Texas Medical Association Resolutions Mark Split in Vaccine Approaches

A nurse fills up a syringe with a COVID-19 vaccine at a senior center in San Antonio, Texas, on March 29, 2021. (Sergio Flores/Getty Images)

A series of resolutions to protect patient freedoms and privacy have been rejected by the Texas Medical Association (TMA), as growing debate over health freedom continues nationwide.

Five hundred physicians and medical student members from across the state of Texas met on May 4 to vote on a wide range of issues including controversial vaccine mandates, according to recently released documents.

One resolution voted down would have affirmed individuals as the prime decision maker in consultation with their personal physician when it comes to “medical intervention, including vaccination.” A similar resolution to affirm that physicians, in consultation with their own personal physicians, are the main decision maker in submitting to a medical intervention, including vaccination, was also voted down. A resolution to oppose mandates for medical intervention was also voted down.

A separate resolution by the TMA emphasized the need to combat “vaccine hesitancy.”

The proposal, listed under the title “Support Statewide Planning and Communication for a Vaccine Plan During a Pandemic,” stated that Texas needed to modify its emergency vaccination plan to “allow for improved communication to citizens in the event of an emergency vaccination rollout.”

Further, the plan “will study ways to improve and simplify vaccine rollout in the future to combat vaccine hesitancy; and supports the use of user-friendly, easily accessible resources for information about new vaccines and vaccine roll-out plans ... to decrease vaccine hesitancy and aid in distribution.”

A resolution to oppose administering vaccines on school grounds was voted down, as was a resolution to assert that vaccines should only be administer on grounds where employees are trained and equipped to handle medical emergencies.

Another resolution adopted was to advocate for influenza vaccines to be offered in school-based settings and to advocate to educate students and school employees about the importance of yearly influenza vaccination.

A spokesperson for the TMA told the Epoch Times that the vote, which involved more than 100 issues, is simply a representation of the opinions expressed by it large membership.

“Proposals could be adopted or not adopted for most any reason, including because the majority of members don’t agree with the proposal, or don’t think it’s needed, [or] they’re redundant,” the spokesperson emailed the Epoch Times. “It’s a democratic process. And though only delegates vote, any TMA member can voice their opinion on a proposal in one part of the policy-vetting process (before the vote).”

The approved resolutions do not create a set of binding rules, but rather an agenda.

The TMA was organized in 1853 to “serve the people of Texas in matters of medical care, prevention and cure of disease, more than 57,000 physician and medical student members.”

State Schism Over Vaccine Policy

Since the pandemic, the debate over whether COVID-19 shot requirements and health decisions should be made by medical experts and officials in authority or by individual patients and their doctors has been a hot-button issue.

In Texas, which boasts the nation’s most robust health care industry, there has been a growing schism in vaccine approaches.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared in a July 29, 2021 Executive Order that vaccines “will always remain voluntary–never forced–in the State of Texas.”

However, large publicly funded institutions can still impose COVID-19 shot mandates.

In September 2023, Mr. Abbott signed into law Senate Bill 29, which prohibits local governments from requiring COVID-related masks, vaccines, or business shutdowns. A separate bill, The Texas COVID-19 Vaccine Freedom Act, intended to block any Texas entity, including hospitals and private businesses, from mandating COVID-19 shots for employees, failed to pass.

More than 80 percent of Americans took the original COVID-19 shots after officials said that they would effectively prevent contraction and stop the spread of the disease. Once it became clear that the shots didn’t work as promised, interest in subsequent boosters decreased dramatically.

Additionally, some adverse health outcomes are believed to have been caused by the shots. COVID-19 shots have been named the primary suspect in more than 1.5 million adverse event reports, according to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database. The numbers could be even higher. An FDA-funded study out of Harvard years before the pandemic, found that VAERS reports generally represent less than 1 percent of actual vaccine adverse events.

Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, a practitioner in Texas and founder of Coalition of Health, says the latest series of TMA resolutions gives a powerful indication that the influential association is leaning toward a top-down health approach.

Dr. Bowden says that lawmakers in Texas looking to reform the current system are up against a powerful and well-funded machine in the medical industry and the TMA, but that the stakes are too high to back down.

“Everybody thinks this wouldn’t happen in Texas, but here we are,” she said. “As goes Texas, so goes the rest of the country.”

Catherine Yang contributed to this report.