My first experience with the immunisation propaganda campaign as I sat having lunch with my parents and a friend of theirs who just happened to be the head of the Immunology Department in that state. When they found out that my 21 month old child was not immunised they proceded to question me about how I thought I had the right to put my daughters life at risk. Oddly enough when my child was born, my father's mother born in 1910 having lived with polio crippling since the age of 13, warned me about immunisation. This along with my wealth of information about the dangers of immunisation made me wonder how I could have taken the risk of having her immunised so putting her life at risk also. This is the debate as it stands, between those for and against immunisation. Through research I have discovered a debate amongst the providers of immunisation about the safety of this procedure; a debate that is kept to the medical journals as the public continues to hear only the advertising campaign and little about the side effects. For this research I have read a variety of literature on the subject in order to display the lack of information that is available to the public and parents in particular regarding immunisation.
The Australian Health and Law reporter lists the status of immunisation procedure in Australia as "arguably the single most effective public health measure available today." The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has stated "immunisation has prevented more suffering and saved more lives than any other medical intervention this century. It is one of the safest and most cost effective procedures in modern medicine. It is also the most cost efficient."
1The report goes on to say that despite this Australia has a low rate of childhood immunisation compared with other parts of the developed world and that the government has made a commitment to educate the community about the benefits of immunisation and encourage higher rates of childhood immunisation.
2 The report acknowledges that there are reservations held in 'some sectors of the community' about the safety of this procedure but states: "although the rates of adverse reactions are difficult to estimate, it is known that the side effects are far less frequent than the complications caused by the diseases themselves." An alternative, homoeopathic immunisation, is mentioned as relevant to some people in the community yet the NHMRC warns: "homoeopathic (Eimmunisation is useless... is not an alternative to the recommended childhood immunisation schedule... and leaves children unprotected against serious and potentially fatal diseases." 3In Britain the effects of vaccinations are more seriously acknowledged where the Vaccine Damage Payments Act of 1979 is in place. This act covers most of the diseases designated by the NHMRC in Australia including whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus, polio, rubella, and ensures people suffering from these inoculations are compensated in some way.
4As yet in Australia no such acknowledgment of the severity of these side effects exists, let alone a compensatory procedure. There are people in Australia who have suffered from immunisations.
The Sunday Telegraph, (Sydney, Australia) April 14 1991, published, "Vaccines: a huge gamble'. There are four different stories related here of Australian children's experiences. On 22 month old died after a measles mumps vaccination. Two others were permanently brain damaged after a polio vaccine for one at age 7 months, and a triple antigen vaccination for another at the age of one year or less. Another child recovered from a measles mumps vaccine reaction that spanned 18 months. In all cases the parents seem to have been treated rather poorly by the health professionals who administered the vaccines. Another article appeared in The Australian, March 21 1991, recounting the story of a child given a routine triple antigen shot at the age of 10 weeks who then hours later began to have a fit and then 3 weeks later suffered severe brain damage. At three years of age, at the time of the article, this child is regarded by doctors as a vegetable. The parents were never warned of possible side effects. Mrs. Rodham (parent) said: "alternative medicine had helped Charlotte in the last nine months, but she had no doubt Charlottes condition is a direct side effect of immunisation despite doctors dissent. "Charlotte's case is only one on a register of sufferers from temporary or permanent health damage after a vaccination which was unveiled yesterday by the Immunisation Investigation Group, made up of parents and health professionals".
There is also discourse among the advocates of immunisation about its safety and procedures that is carried out in medical journals through articles and letters.
These articles reflect uncertainty on the part of some doctors and a determination from others to dispel the myths about immunisation. Hence some professionals are unwilling to listen to the reports of incidents sometimes fatal of serious side effects of immunisation. While others who on the whole believe in the immunisation program are also able to question its validity when presented with some of the tragic consequences in their own patients.
As early as 1981 the British medical Journal published an article by David Hull entitled "Interpretation of the Contraindications to Whooping Cough Vaccination". In Britain the current list of DHSS contraindications at the time of this article is as follows: "History of seizures, convulsions, or cerebral irritation in the neo natal period; history or family history of epilepsy or other diseases of the central nervous system in first-degree relatives; children with developmental neurological defects; any febrile illness, particularly respiratory, until the patient has fully recovered, or any severe local or general reaction to a preceding dose".
5 In this article there was a copy of a questionnaire sent to doctors to try to find out whether anyone could agree when pertussis vaccine would be contraindicated. There were 22 cases relating to a child's medical history ranging from premature birth to a sibling with eczema, cited hypothetically. The physicians were asked would they consider any of these cases serious enough to warrant contraindication to the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine: yes or no. "All 22 cases in the questionnaire it might be argued, were contraindications and indeed there was not one that some respondent did not view in that light." 6 David Hull's article it seems was trying to determine whether practitioners followed the DHSS guidelines or had more of their own. His findings seemed to indicate that the more senior the doctor (possibly having less contact with the public) the less likely they were to consider certain conditions contraindications to pertussis vaccine being administered; while general practitioners had the highest rate for consideration of contraindications. 7A similar survey was done for an article written for the Australian Medical Journal. A sample of Victorian doctors were given a less extensive although still probing questionnaire on their immunisation practices. Although the results pointed to a lot of uncertainty about the safety of the pertussis vaccine, the conclusions of the article were that the use of the pertussis vaccine should be promoted and myths dispelled about its side effects. 8 Amongst the pages of the article was an advertisement for CSL vaccines.
There was also a comment in the same issue of AMJ entitles, "pertussis vaccine-time to stop the confusion", that refutes any findings of the previous article and urges for this vaccine to continue to be used and promoted. Margaret Burgess a physician in preventative medicine seems unwilling to take anything other than goals for complete eradication of disease into account: "the vaccine does not cause infantile spasms, sudden infant death syndrome or epilepsy. It is possible that it does very rarely cause encephalopathy and that this may lead extremely rarely to permanent impairment." 9 To be so aloof about the effects of immunisation on one child for the sake of the herd seemed to be a common line of reasoning for those in the field of immunology and preventative medicine. Herd immunity is mentioned often, but do we really want to be treated as a herd? With these questions in mind we can turn to a book written by Leon Chaitow where we are presented with some more facts about immunisation. All information is factual. However some facts can be misleading, neglecting details while others are enlightening, where details are revealed and so a new story is told. This publication tells a different story of immunisation to that which the general public hears. A detailed history of how immunisation theory and research developed is described. The findings and then implications of the work that was done are reported letting us know that it was not so simple a process as we were brought up to believe with Edward Jenner as its father. The concept of curing or prevention of disease by introduction of that disease in a milder form is an age old idea practised by the druids 10 minus the method of injections and cultivation in animals. It was then studied by several people in later centuries and found to have sometimes very strange effects. 11 Chaitow describes humans as individuals who can either be either severely or mildly affected by immunisation, on a sliding scale; it is not a hit or miss concept in relation to damage from vaccination. There are many reasons why we have less disease in this modern society, namely, good nutrition and hygiene as well as immunisation. Chaitow also sees disease as moving in cycles that come and go, therefore the individual and time are both relevant in understanding illness. The book describes the immediate and long term effects of immunisation on a normal healthy body and the possible fragility of some humans and their propensity towards being adversely affected by immunisation. There is a great amount of information about the adverse effects of immunisation ranging from theory and statistics and anecdotes to discussion amongst the medical profession. At this point in the discussion it would seem relevant to examine the legislation that is in place in some areas.
In Australia we see that although immunisation has not been made compulsory there are still certain measures used to encourage people to immunise their children. Victoria was the first state to introduce legislation regarding school entry upon proof of immunisation status. Unimmunised children may attend school and stay home in the event of any outbreaks at school. This legislation was recommended to every state by the NHMRC. 12 The report notes: "conspicuously absent on the certificate are pertussis and rubella". 13 A completed certificate is issued where the child is proved by records to be fully immunised and an incomplete certificate is issued in the following circumstances: "provision of a statutory declaration stating that the parents are conscientious objectors to immunisation: a medical declaration from the child's doctor, stating that there are medical reasons for not immunising the child: or an undertaking signed by the parents, that the child will have his or her immunisation completed within an agreed period". 14 Some other states in Australia then followed this lead and legislated similar laws.15
In the same publication there was also printed a report on an outbreak of measles in a highly immunised population. This outbreak of measles in a primary school in the A.C.T. provided the opportunity for a questionnaire to be given to parents to determine the efficacy of the immunisation. 16 It was found that six of the 18 cases were unimmunised children. These six came from 13 unimmunised children out of the pool of 365 others, therefore the attack rate of the measles on immunised children was 3.3% and 31.6% on unimmunised children. "The overall immunisation coverage of the school was 95%". 17 The study concluded that outbreaks of measles still occur even when the immunisation rate is high. 18 It then left the report at that, and advocated that all parts of the country continue to increase immunisation coverage to "reduce measles transmission and the frequency of outbreaks in all populations". 19 From these figures and the report we can see that it does not seem at any point to be an issue with these governing bodies that we did not know what immunisation affects in the body, only that it potentially and not even certainly reduces the risk of contracting the disease.
In a book titled Every Second Child, Thomas Nelson describes a situation in parts of the Northen Territory in 1971, whereby 500 out of every 1000 babies in the aboriginal community were dying of SIDS. It was observed by the Minister of the Interior at the time what the cause of this may have been: "we have stepped up immunisation campaigns". 20 Leon Chaitow imagines what might have happened at this time: "A health team would sweep into an area, line up the aboriginal babies and infants and immunise them. There would be no examinations, no taking of case history, no checking on dietary deficiencies... some would die within hours from acute vitamin C deficiency,precipitated by the immunisation. Others would die later from pneumonia, gastro-enteritis, or malnutrition. If some infants survived, they would be lined again in a month, for another immunisation. If some managed to survive even this, they would be line up again... little wonder they died. The wonder is that any survived". 21
In a publication, Dissent in Medicine: Nine Doctors Speak Out, Dr. Richard Moskowitz, a medical doctor as well as a homeopath, speaks about his doubts as to the safety, particularly of the DPT (diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus) and MMR (measles-mumps-rubella), vaccines. He expresses a general suspicion of the notion of being able to rid a population of a disease without adversely affecting people. The question is posed: are the vaccines effective? "because the vaccine is a trick, in the sense that it stimulates the natural immune response developed in the course of recovering from the actual disease, it is certainly realistic to expect that such artificial immunity will in fact wear off quite easily, and even require additional booster doses at regular intervals throughout life to maintain peak effectiveness".
In an article entitled, "Live vaccines and Genetic Mutation", Harold E. Buttram quotes Joshua Lederberg, Department of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine, who said in part in 1967: "in point of fact we already practice biological engineering on a rather large scale by the use of live viruses in mass immunisation campaigns, while these are thought to be of indubitable value for preventing serious diseases, their global impact on the development of human beings of a wide range of genotypes is hard to asses at our present stage of wisdom. Crude virus preparations, such as some in common use at the present time, are also vulnerable to frightful mishaps of contamination and misidentification. Live viruses are themselves genetic messages used for the purpose of programming human cells for the synthesis of immunogenic virus antigens...". 25
At this point we may well ask how vaccines work. "As an example, let us assume that a child is born with a total immune capacity of 100 units. According to the one cell/one qantibody rule, once an immune body (plasma cell or lymphocyte) becomes committed to a given antigen, it becomes incapable of responding to other antigens or challenges". 26
To follow this through a child then naturally acquires measles or any other childhood dise3ase and considering the efficiency of the immune system gains permanent immunity to this disease using 3 to 7 percent of the child's total immune capacity. In the case of routine childhood vaccination a higher percentage is committed, perhaps somewhere from 30 to 70 percent. Once an immune body becomes committed to a specific antigen, it becomes inert and unable to respond to other challenges. 27 "It is dangerously misleading, and indeed, the exact opposite of the truth to claim that a vaccine makes us immune or protects us against an acute disease, if in fact it only drives the disease deeper into the interior and causes us to harbour it chronically, with the result that our response to it becomes progressively weaker, and show less and less tendency to heal or resolve themselves sponateously". 28
One Danish study indicated that the suppression of measles with drugs and vaccines can contribute to auto-immune diseases, such as cancer and arthritis. 29
Needless to say, we have not arrived at any conclusive evidence regarding vaccination, however there seems to exist a situation of disinformation where the public has little knowledge of the discourse between medical professionals who administer vaccine. Also those people who offer knowledge relevant to alternatives to immunisation are somehow kept from the mainstream media such that most parents in Australia are only exposed to massive campaigns across all forms of media that encourage immunisation as the safe resposible and necessary practice that it is clearly not.
'...the time is long overdue when current childhood immunisation programs, until now considered sacrosanct, should be re-evaluated from the standpoint of their long-term consequences". -- Harold E. Buttram. 30
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