Get with the program

Lately there seems to have been a raft of media stories on the pro’s and cons of Vaccination.


Last night there was an Australian 60 minutes article focusing on two young babies (under 6 months and therefore not able to be immunised) that had died as a result of contracting Whooping Cough.

Before that it was some parental outrage from a group of mothers whose children had been sent home from school as they were not immunised against measles and there had been an outbreak in the community.

They were outraged because they had to take time off work to look after their kids and couldn’t seem to understand why the school didn’t start running separate classes etc for their children. It was after all their right not to immunise their kids.

And sadly it is their right, but should it be? First let’s dispose of the outliers in this argument, there are some limited cases where immunisation is not a good idea, for example children already suffering from cancer or have a problem with their immunity for whatever reason. We clearly shouldn’t immunise these children and have no need to do it as there is room in the system for a few unimmunised individuals.

In the 60 minutes doco though they were looking at a community where 1 in 4 kids were not immunised. And we are not talking about some down and out community that didn’t understand the issues this was a solid middleclass community of educated people.

Generally I think people should be left to get on with their lives and compulsory anything needs to be treated with caution, however your rights can’t be allowed to harm others as a general rule and in this instance those unimmunised people who therefore allowed Whooping Cough into their community effectively killed those babies. In the normal course of events if that was one person we would prosecute of murder but because a mob of ignorant people did it they get away with it.

And yes I said ignorant any one that does not immunise their child (without medical advice not to) is simple ignorant and too stupid to be left in charge of a child. There is simple no credible evidence that this is a bad idea. Tens of millions of people have been immunised with probably thousands of studies undertaken on the matter and no one of any standing in the community would be prepared to be against this. If it was systematically bad for people don’t you think we would have noticed by now? Millions and millions of people have had this remember, in every country in the world to a greater and lesser degree.

What we do know for an absolute fact is that many, many diseases have been effectively wiped out in developed nations, generally babies do not die from whooping cough, kids are not crippled by polio etc.

And the people deciding to not vaccinate are not the people who suffer the consequences, it is most likely to be their children or even worse someone else’s child. How do we continue to allow this, it is time we sorted this out once and for all and made it compulsory, to hell with the parents rights, what about the child’s rights. I have seen whooping cough in action and it is very unpleasant at the very least and clearly deadly at the worst.