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Wednesday, December 12, 2001

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Since then, the Czech-born 66-year-old has been gathering research reports that might be pressed into service in support of her hypothesis.

So how does she explain the fact that Australian SIDS deaths have fallen - by about 50 per cent since the early 1970s - during the same period that immunisation coverage has risen to more than 90 per cent of children?

The deaths, she says, must "very likely" be appearing as other causes. "It could be pneumonia, bronchiolitis."

But the total infant death rate has decreased by 30 per cent during the past decade, in parallel with the fall in SIDS.

Dr Scheibner insists she is not aware of this figure, though it is freely available from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Why had she not sought it? "Because I am doing other things. I am very busy," says Dr Scheibner.

Dr Simon Chapman says Dr Scheibner is charismatic and persuasive in public forums. . But the Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at Sydney University deplores her "ambiguous use of science".

He says the parents who listen to her are deprived of the opportunity for informed choice - ostensibly a chief tenet of the anti-immunisation platform.

If Dr Scheibner is the movement's scientific anchor, then Meryl Dorey is its canny, grassroots worker through her advocacy group, the ambiguously titled Australian Vaccination Network.

The coalition of local groups can rustle up immediate political noise on a range of vaccination-related issues. Its current campaign is to remove the requirement for a doctor to sign off on a conscientious objector statement - necessary if a parent wants Centrelink child-care assistance for an unimmunised child.

Ms Dorey is also lobbying for mandatory reporting by doctors of all adverse symptoms that could have resulted from immunisation.

She says she no longer expects mainstream support for her unpopular crusades and that only direct parent power will change the status quo.

"This issue will never be in the public eye until there's a grassroots push for more information ... for parents to be empowered that they are the experts on their children, not doctors, not the government."

Julie Leask's PhD research at the University of Sydney is an examination of the apparent beliefs of anti-immunisation disciples such as Dr Scheibner and Ms Dorey.

To investigate, Ms Leask has had to infiltrate. She joined the Australian Vaccination Network and attended its public rallies.

Commonly, Ms Leask says, the belief is part of a package. Central is the theme that governments, hand in glove with pharmaceutical corporations, have an agenda to control or injure their citizens. This plays out in an "all natural" approach to food and medicine, and a reluctance to engage with what is seen as the "system".

"I think it's a religious faith ... They're not malevolent. They're passionate in a religious way," Ms Leask says.

Their influence is limited. Fewer than 5 per cent of parents have any problem with immunisation, and the proportion of Australian parents immovable on the subject is even smaller - about 1per cent.

David Isaacs, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at The Children's Hospital at Westmead, opposes the concept of compulsory immunisation, calling it "abhorrent". But he believes doctors should go in hard on parents who resist jabs for their children.

Just as anti-immunisers display wrenching pictures of babies allegedly damaged by vaccines, doctors should be prepared to outline - graphically - the potential consequences of catching vaccine-preventable disease.

His own practice is to lay out their social duty to immunise in uncompromising terms and to tax them with selfishness if they still refuse.

When all such strategies fail, Professor Isaacs begs parents to immunise their child against at least tetanus, which is carried in the soil and by animals - and which can kill up to 10 per cent of infected people. "That's completely preventable for a vaccine with no serious side effects," he said.

Sue Page practises medicine in Lennox Head on the far North Coast. It is anti-immunisation heartland, where coverage rates are the lowest in NSW, and she is surrounded on all sides by propaganda. "They've done letterbox drops. The pre-schools are targeted. As a GP it's really hard to have that level of anti-immunisation activity around you."

Dr Page meets fire with fire. She reads every scientific paper her opponents are likely to cite. When a parent mentions it, she can pull it from the file and show them what it really says.

Fourteen per cent of children are wholly or partly unimmunised in the Northern Rivers area, according to State Government statistics. Dr Page says that massively understates the problem. Thousands of people simply don't appear on the census, and local GPs have estimated 35 per cent to 40 per cent is more realistic.

Despite that, she credits Ms Dorey and her supporters with forcing the Government's hand on legitimate improvements to the vaccine regime - such as the move to subsidise the acellular whooping cough vaccine which causes fewer reactions.

But she has little time for the anti-immunisation leaders, whom she accuses of "dodgy play ... I used to think it was misunderstanding. Now I think it's more blatant than that."

Dr Page's negativity does not extend to the concerned parents who imbibe the message. "They actually do the reading ... They may be getting misinformation but I really admire them for wanting the information in the first place."

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