked sickly. Her mother refused to let her eat anything but a handful of things, nothing with very much protein at all. She literally had a binder full of articles about how horrible vaccines are, all the bad things they put in food these days, etc. She had completely brain washed this kid so the kid believed it too. Her labs showed malnutrition, her teeth were horrible. Just a sad case all around.

Veterinarian here. Had a client years ago who bred Salukis, and who fed raw, refused most medication cuz chemicals bad, and didn’t believe in vaccination.


One of her dogs was exposed to parvo, and she brought it back to the kennel. She tried to treat it homeopathically herself at first, so by the time we saw it, the dog was already pretty far gone.


Then the next day she brought in another sick dog.


Then another the next day.

Then another the next day.

Then another the next day.

Then another the next day.

Then another the next day.

Then another the next day.

Then another the next day.

Then another the next day.

Then another the next day.

Then another the next day.


All in all, after 6k in bills 12 beautiful dogs were gone from a disease she could have prevented for 120 dollars.

I had a mother bring her child to see me as a new patient. When I saw that he wasn’t vaccinated I asked my nurse why not and she told me that the mother had a “religious exemption.” When I entered the room, I asked the mom what the religious exemption was and she said “oh, well when he was a baby he had a rash from the hepatitis B vaccine.” I kindly told her that I couldn’t care for her child because he was not only a risk to my staff, myself but also to other patients in my office. She went off on me and ranted about “how she can not believe that every doctor’s office that she calls refuses to treat her son because he isn’t vaccinated.” And that “the only doctor in the county that will see him can’t see him for almost 2 months.” I kindly stopped her and said “if I was one of a few that refused to treat your child, i would understand your frustration. But don’t you think there’s a message that not a single doctor in the entire county (save for ONE doctor who did some really questionable practices, think essential oils and stuff) will treat your kid? That maybe there’s a valid reason behind it?

Yeah, she definitely wasn’t happy and left.

In medical school I saw a kiddo whose parents refused vaccines and so when they were given the vaccine refusal form to sign. This form essentially said that the parents understood that refusing vaccines was against medical advice, that their kiddo could get sick from all those preventable diseases, and that the they wouldn’t hold the doctor/practice liable for any complications that the kiddo may get from said preventable diseases. This mom pulled out a sharpie and blacked out the part about the doctor not being held liable. The parents thought that we’d be cool with them just changing that form just for them and they wanted the doctor to be held liable for their moronic choice. Of course this didn’t work and they were told to sign the form or they would be discharged from the practice and have to find another. They refused to sign and were told to leave after given a list of other pediatricians in the area.

I'm not a medical doctor but a mental health therapist, went to do a new client intake and while asking the mother about the kid's medical history, vaccination records etc she said he was not vaccinated because vaccines cause autism and she didn't want to risk her son getting it, then when I went to meet the kid within 5 seconds of laying eyes on him I could tell... he was autistic. Worst part was that when I told her she became very upset and started yelling at her husband saying he must have gotten the kid secretly vaccinated and then immediately ran out the house and took the kid to the emergency room for "testing" and just left me and the dad in the living room just kind of staring at eachother. Never answered my calls or texts again after that and I had to get DCF involved.