Why is Australia in the midst of a whooping cough epidemic

Following is the transcript of an interview on Gary Hardgrave's Drive programme on 4BC (Brisbane), yesterday afternoon, the 18th of January. This is in regards to the current record levels of whooping cough in Australia (and worldwide) and the vilification by the government and medical community who blame the unvaccinated for the outbreak whilst ignoring the evidence that the vaccine is not working and may itself, be the source of the epidemic.

GH: Doctors are fearing a rise in whooping cough, yet we’ve been immunising people for ages. Just what is going on here? I thought immunising against whooping cough was supposed to prevent it and there’s been a mini epidemic in far north Queensland. I don’t know much more details than that. I’m wondering if it’s within indigenous communities or possibly within newly arrived migrants. I don’t know, but others are saying no, it’s a pretty broad cross section of our community that have been called out of that. We’ll talk about that in some detail in a moment.

We return with this apparent mini epidemic of whooping cough. I had a touch of whooping cough when I was a young tacker and I as far as I know was immunised. It is not a nice thing. Australia’s gone from having only 332 cases of whooping cough per year in 1991 to having something like 38,000 cases in 2011. That’s the claim. 10,000% increase. I thought we were immunising people against this.

The Australian Vaccination Network’s Meryl Dorey joins us, Meryl I know you’re not a big fan of vaccination, but something’s wrong here.

MD: Well something is definitely wrong here. It’s not that I’m a fan or not a fan of vaccinations, but I am a fan of using scientific information to say that what we’re doing works and it’s not a mini epidemic that’s happening for whooping cough. We’re actually starting the fifth year of a record-breaking number of cases of whooping cough. When the vaccine was introduced in 1953 we had about 180 cases of whooping cough per 100,000 population in Australia and right now, with our vaccination rate going from 0 to 95%, we have 180 cases per 100,000 head of population. So we’ve actually seen no improvement in the incidence of whooping cough and what’s occurring in Australia is what is occurring around the world. Any place that the vaccine is being used we’re seeing this huge increase, an absolutely enormous increase in incidence, 10,000% in the last 20 years in Australia and the vaccine may very well be responsible for it. What the medical community is saying is that in the same way that antibiotics can lead to antibiotic resistant bacteria, well over use of the whooping cough vaccine has actually caused a mutation in the bacteria that causes whooping cough and it’s no longer in the vaccine.

GH: Yeah so what you’re saying really is we need a bit more science to check out what we’re actually vaccinating against?

MD: Absolutely. And right now the medical community and the government are using this outbreak of whooping cough to try and get people to vaccinate more but we are vaccinating more than we’ve ever vaccinated before and it’s not having any effect. Like you said - you thought, I thought, everyone thought - that when they vaccinated against whooping cough, it meant that they were protected. But now, even the medical community is saying, “No, you’re not protected. It may just mean that you get the disease milder.” and I have to tell you that from my research, there isn’t any evidence that that’s the case either. We are getting more cases of whooping cough than we’ve had in decades and it’s despite a 24% increase in the vaccination rate against whooping cough in Australia in the last 20 years.

GH: But I was vaccinated when I was a kid because I’ve been born 1953, I was born on January 5th in 1953 if anyone wants to write that down for my 60th birthday, my point being that I had a mild form of whooping cough when I was a kid, it terrified my parents, it was an aweful time they reckon.

MD: Well that’s it. And from the statistics we’ve gotten from the government, it appears that something close to 80% of all cases of whooping cough are occurring in fully vaccinated people so you know, we have a situation where we’re getting a huge incidence of disease and we’re being told that the only answer is to get more vaccinations, more vaccinations, but we already have so many people vaccinated and the disease is not declining - it’s actually increasing. And what the AVN says is that we have about a 95% vaccination rate against whooping cough right now. If the government wants to increase that even higher, and that’s a pretty high vaccination rate, a lot of parents that we speak with are very concerned about whether or not giving their children vaccines is going to keep them healthy. And we have been asking, organisations like the AVN around the world have been asking for decades now, for the governments to do the one study that will actually make parents feel more comfortable about giving their children these vaccines and that is a study comparing the overall health of children who are fully vaccinated with children who are completely unvaccinated but that’s never been done.

GH: All right, SOMETHING is out there, I appreciate your time.

MD: Thank you.

GH: We’ll talk to you again.

M: Thanks a lot.

GH: Meryl Dorey, President of the Australian Vaccination Network. They say parents have the right to choose. And I am a great believer in vaccination but I get the point that she’s making that I’m very, very interested in because whether or not we’re vaccinating against exactly the same thing, or the right thing, that we should be vaccinating against.

Doctor Richard Kidd, President of the Australian Medical Association joins us. Vaccinations do make sense but are we getting the vaccination right?

RK: Hi Gary. Yes, I think we are using the right vaccines. The tricky thing here is that people like you and me who got vaccinated as young children, the vaccines that we used then are different to the ones now.

R: So they keep updating the vaccine, that’s what you’re saying?

K: they do, and improving them. And whooping cough is still not one of the ones where we’ve got a vaccine that gives life-long protection. If you’re vaccinated against, Hepatitis B for example, we now have pretty good evidence that you can, if it’s demonstrated that you become immune through a blood test, that immunity will probably last you the rest of your life. Unfortunately, that’s not the case with whooping cough so people like you and me who got vaccinated as children are losing that immunity now so we need to be revaccinated, especially if we’re going to be in contact with babies. The problem with whooping cough is that children under the age of 6 months who contract whooping cough, one in about 200 die from pneumonia or brain damage and the reason that we have a series of vaccinations given through the time that someone’s a baby and then to early childhood is that we know that while the immune system is immune, a single vaccine isn’t going to be enough to generate proper immunity. Well that’s why these poor kids go through the vaccinations at 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, 12 months, 18 months and in the case of whooping cough they have them a number of times. So practically no baby will have protective immunity at the age of 6 months or younger against whooping cough so the reason society has to pull together to try to minimise the chance of exposing new born babies to whooping cough.

GH: So, I mean the point made by the Australian Vaccination Network, and I know the Queensland government has feared, that we shouldn’t be taking their side of it, we should be taking other things but we want to have a debate here though. The point they’re making is, I think possibly very timely in that you were sort of making the same point from a different starting position and that is that the vaccine we thought that would work for us may need to be updated. We in fact need, as grown-ups now, to reconsider whether or not we’re properly vaccinated against whooping cough.

RK: That’s right, a number of the, well just about all the vaccines that we have as children, we know now did protect us to some degree and no vaccine will guarantee that someone won’t get a disease but if you’ve been vaccinated and your immune system has actually worked then if you get exposed to it, like for example chicken pox. There’s a lot of evidence that a kid who’s had a chicken pox vaccine, but then might actually catch chicken pox later on and most of them don’t, but the ones who do will only get a few blisters rather than getting covered from head to foot and maybe getting a chicken pox pneumonia or something else so as with your experience, the whooping cough vaccine probably worked for you in that you only got a mild disease.

GH: Well, it was pretty awful though. I do remember it, having the lamps burning in the middle of the night, all sorts of stuff; it was all old technology I suppose.

RK: Yeah, at least you’re alive.

GH: Well all true! And it’s a god awful thing because the kids literally shake their brain loose from coughing and so forth.

RK: Yeah, you know 1 in 200 will die under the age of 6 months.

GH: Okay, so what should we be doing? As grown-ups, and you say those of us who might be seeing babies, we should perhaps be talking to our doctor and saying I want to update my vaccine? Is that what we should be doing?

RK; Absolutely, and the government is supporting young adults, well adults who are expecting to have a baby so people who are expecting to have a baby, mum and dad can go along and get that vaccine for free. The rest of us have to cough up and pay for the vaccine so you know, the grandparents, the uncles, the aunts, the friends who know that they’re going to go and visit someone who’s had a baby, all of us should be getting our whooping cough vaccines.

GH: All right well my family if you’re listening to that because we’ve got one due in the next couple of weeks so I think we’ll be going getting a jab by the sounds of it. Good to talk to you, thanks for your time.

RK: you too

GH: Doctor Richard Kidd, I mean this is some pretty big numbers here, 745 confirmed cases the number of whooping cough cases in far north Queensland, a 400% increase in 2011, I mean this is serious. What you thought you were vaccinated for you may not be now. I think that’s the point, the common point, from both of those contributors.