Immunisation
The Australian Vaccination Network stuck its head over the parapet again this week, and almost immediately copped one between the eyes. American Airlines pulled the group’s anti-vaccination ad from its flights before it even aired.
It’s the latest in a series of setbacks for the controversial organisation, which is increasingly struggling for air in the Australian media.
The media has been exemplary on this topic, refusing to indulge a group that is full of rhetoric but light on evidence. Most famously, Tracey Spicer demolished the AVN’s president, Meryl Dorey, on 2UE. The well-researched Spicer gave Dorey short shrift, eventually hanging up on her.
Continue reading "We need a change in climate in the Australian media" »
Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit, a regular column that looks at pseudoscience and magical thinking. Unsurprisingly, vaccination pops up quite a bit.
The Australian reports today that the Government has renewed CSL’s contract to supply Fluvax – the vaccine found to trigger febrile convulsions in children and subsequently banned.
Fluvax also has a “modestly higher” risk of side effects in adults – it is more likely to cause headaches, fatigue, vomiting and injection site pain.
Continue reading "ICB: Anti-vaxxers injecting credibility into their cause" »
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BaSH PR0MPT says:
Why would you even provide a link to those sociopathic muppets? The Australian Skeptic Society and Dick Smith took out a full page advert in The Australian debunking and slamming these derps, and the entire internet has a field day with them. But their insane old crone leader is a… Read more »
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St. Michael says:
Oh, you’re that Chris. If the point’s to encourage greater education on vaccines and why they work, I could totally get behind that. I tend to keep harping on the measles example because it’s one of the most prominent examples of a disease that gets blown away by vaccines in… Read more »
The Government has hoisted up a large and slightly unwieldy carrot to boost immunisation rates. Families could miss out on around $2100 if the kids don’t get their jabs. The announcement comes in the midst of a whooping cough outbreak, and at a time when clusters of non-vaccinators are allowing preventable diseases to incubate.
The Government’s changes, which will mean those who don’t immunise will not be eligible for three payments of $729 under Family Tax Benefit A, is well intentioned, if clumsy. Under the current system families get an immunisation allowance – even if they are “conscientious objectors” – but this will now be scrapped, while more immunisations will be added to the schedule.
Here’s the likely outcome.
Continue reading "Time to inject some rational thought into anti-vaxxers" »
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Sarah says:
The Gardasil vaccine is also used to protect from the 2 most common types of HPV that cause the STD genital warts. It impacts more than just your own health if you are not vaccinated Read more »
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RyaN says:
@Fiona: Oh and YOU are wrong Fiona, here you go. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/doctors-warn-parents-to-keep-newborns-at-home-as-whooping-cough-epidemic-escalates/story-e6freuy9-1226055946293 Sound medical advice from doctors, follow it! Read more »
It’s an anxious moment for many parents; rolling up the sleeve of your precious baby and presenting that perfect skin to the doctor’s needle.
And the sting is the least of your worries; we may be rational and sensible enough to know vaccinating our kids against potentially fatal diseases is right, for them and the community, but that cocktail of antigens going into their arm is a discomforting sight.
What if we’re the one in a million whose baby has an adverse reaction or gets the rarest side-effects?
Continue reading "Irresponsible parents spare the jab, endanger the child" »
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Lynx says:
CDC estimates that 1 in 88 children in the US has been identified as having Autism Spectrum Disorder. Mmmmm Hmmmmmm. Read more »
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BaSH PR0MPT says:
You should have noted that Dick Smith bought a full page ad in the Australian to out anti-vaxxers, especially the Australian association run by a conspiracy theorist crazy American woman who pushes her agenda everywhere she can. All anti-vaxxers are either unintelligent and don’t understand logic and reasoning, or have… Read more »
One day the Government may need to stage an intervention in Sydney’s plushest suburbs, Byron Bay’s glorious expanse, and the genteel landscape of the Adelaide Hills.
These are the places where some children’s lives are at risk because parents have entirely lost trust in governments, and are turning to some dodgy alternative sources of health information.
Studies by the Federal health department, CSIRO and the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance have shown that while overall Australia’s uptake of vaccination is good – mostly around 90 per cent for children - in certain regions the levels of conscientious objectors have soared, resulting in clusters of deadly diseases.
Continue reading "Deadly parenting choices in the vaccination debate" »
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LC says:
Yes you’re free to do what you want that involves putting risks putting the health of other on the line. That is, you’re free to do it if and only if you and your family are living on your own in a shack in the middle of the outback, at… Read more »
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David says:
Acotrel, my mum and grandfather had cancer, followed our medical system through to the end, they are dead now too. Read more »
The final in a three-part series exposing the fraudulent link between autism and vaccination is out today.
Read about the first part here, and the second part here.
The three authors of a British Medical Journal editorial accompanying the final part argue that science is “our best way of knowing”, despite the numerous people and systems at fault for perpetuating the myth that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination is linked to autism in children.
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LC says:
Damnit, not again. “The “no mandatory vaccinations under the age of 5” is to buy time to determine if there is any actaul reason that they should be vaccinated.” That should read “if there is any actual reason that they should NOT be vaccinated”. Read more »
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LC says:
@Syl “Whats the point of giving the choice before the age of 5 but forcing them to vaccinate after? We should be protecting them from preventable dieases from the get go, afterall, under this scheme, they are going to be vaccinated eventually (extenuating circumstances aside)” The “no mandatory vaccinations under… Read more »
The link between autism and vaccines is dead, and should be buried.
However, that destructive little idea received a couple of good, hard kicks last week - the violence of which may have given the illusion that some life was left in the debate.
Many have been blamed for keeping the myth going, and now an author and expert is also blaming the media, who he says perpetuated the myths through a mistaken sense that they were being balanced.
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Adelaide Dad says:
So where is this double blind power study (10,000 kids - independent of any pharmaceutical co.) that suggests vaccines don’t cause autism or is it still anecedotal evidence by doctors protecting their agency? or would it not be proper to vaccinate 5000 kids to save 1:100 from getting this debilitating… Read more »
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rb says:
@ St M. I have no idea what the % are. When I was discussing the vacc schedule with a doctor I said I felt better with oral vaccs as I felt that the immune response in the mouth was part of the normal defence vs putting it straight into… Read more »
The British Medical Journal has devoted an editorial to stating that an article published in popular medical journal The Lancet in 1998 linking childhood vaccination with autism “was in fact an elaborate fraud.”
The Lancet had already retracted the article by Andrew Wakefield early last year, but BMJ now sought to totally discredit the “study”, which led to a decline in the triple vaccination of measles, mumps and rubella in Britain as well as in the United States and Australia.
Sadly, despite the strength of the BMJ articles - brought on by the work of Sunday Times investigative journalist Brian Deer - there will still be people who will not only ignore it but view it as further evidence of the conspiracy.
Continue reading "There is, unfortunately, no vaccine against stupidity" »
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LC says:
So take a guess at what would happen should you have caught the full-strength version of that virus… Read more »
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LC says:
@Davido, Yeah sorry. I’ll tell you another good reason to vaccinate. Aside from this whole thing called herd immunity, there is also this thing called MUTATION. If your child contracts measles, and the virus mutates, this new virus can infect everyone regardless of whether or not they were vaccinated against… Read more »
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