Page 2535 - Week 08 - Thursday, 19 August 1993
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I think that recently, in many parts of Australia, there have been some problems with whooping cough outbreaks, as there was in the ACT a couple of years ago. In fact, in the first five months of this year in Australia there have been 625 reported cases of whooping cough. Anybody who has seen a child with whooping cough would be straight out there getting their child immunised, I can promise. It is interesting that whooping cough is the one that everybody always talks about. Certainly, Mr Stevenson and his colleagues speak about it. It certainly is the one with the most side effects. But when we look at the statistics in this area the current immunisation rate for whooping cough is, at best, 80 per cent. That is not nearly good enough to stop outbreaks. Even so, when we look at those 625 cases in the first five months of this year, we find that 43 per cent of those were not immunised. We find that 20 per cent of those had had only three doses instead of four. Certainly, there were 14 per cent who were fully immunised children.
Mr Stevenson and his colleagues claim that those figures show that immunisation does not work. I do not think he can read figures terribly well. He and his colleagues, and, I must admit, others, claim that the reason why we have had this great downturn in deaths from preventable childhood diseases is that we have better nutrition. There is no doubt about that, but we are only comparing 1926 to 1993. I do not believe that the increase in nutrition, cleanliness and all the other things that they claim are the reasons is all that dramatic over that period - not when you consider that we have saved some 8,000 lives in this country each year over that period. I should not talk about only Mr Stevenson's comments, as there are certainly others; but I think that anybody who was at the launch of the Red NoseDay appeal and saw Mr Stevenson and his colleagues standing there with those placards was ashamed. I know that I was. I felt very sorry for all the mothers and fathers who had lost children and who were at that particular reception, looking at those placards and feeling, "Well, maybe it was our fault". I think that that sort of approach shows quite remarkable insensitivity.
It is unfortunate that recently homoeopathic immunisation has got a whole heap of credibility in Australia. It is appropriate, I think, to look at what has been said about homoeopathic immunisation. The NHMRC, at their 110th session in November 1990, reviewed the evidence about homoeopathic immunisation and made this statement:
Homoeopathic "immunisation" has not been shown to be effective.
The council warned that homoeopathic immunisation was useless - they do not usually use words quite that dramatic - and left children unprotected against serious and potentially fatal diseases. In fact, two years ago in Perth there were cases of whooping cough amongst children who had been homoeopathically immunised, confirming, I think, the inadequacies of such measures to protect against infection. I was pleased to see the faculty of homoeopathy of the Royal London Hospital state that, where there is no medical contraindication, immunisation should be carried out in the normal way using conventionally tested and approved vaccines. Dr Brendan Nelson, the current national president of the AMA, said that parents who consulted untrained practitioners to immunise their children were leaving them totally unprotected. Homoeopathic vaccines were a total fraud, according to Brendan Nelson. I think that that is the information that we need to get out to our parents in the ACT. One of the primary aims of any public health organisation is to provide immunisation to all of our preschool children, and, wherever possible, to provide that immunisation free of charge.
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