Page 2536 - Week 08 - Thursday, 19 August 1993
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MR MOORE (3.56): Madam Speaker, I support the thrust of what members are saying but with perhaps a little more questioning than they have expressed. One of the difficulties with vaccination is that we have had our evangelists on both sides. Mr Stevenson has been mentioned a number of times today, but I think there are also those on the flip side of the coin who seem to suggest that immunisation is a complete answer. I must say that it is a credit to Mr Berry that he presented the risks associated with immunisation as well as the advantages. When I think back, Madam Speaker, to the NHMRC and how long they took, for example, to recognise the dangers associated with asbestos, I think it is imperative that we do not simply rely on one source for our own information. It is appropriate, when people do have doubts, that those doubts are tested scientifically. An association between SIDS and immunisation certainly has not been shown, to any extent, to exist in a causal relationship. Where people have suspicions it is appropriate that those suspicions be tested by a series of scientific experiments to establish whether there is or is not a relationship.
Mr Berry also pointed out, and credit to him, that no medical technology exists without some kind of risk, and the recognition of those risks will assist in recognising some people's fears associated with immunisation. It is also important for us to recognise that there are, of course, vested interests who are going to do very well out of immunisation programs. The pharmaceutical companies, in particular, have a huge advantage in ensuring that immunisation programs do go ahead, preferably with the vaccine that they are producing. The issue of measles was raised before and we recognise that there are times when the vaccine simply is not effective. I think there has been some evidence recently that the measles vaccine is not doing the job that it was doing some years ago. Since people have been speaking on a personal basis, I find it interesting that three of my children, who were vaccinated for measles, all later came down with measles. Whilst that is only anecdotal evidence and nothing else - I do not claim it to be anything else - it is a concern and that concern therefore ought be raised and tested scientifically.
Accepting new forms of immunisation without question would be inappropriate. They are questioned. The NHMRC does question them and I think it is appropriate that it should. But it is also a parental responsibility and I think that it is important for us to recognise the right of parents to make decisions on this sort of issue. That is being done. The method that Mrs Grassby talked about in terms of schools, preschools and child-care centres, where people are identified when they are not immunised, has a particular advantage for the particular children in that if there is an outbreak of any one of those preventable diseases those children can be excluded from the school - not to protect those who are already immunised, but to protect them.
Madam Speaker, I think that over the next 10 or 15 years there will be a great deal more research not only on the issue of the effectiveness and waning effectiveness of some of the immunisations, but also on the side effects and the problems associated with those side effects. Madam Speaker, I think it is a quite refreshing debate today. Often the debate on immunisation polarises completely and the truth does, in fact, get half buried. Today members have recognised the problems associated with immunisation but at the same time have supported general immunisation, and that is the same position that I take. Madam Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to speak and I also thank Mrs Grassby for raising the issue.
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