It Was National Doctors’ Day and a Top Vaccine Expert Resigned

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

Yesterday was National Doctors’ Day, which dates back over 90 years. In 1990, President Bush designated it as an official day of recognition. It is supposed to honor the dedication and compassion of over a million physicians and be led by the public and patients.

Now, however, we must recognize that doctors are in an epidemic of burnout. Moreover, just a couple of days before, Peter Marks, MD, PhD, the head of the US Food and Drug Administration, resigned, being given the choice to resign or be fired. There could hardly be anyone more well trained and expert in his position. As one example of his importance, he helped to conceive of Operation Ward Speed for COVID-19 vaccines, which are estimated by scientific experts to have prevented millions of deaths. Other top health care officials have also departed.

At least 2 aspects of Dr Marks’ career connect directly to psychiatry. One is that he helped to scientifically refute the association of vaccines as a cause of autism. Secondly, in his resignation letter, he cited “misinformation of lies” coming from the new head of Health and Human Services.

There are also 2 medical and psychiatric ethical concerns here. One is the adverse repercussions of less use of established vaccines, like that of the measles outbreak in West Texas and now spreading. Then there is the concern for the well-being of colleagues that has long been on the second tier of our ethical priorities, right below that of patient needs. That leaves us with the ethical challenge of how to react to this forced firing, whether that be in protest or support.

As the well-known Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said, saying and doing nothing conveys an implicit acceptance of what happened. Silence often occurs due to fears of retaliation or learned helplessness. That is why it feels safer to be part of a larger group or institution in regard to protesting about a new worrisome process like this resignation. Such implicit support exists in the American Psychiatric Association and smaller psychiatric organizations. Perhaps safer too are individuals with less to lose, like those in some sort of retirement.

We in mental health care also know the best ways to open people’s minds. It is not through protests, hostile argument, or shaming the other; It is best through curiosity and respectful conversation. Otherwise, confirmation bias comes into play and values and ideas become even more embraced. If humiliation is involved, revenge of some sort is not unusual.

The theme to this year’s National Doctors’ Day was “Behind the Mask: Who Heals the Healers?” That healing can include job loss or threatened job loss, as well as the ongoing epidemic of physician burnout. Masking our psychological pain and building up more and more resilience from the obstacles to heal is counterproductive in the long run. It is critical not to ignore our own well-being during these trying times for psychiatry and medicine.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.