CNN’s Michael Smerconish highlighted on Saturday the prevalence of people using religious exemptions to avoid getting the Covid vaccine amid new federal and state mandates, despite “no major religious denomination in the U.S. outright [opposing] vaccination.”
Smerconish noted that under the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, “a religious belief does not have to be recognized by an organized religion and it can be new, unusual, or seem illogical or unreasonable to others. But it cannot be founded solely on political or social ideas.”
Dr. Robert Klitzman, a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University and founder of the school’s Masters of Bioethics Program, joined Smerconish in asserting that the ambiguity around religious exemptions may be problematic.
“I had a patient who had terrible cancer. She was told that it was treatable if she goes and gets chemotherapy,” Klitzman said. “She, however, decided that prayer alone and Chinese herbal medicine was going to help her, and that is what she pursued instead of medical treatment. And she came back to the hospital not long afterwards and the cancer had basically taken over her body.”
“I felt her stomach and it had bulges like rocks of tumor, and she died shortly thereafter,” he added. “So her religious belief contributed to her death, unfortunately.”
Smerconish then responded that while the story was “so darn sad,” “we respect her right to make that decision.”
“How has it changed, however, when it’s a contagious virus and we’re in the midst of a pandemic?” he asked.
Klitzman answered that society limits how far religious beliefs can extend, arguing that “we don’t say, ‘fine, you have the religious belief you want to go and harm other people, go and harm other people.'”
He went on to suggest that the Biden administration create guidelines for what constitutes a sincerely held religious belief, and make the process for claiming an exemption more involved.
“I think that the Biden administration and state and local health departments, for instance, need to say here is what can be done,” Klitzman said. “Rather than just checking offer a box [that says] yes, I want to have a religious exemption, or even providing a statement. Because at this point, there are lots of templates online on how to get out of having to get a vaccine using a religious exemption.”
He suggested having an interview with the person to discuss their belief, before adding that many religious beliefs against vaccines are “based on myths.”
“People are saying all vaccines are made using fetal cells and I’m pro-life. Well that’s simply not true,” Klitzman said. “One vaccine, Johnson & Johnson, was developed using cells derived from fetal cells from 40 years ago. But those cells have been replicated thousands
Asked about the anecdotal increase in religious exemptions, Klitzman affirmed that “people are using it as an excuse.”
“But we need to remember that by not getting the vaccine, we’re putting other people in danger,” he later added. “We have thousands of Americans dying every day of Covid. We can stop this pandemic if we get everyone vaccinated, and I think religious exemptions are a major problem in getting that done.”
Watch above, via CNN