Right: pro-vaccination groups and the Federal and state governments encourage posters such as this one.
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Arguments that families that resist vaccinations be denied government benefits for their children
1. Vaccinations dramatically reduce the likelihood of children contracting serious diseases
Australia's vaccination program is a major public health initiative protecting the physical wellbeing and preserving the lives of the Australian population.
In a fact file published by the Royal College of Pathologists of Australia in August 2013 it was stated, 'Tens of thousands of deaths of Australian children were prevented, during the 20th century, by immunization and the benefits have been supplemented by the introduction of newer vaccines. Rotavirus vaccine has reduced hospital admissions and deaths from infant diarrhoea, hepatitis B and human papilloma virus vaccines have protected thousands of adults from liver and cervical cancer, respectively, and many others have prevented infections in travellers or people who are at risk of exposure to exotic infections.'
The fact file then surveys the effectiveness of the current Australian vaccination schedule in reducing the incidence of a range of diseases and concludes 'Safe and effective vaccines have saved the lives of millions of children, worldwide, and will continue to do so as long as immunization programs are maintained.'
In an opinion piece published in The Australian, Janet Albrechtsen cited a number of dramatic declines in disease and death attributable to vaccinations. She states, 'Between 1926 and 1935, 4075 people died from diphtheria in Australia. Following a vaccination program, deaths from this disease fell to zero by 1990. There have been two infections since then, both imported...
Between 1926 and 1935, there were 2808 deaths, mainly among small children and babies, to whooping cough. Following vaccinations, deaths fell to eight between 1986 and 1990...
Since the introduction of a polio vaccine in 1966, the disease rate fell from 39.1 per 100,000 people (hitting this peak in 1938) to the country being now largely polio-free. According to the Health Department, the last reported case of polio involved a foreign student who contracted the disease in Pakistan.'
2. The risk associated with vaccinations is minimal and the most common accusations made about their dangers are bogus
The health risks associated with immunisation are very small and the risks associated with the diseases the vaccinations attempt to prevent are far greater.
This point was made on the Victorian government's Better Health Channel Internet site in response to a frequently asked question about the safety of vaccines.
'Childhood diseases such as measles and whooping cough (pertussis) are serious and potentially fatal. The risk of complications from disease is much higher than the risks of complications from immunisation.
Parents who are fearful of autism, SUDI or other disease complications may choose not to have their children vaccinated. However, if vaccination levels in the community fall too low, disease epidemics can reappear. People with little first-hand experience of childhood infectious disease can underestimate the effects and complications of infectious diseases.
Some parents worry that the measles mumps rubella (MMR) vaccine can cause brain inflammation (encephalitis), but this risk for the vaccine is around one in one million. On the other hand, one in every 2,000 children who catch measles will experience encephalitis. Of these, one in 10 will die and four in 10 will have permanent brain damage.'
One of the major bogus claims made against immunisation is that it has been linked to autism. The MMR vaccine was first alleged to be a cause of autism in 1998, when Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a British researcher, published a study in The Lancet claiming that 12 children with neurodevelopmental delays he examined had the measles virus in their guts.
Serious ethical problems such as financial ties to trial lawyers and a skewed sample group brought the validity of the study into question. Subsequent studies have failed to replicate Dr. Wakefield's results and he is currently facing professional misconduct charges as a result of this study in front of the United Kingdom's General Medical Council.
Ten of the 13 original authors have since retracted their names from the paper, and The Lancet has discredited its findings.
The United States National Center for Biotechnology Information has published a series of studies demonstrating no link between vaccinations and autism. One published in 2002 concluded, 'Of the 535 544 children who were vaccinated, 199 were hospitalized for encephalitis, 161 for aseptic meningitis, and 352 for autistic disorders. In 9 children with encephalitis and 10 with meningitis, the disease developed within 3 months of vaccination, revealing no increased occurrence within this designated risk period. We detected no clustering of hospitalizations for autism after vaccination.'
3. Homeopathic and other non-medical preventative measures are not effective
A number of people in Australia consider or use complementary and alternative medicines (commonly referred to as CAM). Complementary medicines are used in conjunction with conventional medicine while alternative medicines are used instead of conventional medicine.
One form of CAM is homoeopathy, which uses highly diluted preparations that are thought to stimulate the body's own healing response to prevent and/or treat a wide range of illnesses.
Some people consider homoeopathy for their child's immunisation rather than conventional vaccination. However, unlike conventional vaccinations, there has been no rigorously tested research to demonstrate the safety or effectiveness of homoeopathic preparations in providing protection against childhood infectious diseases.
In addition, there is no biologically plausible mechanism for how homoeopathy could work to prevent infectious diseases.
In April, 2015, the National Centre for Immunisation Research & Surveillance (NCIRS) released a fact sheet titled 'Homoeopathy and Vaccination'. The fact sheet states, 'Although homoeopathic preparations and schedules have been developed claiming to prevent childhood infectious diseases such as pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, diphtheria, measles, mumps and rubella (German measles), homoeopathic peak organisations still support the need for children to be vaccinated conventionally.'
The NCIRS further states, 'Both the British Homeopathic Association and the Australian Register of Homoeopaths recommend that people should receive conventional immunisation and that homoeopathic preparations "should not be recommended as a substitute for [conventional] immunisation".'
4. Vaccinations are not a private choice; they are a public health measure
Supporters of increased penalties being applied to those parents who do not have their children vaccinated argue that this is not primarily a question of personal choice; rather it is a public health issue.
This point was made in the joint media release issued by the Minister for Social Services, Scott Morrison, and the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.
The media release states, 'Parents who vaccinate their children should have confidence that they can take their children to child care without the fear that their children will be at risk of contracting a serious or potentially life-threatening illness because of the conscientious objections of others...
The Government is extremely concerned at the risk this [non-vaccination] poses to other young children and the broader community.
The choice made by families not to immunise their children is not supported by public policy or medical research nor should such action be supported by taxpayers in the form of child care payments.'
Some commentators have suggested that a social contract exists among parents to immunize their children not only to provide them individual protection, but also to contribute to the protection of other children who cannot be immunized or for whom the vaccine is not effective.
The proportion of the population that has to be immune to provide this "herd immunity" varies according to the infectiousness of the agent. For poliomyelitis, that proportion is considered to be on the order of 80 per cent, whereas for measles it exceeds 90 per cent.
The primacy of public health concerns over individual freedom of choice has been confirmed in the United States where, in 1922, the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of childhood vaccination requirements in Zucht v. King.
The Court denied a due process Fourteenth Amendment challenge to the constitutionality of city ordinances that excluded children from school attendance for failure to present a certificate of vaccination holding that 'these ordinances confer not arbitrary power, but only that broad discretion required for the protection of the public health.'
Also in the United States, further authority to compel vaccination of children comes under the doctrine of parens patriae in which the state asserts authority over child welfare. In the 1944 case of Prince v. Massachusetts, the U.S. Supreme Court summarised the doctrine, noting that 'Neither rights of religion nor rights of parenthood are beyond limitation. Acting to guard the general interest in youth's well being, the state as parens patriae may restrict the parent's control.'
5. Despite general compliance, there is a hard core of parents still refusing to vaccinate their children and others who have their children vaccinated late and/or incompletely
It has been noted that although the vaccination compliance rate in Australia is generally high, there are groups of objectors whose opposition remains fixed. It is also the case that there are particular regions in Australia where immunisation rates are unacceptably high and where public health is at serious risk.
In addition, the popularisation of the anti-vaccination message by hard-core opponents has led to reluctance among some parents resulting in delayed or incomplete courses being administered to children. Such behaviour carries risks for individual children and the community as a whole.
In an opinion piece published in The Australian on April 18, 2015, Janet Albrechtsen noted, 'In Australia, up to one in five children in some regions are not fully immunised. In NSW's Richmond Valley region, 17.53 per cent of one-year-olds, 19.69 per cent of two-year-olds and 21.7 per cent of five-year-olds are not fully immunised. Similarly low immunisation rates are recorded in Fremantle, inner-city Adelaide, suburban Darwin, Queensland's Sunshine Coast and the high-income, highly educated eastern suburbs of Sydney.'
In an opinion piece published on the ABC's opinion site, The Drum, Katie Attwell, a lecturer with the Sir Walter Murdoch School of Public Policy and International Affairs, Murdoch University stated, 'A small core of anti-vaccine activists have attained wide exposure for a range of spurious arguments against vaccines. These include unsupported links to ill health and disorders and claims about vaccine ingredients that ignore the maxim that the size of the dose determines the poison. While this information in the public discourse has not significantly affected vaccination rates, it has contributed to "vaccine hesitancy"...
Vaccine hesitancy also manifests as some parents delaying or refusing certain childhood vaccines, but getting all or most of them by the time children start school. Such decisions are problematic; for example, some parents regard vaccination against chicken pox as unnecessary, yet otherwise healthy Australian children have died from the disease in recent history. However, under the old policy, refusing vaccines for certain diseases was easy and hence had the appearance of being inconsequential.'