Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!ucivax!ucla-cs!Richard.DeWald@f70.n382.z1.fidonet.org
From: Richard.DeWald@f70.n382.z1.fidonet.org (Richard DeWald)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: Hepatitis B vaccine
Message-ID: <39597@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 2 Oct 90 05:17:20 GMT
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Note:	Copyright 1990 by Daniel R. Greening.  Permission granted for
Note:	non-commercial reproduction.
Archive-number: 2571

My feed with this conference was broken for a while, so I missed this 
discussion, but it seems that comments I made about the Hepatitis B vaccine 
have caused some concern.  It is true, I should not have (and did not mean to) 
given the impression that the vaccine is too painful or expensive to be worth 
getting.  I have gotten it myself and it was no more painful than any other 
vaccine.  I got it for free from the Hospital with which I work.

I have been amazed at how many people that work in the Hospitals that I work 
at have not gotten the vaccine.  It has been my experience that people are 
unduly afraid of the pain of an injection, images of sadistic doctors and 
nurses with needles in their hands do crop up in the popular culture here and 
there.  People do believe such things, as silly as they are.  Disapproving of 
their rationale does not make this reality go away.

Even those of us who have been vaccinated still work up a patient for Hep B 
when we get stuck.  Even though we are supposed to have some degree of 
immunity, we worry.  Among the doctors and nurses that I have a personal 
rapport with, we talk much more about Hepatitis B exposure risks than HIV 
exposure risks.  We are scientists as well as humanitarians, we respect the 
numbers.

By all means, get the vaccine.  It is much less trouble and expense than 
coming down with Hepatitis B is.  I hate to belabor the obvious, but I did not 
anyone to believe that the minimal pain and inconvenience were adequate 
justification for going unvaccinated.  If it were much more painful and much 
more expensive you still should do it.

Richard DeWald, BSN Student
Univ. of TX - Austin.

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