Is Australia on the eve of compulsory vaccinations?

Biomedical assault on vaccination dissent

In recent months eminent 'medical experts' around Australia have been waging a frenzied propaganda campaign about the dangers of not vaccinating children…and everyone else who breathes, works or lives around children. Their campaign appears two-pronged: whip fear into the general population, particularly among young parents; and mock those who disagree with or debate "the science" and their "scientific" pronouncements.

Headlines accompanying these stories include: "Deadly outbreaks feared as immunisation rates plunge", "Anti-vaccination campaigns threaten measles-free status", "Doctors take aim at 'vaccine objectors'", "The great vaccination debate: are you for or against?", "Girl, 8, to get vaccination shots after court overrules mum", "Science is clear - vaccinate children, says research biologist Sir Gustav Nossal", "Anti-vaccination arguments are fatally flawed", and "At last, science finally comes out swinging'"

Typical of the Murdoch press's opening paragraphs on the topic is: "The anti-vaccination lobby is wrong, dead wrong. The truth is that vaccines are undoubtedly history’s most cost-effective public health tool."; and this: "A FEW years ago the second man to walk on the moon, Buzz Aldrin, was confronted by a man who believes the moon landing was a hoax." Yes, you know where this story was going. Here's a segment of the diatribe in the Herald Sun, 27 November, 2012, that followed:

"To this end it is extremely heartening (if overdue) to see science taking a stand against one of the most dangerous and absurd trends of the modern era, the anti-vaccination lobby.

"What was once regarded as a very marginal fad, fuelled by a couple of fringe scientists whose work has since been repeatedly discredited, has now taken off with alarming force. The number of parents registering a conscientious objection to having their children vaccinated has gone from just 4271 in 1999 to more than 30,000 today.

 "...The anti-vaccination movement is much more of a worry than climate scepticism, or the battiness of the moon landing hoax brigade or 9-11 “truther” movement, because it exposes the overwhelming majority of immunised kids to a real-timedanger."

Writers of such tirades seem incapable of connecting the dots between medical claims that vaccines work, and the medical argument that any person who is not vaccinated may spread the disease to vaccinated individuals. Vaccines either work, or they don't! I'll address such logical absurdities, particularly the concept of "herd protection", in later posts.
 
But it's not simply a media campaign that's being waged. Extraordinary public attacks on the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN)—an organisation that provides published scientific information about vaccinations that biomedical propagandists refuse to accept, let alone debate—have come from advocates of vaccination. Brian Martin, Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong, has investigated and written a superb paper on the whole topic, entitled Debating Vaccination: understanding the attack on the Australian Vaccination Network. Professor Martin has a particular interest in the use of power to suppress dissent.

The attack on the AVN is also being conducted by government. The NSW Department of Fair Trading has ordered the Australian Information Network Inc—which has used its name with no government intervention for 17 years—to change the name to suggest the network provides anti-vaccination information. And who complained to, and prompted action by, the Government department? According to media reports, it was the Australian Medical Association (AMA).

The AMA is an organisation that purports to represent the interests of medical practitioners. By periodically issuing warnings about the onslaught of 
seasonal germs and urging the public to be vaccinated it is certainly drumming up business for its members. And for Big Pharma, of course. For doctors, additional financial rewards/bribes flow from the Federal Government, through its General Practice Immunisation Incentives Scheme; but only for doctors who fully vaccinate 90 per cent or more of their child patients. And Big Pharma is rewarded with over $427.2 million (this figure, the most recent from the AIHW, is from 2008/2009) a year from the sale of its vaccines to Government.

But is the AMA really interested in the public health of Australians? The diseases that are harming and killing over half the population are cancers and autoimmune diseases, diabetes and cardiovascular disease—and, though not killing people but certainly harming many of the young ones, is autism, now affecting about 1 in 88 children under 8—not measles and mumps, chickenpox, whooping cough, polio and diphtheria.

Has the AMA ever uttered a word about any dangers from exposure to electromagnetic radiation from mobile or portable phones, phone towers, or wi-fi? No! There are warnings from independent, non-corporate biased, scientists about these issues. Has the AMA ever issued a warning about the potential dangers of allowing genetically engineered foods to enter the Australian food chain? No! The British Medical Association, in 1999, did at least call for a moratorium on GE foods lest the British public be harmed by these corporate Frankenfoods. 

Ironically, the medical profession in Australia, as in other nations, has chosen to call the domain in which its members are employed a "health system". That in itself is a complete misnomer. Nothing in modern medical practice, whether in the clinics of medical practitioners, or in hospitals (which are, in essence, factories for the sick), deals with health. It's all about disease care. And rightfully, the name "Department of Health'' should be changed to "Department of Disease Care" to reflect the reality of medical practice in our culture.

The assault on vaccination dissent is also being waged by the Federal Government of Australia. Australia's statutory watchdog for business competition and consumer law, the Australian Competition and Consumer Affairs (ACCC), entered the fray in May 2012. Prompted by a complaint from the medical profession, yet again, the ACCC ordered a manufacturer of homoeopathic remedies, Homeopathy Plus! Pty Ltd, to remove from its website statements to the effect that the current whooping cough vaccine is "unreliable" and "largely ineffective", while homeopathic remedies are a safe and effective alternative for the prevention and treatment of whooping cough. 

The ACCC initially claimed that the statements on Homeopathy Plus!'s website "were likely to be misleading or deceptive." Later, in February 2013, when the ACCC began legal proceeding against Homeopathy Plus! and the owners of its website, it had changed its claim to: "The ACCC alleges that these claims "are misleading and deceptive, in breach of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010." 

Curiously, the ACCC's purpose, according to its website, is: "Making markets work for consumers, now and in the future." And its role is to: "enforce the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and a range of additional legislation, promoting competition, fair trading and regulating national infrastructure for the benefit of all Australians."

But by prosecuting a case where statements that contradict the biomedical paradigm are deemed to be misleading and deceptive and illegal, and by stating that "The Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing recommends children receive the whooping cough vaccine as part of routine childhood immunisation", the ACCC has fallen into line with the biomedical paradigm to assess an issue rather than relying on market forces and consumer choices, open debate and freedom of speech.

Even the judiciary, through the Family Court of Australia, has made a ruling—based on biomedical advice—in favour of vaccinations for a child. The case involved a mother in the State of Victoria who had asked for a court injunction to prevent her former husband and his new wife from taking her 8-year-old daughter, who lived with her, the mother, to a doctor to be vaccinated. The mother's argument was that both she and her daughter lived a "simple and healthy way of life'" by eating organic and unprocessed food, avoiding toxins, and using homoeopathic remedies for the prevention of infectious diseases.

The former husband's new wife, the girl's stepmother, had secretly taken her stepdaughter, two years earlier, to be inoculated with vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, polio, Hib, measles, mumps, rubella and meningococcal C. Though critical of the father for his secret attempts to vaccinate the child, Justice Victoria Bennett did rely entirely on the expertise of a senior paediatrician who, naturally enough, debunked homoeopathic remedies, and healthy lifestyle, and extolled the virtues of vaccinations.

In her summation, Justice Bennett—as quoted from It'sMyHealth Website—stated: "Dr J’s evidence was that post-initiation vaccine surveillance, the widespread use of vaccination on millions of children, and published articles in peer reviewed scientific journals suggested to him that traditional vaccination is relatively safe. I accept that evidence as correct."

The judge's ruling is understandable. In our culture the default setting for understanding health and disease is the biomedical paradigm. The dominant corporate and political interests have made sure that any other paradigm is denigrated and maligned. But thanks to the Internet many parents are now exploring the very issues that the powerful vested interests of media groups refused to investigate. Hence the increasing numbers of parents who are refusing to allow their children to be vaccinated.

That ruling, however, does set a precedent: that in any legal conflict about the pros and cons of vaccination versus traditional lifestyles and treatments, from now on there will be, emblazoned across the Australian landscape and psyche, banner headlines that read...Vaccinations Rule, Okay?

For Australians, as for the citizens of 24 other fully democratic nations in the world today, the freedom to choose our way, and to debate that choice, is the lifeblood of our democracy. Nowhere is this more important than in the freedom to choose our lifestyles to optimise our family's health. This includes our medical choices. Vaccinations are a biomedical treatment and choice. And so is opting for no biomedical, drug-oriented intervention. 

Please note: there are many traditional approaches to preventing, ameliorating and treating infectious diseases. Many have been used safely and effectively for 80 generations and more. Biomedicine's raft of vaccines, however, has been tested on fewer than three generations of people. Many of us believe they are neither safe nor effective in the long term.
 
Unfortunately, Australia, unlike other democratic nations, has no bill of rights, no statutory guarantee of freedom of speech, freedom of medical choice, or any other freedom. So Australian citizens need to be particularly vigilant to ensure that their state and federal governments are not bribed, bullied, cajoled or seduced by lobby groups into interfering with or abolishing traditional freedoms. 

To help in the debate that the medical profession refuses to have I've included a section of a chapter entitled "To vaccinate, or not to vaccinate" from Volume 1 of my book Cry for Health. In subsequent posts I will challenge some of the statements made in recent months by some of Australia's eminent scientists and doctors.

To vaccinate or not to vaccinate 

Excerpt from Cry for Health, Vol 1, pp. 47-49 

 The hype

To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? That is the question every parent must face—unless, of course, you live in a country where the government makes the decision for you. And behind that question are a host of others. Is vaccination safe? Is every one of the 13-odd vaccines, which the government recommends every child should get several times before he or she turns two, really safe? Is there a link between certain vaccines and autism or other disorders? Do vaccinations really work? What if I don’t have my baby vaccinated, what will happen?  

The medical hype, of course, is that immunisation is one of the most important health interventions of the 20th century; that it has eliminated smallpox infection worldwide, driven polio from most western countries and made formerly common infections like diphtheria, whooping cough, and measles rare occurrences. 

So, who do you turn to, who do you trust? The vaccine manufacturers and their scientists, the public health department with its pro-vaccination campaigners, and your doctor who administers the jab? Or do you trust those who warn against vaccinations, claiming that vaccinations are neither safe nor efficacious?

In every country except Australia, doctors have no legal obligation whatsoever to tell you all the issues about any medical procedure. Their advice is based solely on ‘medical opinion’, and the doctor paternalistically decides what is in the patient’s best interests. But in Australia, thanks to a High Court ruling in 1992 (Rogers v. Whitaker), Australian doctors have a legal duty of care to warn patients of all the side effects of all procedures whether the patient asks or not.1 The problem is, most doctors only know about the pros of vaccinations and have no idea about the cons.

Since your baby’s future health is at stake, it’s certainly an emotive issue. Indeed the last thing you need in making your decision is to have fear added to the mix. But alas, that’s exactly what governments and many doctors do. Hence informed choice flies out the window, the result being that those of us who have children invariably succumb to fear-mongering tactics. 

Parents who do refuse to have their children vaccinated are typically condemned as being irresponsible. The professional inquisitors are well armed: ‘Do you know how dangerous diphtheria and tetanus and measles and mumps, and all the others diseases for which modern medicine has created a vaccine, are …?’ ‘Do you appreciate how miserable your children will be when they contract whooping cough …?’ ‘Why would you put your children at risk when a simple shot or two, or thirty (which is roughly the number they’ll get before they start school) will protect them from nasty childhood illnesses?’ 

If such rhetoric fails to convince the parent, there’s always the stab to the parent’s social conscience: ‘Do you know that by refusing to vaccinate your child you’re putting other people at risk as well?’ 

What your doctor doesn’t tell you, is that unlike every other drug, not a single vaccine has ever been tested for either its efficacy or its safety in a double-blind, placebo-controlled field trial. No one has dared to compare the health of vaccinated and non-vaccinated children because such a trial is construed as unethical. But in a logical absurdity worthy of Alice in Wonderland, it is considered ethical to test vaccines on mass populations of children and adults.

Nor does your doctor tell you that many doctors do not follow their own advice: many refuse to have their own children vaccinated; or won’t follow the nation’s vaccination guidelines by delaying the administration of certain vaccines until their own child is aged two or more, or by picking and choosing which vaccines their own children will and won’t get. 

In a rare instance of doctors disclosing their own biases and indeed their own double standards, a Swiss survey sent to 2,000 doctors—roughly half of whom, tellingly, didn’t reply—revealed that 15 per cent refused to allow their own children to have certain or all vaccines.2 Five per cent wouldn’t allow their children to have the Hib vaccine (against Haemophilus influenzae type b) or the MMR vaccine (against measles, mumps and rubella). And 10 per cent refused to give, or delayed giving, their children the DPT vaccine (against diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), and tetanus). 

Similarly, a US survey of paediatricians revealed that 12 per cent of those who were parents hadn’t vaccinated their own eligible children against chickenpox,3 and 4 per cent had refused permission for an immunisation for their own children younger than 11.4 And a Canadian survey showed that 41 per cent of nurses didn’t fully agree with medical claims that vaccines were safe and effective.5 In fact, 40 per cent of nurses thought that such practices as homoeopathy, good eating habits and a healthy lifestyle can eliminate the need for vaccination. Even the former prime minister of Britain, Tony Blair, whose government was waging a campaign to have all children vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella, refused to disclose whether or not he had had his young son Leo inoculated with the MMR vaccine. 

Chances are your doctor isn’t even adhering to the medical profession’s vaccination guidelines for health workers. Various reports have shown that half of British doctors in one survey, and less than a quarter of US doctors in another survey, were vaccinated against hepatitis B;6,7 that only 20 per cent of susceptible physicians were vaccinated against rubella;8,9 that only one of 11 obstetricians and gynaecologists at the Los Angeles County–University of Southern California Medical Center was vaccinated against rubella;9 and that only a quarter of the trainee doctors in a US hospital emergency department, and a third of all emergency health workers in four hospitals in Canada, were vaccinated against influenza.10,11

Even when doctors are bombarded by campaigns to get themselves vaccinated many seem reticent to comply. A study at a Texas training hospital, where only 32 per cent of doctors and medical students had ever been vaccinated against influenza, found that despite sending out a memorandum, followed by a personal letter, and then a telephone call, and then providing free vaccinations at medical conferences, only 62 per cent of the medical staff decided to be vaccinated.12

Which all goes to show that many members of the medical profession, and undoubtedly many politicians, are not convinced by their own propaganda. 

Of course, we don’t know which aspect of the propaganda each of them didn’t buy, for the flagstaff from which the vaccination flag flutters is held aloft by three tangled mainstays: one, if not for vaccinations we’d still be ravaged by deadly diseases that plagued past generations of people; two, each vaccine that is targeted at a specific germ will prevent the vaccine’s recipient getting the disease that germ causes—in other words, vaccines work; and three, vaccines are safe.

 

References: 

1. Rogers v. Whitaker, the High Court of Australia 1992, 175 CLR 479; 19th November, 1992. 
2. Posfay-Barbe KM, Heininger U, Aebi C, Desgrandchamps D, Vaudaux B, and Siegrist C-A. "How do physicians immunize their own children? Differences between pediatricians and nonpediatricians." Pediatrics, 2005; 116 (5): 623–633. 
3. Katz-Sidlow RJ, and Sidlow R. "A look at the pediatrician as parent: experiences with the introduction of Varicella vaccine." Clinical Pediatrics, 2003; 42 (7): 635–640. 
4. Diekema DS, and the Committee of Immunization of Children. "Responding to parental refusals of immunization of children." Pediatrics, 2005; 115 (5): 1428–1431. 
5. Dionne M, Boulianne N, Duval B, Lavoie F, Laflamme N, Carsley J, Valiquette L, Gagnon S, Rochette L, and De Serres G. "Lack of conviction about vaccination in certain Quebec vaccinators." Canadian Journal of Public Health, 2000; 92 (2): 100–104. 
6. Kinnersley P. "Attitudes of general practitioners towards their vaccination against hepatitis B." British Medical Journal, 1990; 300 (6719): 238. 
7. Gerety RJ. "Hepatitis B transmission between dental and medical workers and patients." Annals of Internal Medicine, 1981; 95 (2): 229–231. 
8. Preblud SR, and Hinman AR. "Rubella vaccination of hospital employees." Journal of the American Medical Association, 1981; 245 (7): 736–737. 
9. Orenstein WA, Heseltine PN, LeGagnoux SJ and Portnoy B. "Rubella vaccine and susceptible hospital employees. Poor physician participation." Journal of the American Medical Association, 1981; 245 (7): 711–713. 
10. Bishburg E, Shah M, and Mathis AS. "Influenza vaccination among residents in a teaching hospital." Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, 2008; 29: 89–91. 
11. Saluja I, Theakston KD, and Kaczorowski J. "Influenza vaccination rate among emergency department personnel: a survey of four teaching hospitals." Canadian Journal of Emergency Medical Care, 2005; 7 (1): 17–21. 
12. Ohrt CK, and McKinney WP. "Achieving compliance with influenza immunization of medical house staff and students. A randomized controlled trial." Journal of the American Medical Association, 1992; 267 (10): 1377–1386.

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