Doctors take aim at 'vaccine objectors'

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Sorry, this video has expired Video: Doctors worried by falling child vaccination rate (7pm TV News NSW)

Twelve of Australia's top immunisation specialists are warning parents that they are risking deadly consequences if they choose not to vaccinate their children.

Figures show that one in 12 Australian babies is not fully immunised - a rate which scientists believe may allow diseases like measles, diphtheria and whooping cough to regain a foothold.

The number of so-called "vaccine objectors" has risen six-fold since 1999, a trend which doctors say is putting the whole community at risk.

Now the Australian Academy of Science, with the support of the Australian Medical Association, has published a booklet explaining why vaccinations are so important.

Professor Ian Frazer co-wrote the booklet and it has been reviewed by another former Australian of the Year, Professor Fiona Stanley.

The academy says immunisation remains the most effective protection against disease and its president, Suzanne Cory, says the booklet's aim is to combat the "misinformation" that has driven immunisation rates down.

"Vaccination is incredibly important for our society to keep us free of infectious diseases," she said.

"You just have to think back to the early days of Australia and look in the cemeteries and see how many young children died of infectious diseases before we had these wonderful vaccines and before we had antibiotics.

"It is of concern that there are these pockets of conscientious objection to vaccination that are growing," she added.

"I don't think people understand that they're not just choosing for their own family, they're putting at risk the wider community."

The scientists say the internet, and its plethora of information and opinion, is not helping their cause.

"I think it was 1998 when a paper was published in the British highly-reputably medical journal The Lancet suggesting that there was a link between autism and being given the MMR measles-containing vaccine," Emeritus Professor Tony Basten, of Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, told AM.

"The suggestion was that the virus got into the intestine and stopped the absorption of nutrients that are needed for normal brain development.

"Extensive studies have been done comparing the autism rate in vaccinated and non-vaccinated people. There is no difference. And that paper is now accepted as fraudulent and it has been withdrawn by the publishers."

Topics: vaccines-and-immunity, parenting, family-and-children, health, australia

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