Guest Post: The Vaccine Debate - a Matter of Trust
An open letter to the open-minded
There are many difficult conversations in healthcare – how to best assist people dying in pain, policies regarding foetal termination, the ethics of spending a million dollars on a procedure to help one person rather than using that money to assist hundreds of others, and so on. But the conversation that attracts the most venomous disagreement relates to something where all sides have already agreed on the final goal – maximising the health of community members, especially children.
The decision of whether to vaccinate against potentially serious diseases is one of the most difficult that many thousands of parents will face when raising their children. Most allow the decision to be made for them and vaccinate according to Government recommendations. But a growing number of parents question whether vaccination is the best option for their child based on their assessment of potential benefits and risks.
Ignoring the evidence
Given the overwhelming level of support for vaccination, one must ask why there is any doubt about this issue at all. The answer for many is that they have lost trust in orthodox advice. There are real reasons why this has happened, reasons which Health Department literature and shows like “Jabbed” which recently aired on SBS have all failed to address.
There are tens of thousands of parents in Australia, and countless more internationally, who have witnessed what they believe is damage caused to their children by vaccines. Yet their genuine concerns are typically dismissed by orthodox clinicians as being “just coincidence”, “hysteria”, “ignorance”, and so on. Yet these parents live with real consequences every day of their lives, and view such conclusions as being arrogant and dismissive of their genuine concerns.
They are told that vaccines are proven to be safe, yet parents know that vaccine manufactures only operate because they are indemnified from prosecution by Government legislation. They see the huge Government payouts made in vaccine damage compensation schemes in other countries (America has now passed the $2.5 billion mark) proving that some adverse events do occur. They look up Government sites like the VAERS database of adverse events from vaccination containing hundreds of thousands of entries, so they know that there is too much here to be simple “coincidence”.
The more informed ask a simple question – where are the long-term studies examining the full health (intellectual, emotional and physical) of age-appropriate, fully vaccinated and completely unvaccinated children? They don’t find such studies. Instead they find a relatively few studies which claim to prove the long-term safety of vaccination, but either these studies don’t consider the holistic health of participants, or don’t look at age-appropriate cohorts, or don’t compare fully vaccinated and unvaccinated cohorts - the combination of which is necessary to conclusively demonstrate long-term safety. And even the studies cited are imperfect – for example, the very large “Danish studies” published in 2002 and 2003, credited with proving that autism is not related to thimerosal and MMR, are weakened by significant confounders and researcher fraud.
So based on careful research, some intelligent and reasonable people ask a second question – we are told repeatedly that the risks from vaccines are less than the risks from the diseases they prevent, but if the long-term risks are not fully quantified, how can such a statement be scientifically credible? That question has yet to be answered other than by returning to the less than adequate studies already cited.
Homeopathic disease prevention (homeoprophylaxis)
Finally, some of these parents continue their research and find that there is a middle path – immunising their child homeopathically, a practice which was first used in 1798 (vaccines were first used in 1796). They are told by orthodox authorities that homeopathically prepared substances have nothing in them, so they can’t work, and also that there is no evidence of effectiveness. All agree that “nothing” cannot be toxic, so the real question then becomes – is there evidence of effectiveness?
It is here that I must describe my personal experience involving the collection of evidence. This experience shows that any statement that “there is no evidence” is simply a denial of reality. Of course the evidence may be contested and the results argued over, but the fact that evidence exists to support claims regarding the effectiveness of homeopathic immunisation is undeniable.
The Cuban Experience
I was first invited to visit Cuba in December 2008 to present at an international conference hosted by the Finlay Institute, which is a W.H.O. accredited vaccine manufacturer. The Cubans described their use of homeopathic immunisation (HI) to control an outbreak of leptospirosis (a potentially fatal, water-borne bacterial disease) in 2007 among the residents of the three Eastern provinces which were most severely damaged by a major hurricane – over 2.2 million people. 2008 was an even worse year involving three hurricanes, and the country’s food production was only just recovering at the time of the conference. The HI program had been repeated in 2008, but data was not available at the conference regarding that intervention.
The 2008 result proved to be remarkable, and could only be explained by the effectiveness of the HI intervention. Whilst the three hurricanes caused immense damage throughout the country it was again worse in the east, yet the three homoeopathically immunised (eastern) provinces experienced a negligible increase in cases whilst the rest of the country showed significant increases until the dry season in January 2009.
I revisited Cuba in 2010 and 2012, each time to work with the leader of the HI interventions, Dr Bracho, to analyse the data available from this and other HI interventions, including the HI of 9.8million people against Swine Flu in 2009/10. Dr Bracho is not a homeopath; he is a published and internationally recognised expert in the manufacture of vaccine adjuvants. He worked in Australia at Flinders University during 2004 with a team trying to develop an anti-malarial vaccine.
In 2012 we accessed the raw leptospirosis surveillance data, comprising weekly reports from 15 provinces over 9 years (2000 to 2008) reporting 21 variables. This yielded a matrix with 147,420 possible entries. This included data concerning possible confounders, such as vaccination and chemoprophylaxis, which allowed a careful evaluation of possible distorting effects. We accessed the raw HI data. With the permission of the Cubans, I brought this data back to Australia and it is being examined by mathematicians at an Australian university to see what other information can be extracted. Clearly, there is objective data supporting claims regarding the effectiveness of HI.
This is but one example - there are many more. It is cited to show that there is significant data available, and the HI interventions have been driven, in the Cuban case, by orthodox scientists and doctors. Many people internationally now know this, so once again claims by orthodox authorities that there is no evidence merely serve to show that either the authorities are making uninformed/unscientific statements, or that they are aware but are intentionally withholding information. Either way, trust is destroyed and leads to groups of people questioning what they are told.
It is contended that what now seems to be an endless and repetitive battle between pro and anti-vaccination groups would be unnecessary if the Government made three decisions:
Ensure that the parents of vaccine-damaged children and the children themselves are appropriately supported, and that these people and other parents genuinely concerned about the possibility of vaccine damage are not attacked as being irresponsible and a danger to the community.
Support those parents who would otherwise not vaccinate their children to use homeopathic immunisation. This in turn would lead to an increase in herd immunity. It would also allow coverage against diseases such as meningococcal meningitis type B, and dengue fever for which there are no vaccines. It would not require Government endorsement of the method, just appropriate paperwork to identify which type of immunisation was being used – vaccination or HI.
Establish a Government sponsored study of long-term vaccine safety examining the holistic health of age-appropriate, fully vaccinated and unvaccinated children, and publish the full results.
I would also suggest that given the legislative protection and Government financial support provided to multinational vaccine manufacturers, that our Government evaluate the possibility of having vaccines used in Australia made in Australia by a not-for-profit manufacturer. If a small country like Cuba can do this, then so can we. We should not have to bear the costs of a near-mandatory procedure without sharing the benefits, but this is the existing situation with vaccination.
This divisive issue has caused our society to become a less tolerant place, where free-speech is prevented through selective media bans and the discussion of ideas and options is attacked by academics and scientists who should be the champions of open and objective dialogue. We need to return to evidence – not just selected and convenient results but all the evidence from all sides of this issue. The orthodox response is that all the evidence has been considered and there is no more to discuss. But too many people know that this is not true, and until a fully open conversation is held this issue will never be resolved, and trust will not be restored. And it needs to be – for the benefit of all citizens.