Well, better late than never, I suppose. This newsletter was supposed to be winging its way through cyberspace to you on Thursday last week, but we were on magazine deadline (emphasis on the first syllable of that word :-) and my life has not been my own!
I have had more articles to write for this issue than for any other previously so, I hope you will excuse the fact that there is only one feature here and that it is taken from our Taking Action section of the magazine. I felt that it was so important to do these things in a timely manner, I am sending you this notice now and then, you will get a follow-up reminder when you get your magazine in the last week of July. But since at least one of these action alerts can be followed up on line and since you are obviously on line now...how about getting it over with now and then, you can feel really superior when the magazine arrives and you know that you've already taken action on these issues?
Now, on to the donation tally. As you no doubt remember, we are looking for total donations of $52,000 which equated to a donation of only $26 from each one of you. Since the last newsletter, we have raised an additional $2025 in donations which is lovely but means that we still need more than $48,000 to get to our goal.
Please see the chart below:
If you have not yet donated, please do so as your support is necessary for us to continue our work and to be as effective as we possibly can be.
Once again, the information on how to donate is below:
We accept donations by credit card by phone (02 6687 1699), FAX (02 6687 2032) or on our website – www.avn.org.au. Just click on the link that says Donate in the upper right hand corner or use the Paypal link which is just below the magazine cover.
You can also direct deposit funds into our account at the Westpac bank either by internet banking or over the counter. Please! Leave your name as identification so we can send you a receipt. There are several unidentified donations which have come in recently. If you deposited money more than a week ago and have not yet gotten a receipt, please contact us and we will hopefully be able to work out which payment is yours.
The bank details are as follows:
Australian Vaccination Network Inc.
Westpac Bank - Ballina Branch
BSB number is 032 591
Account number is 188207
Of course, cheque or money orders can be posted to:
AVN
PO Box 177
Bangalow NSW 2479
AUSTRALIA
Since we announced last week that we were going to be co-hosting a seminar in Sydney with the Aurum Project, we have been inundated with enquiries and bookings which is wonderful. We now have people who have bought tickets to attend from as far away as Queensland's Sunshine Coast and Melbourne!
If you have not yet booked in, it is definitely not something that should be delayed as I would hate to be turning people away when the information will be so amazingly important.
Just to recap the details, they are as follows:
Date – Tuesday – August 15th
Time – 6:30pm for a 7:00 SHARP start
Venue – Manly Wahringa Leagues club – details above
Cost – AVN members and students (must show student card) - $17 per person/$30 a couple.
Non-Members - $27 per person/$42 a couple
The speakers will be myself, Meryl Dorey, Dr Isaac Golden, DipHom, PhD and Dr David Ritchie, Anthroposophical medical doctor from New Zealand.
You can book by phone on 02 6687 1699, FAX on 02 6687 2032 or by sending us a cheque, money order or your credit card details to our address- above.
We currently have two issues which will need your action – both of them important – both of them more than timely. The first one has been touched on in the last issue of Doing the Rounds. It is the fact that every single state and territory in Australia has instituted policies which require students studying in the health professions to be doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, etc, to be fully vaccinated before commencing or completing their practical work. Without these vaccines (and the list of ‘required’ shots is extremely long with some of these poor souls receiving 8 vaccines at one time!), they will have to cease their education and or lose out on placings in hospital.
In NSW, this new regulation is called Policy Directive 2005_338 and it states that, “Compliance with this policy directive is mandatory”. It basically says that starting this year, in 2006, all health students who are affiliated with the hospital system or with NSW Health, will be required to be vaccinated against Diphtheria, Tetanus, Whooping Cough (Pertussis), Hep A and Hep B, Chicken Pox (Varicella), Measles, Mumps and Rubella and Influenza.
Starting next year, this requirement will be extended to include everyone – doctors, nurses, orderlies, office staff – even those who work for laundries that are contracted by the hospital!
This is supposedly for the protection of patients though, if the various health departments across the country were truly concerned with patients’ health, they would require any staff member receiving a live virus vaccine (eg MMR (measles mumps and rubella), OPV (oral polio), Varicella (chicken pox) and Hep A to stay home for 90 days because they are carrying these viruses around and communicating them to those they are in contact with for up to that long a period of time.
There are two ways to get out of this requirement. One is to have a valid medical exemption either because you have had a serious reaction (eg anaphylactic shock) after a dose of a certain vaccine in which case you will only be exempted from that particular vaccine) or to have a blood test showing you have high levels of antibodies to any of the diseases listed above.
We have been contacted by several people who have had these vaccines with serious ill effects including being diagnosed with cancer shortly afterwards. We have also been in contact with people who have lost their placement due to their refusal to be vaccinated.
This is a situation which we must not stand for! No matter your opinion on vaccination, every thinking person must agree that all medical procedures carry with them certain risks and it is unethical (and illegal under our current constitution) to require anyone to submit to medical procedure against their will.
Today it is the health professionals of Australia – tomorrow, it will be our children and ourselves if we allow this to happen.
Where do you come in? There are three things we need here.
1 – We need lawyers who are willing to take cases against the health departments of every state. We currently have a barrister in NSW who is investigating the best way to approach this issue. Read more about this in point 3 below. He will definitely need lawyers to assist him as this could end up being a huge and precedent-setting case so if you are a lawyer or know of one who is on side and does some public-advocacy work, please get in contact with me.
2- Are you a health professional? Are you a health student? Do you know someone who is? Chances are you do and chances are that either you (as the health professional or student) or they are unaware of these new rules. Please spread the word. Make copies of this part of the newslettersand distribute it to hospitals in your area or forward it by email to friends, family and other interested parties and ask them to do the same. Send to doctor’s surgeries and to schools that have a medical faculty. Make everyone aware of what is being done – I don’t believe that even the most pro-vaccination medico will be happy about being forced to be vaccinated or about vaccinating anyone without their express consent.
We will also need financial support to keep this initiative going. If you know of people who should be members – give them one of the attached membership forms and ask them to join the AVN and subscribe to Informed Voice. Tell them why it is so important. Also, please consider giving us a donation of $26 – if every member donates this amount, a pittance when you think of it in the grand scheme of things – we will be able to achieve our goals as stated in past issues of Doing the Rounds.
3- We need lobbyists in each state and territory. Currently, it looks like the only way in which we can fight this issue is by first going through the Anti-Discrimination Tribunals which may sound like a good thing but…here is the kicker. The current Anti-Discrimination legislation in Australia says that you can’t be discriminated against on the basis of race, religion, skin colour, sex or disability. Nowhere is it stated that you can’t be discriminated against because of your health choices. Therefore, the only way we can get the ball rolling is to take a case on the basis of discrimination – stating that unvaccinated people may at some point in the future be disabled due to a so-called vaccine-preventable disease and therefore, they should not be discriminated against.
You know this is not true – and I know this is not true. And it is not a good barrow to push in a community which already thinks of those of us who don’t vaccinate as ignorant and disease carrying lepers.
We need to lobby for changes to the Anti-Discrimination legislation so that the right to choose our own form of healthcare is enshrined in law. If we get these changes, I can envision some very positive possible ripple effects happening such as the following:
This is just the beginning. If you are a lobbyist, have experience with lobbying or know someone who you feel could help, we need to hear from you NOW! Call Meryl on 02 6687 1699 or email meryl@informedvoice.com.au.
Vaccination is its own reward – or is it?
An ex-member sent me information on the following which really made my blood boil! Please note - I have attached a copy of the original to this newsletter but if you don't want to go through the whole thing, Read the following bit and see if you agree with me:
The Infanrix Immunisation Awards (ed note: Infanrix is a combination Diptheria, Tetanus and Acellular Pertussis vaccine manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline – a major multi-national pharmaceutical company)
Grants of $10,000 for achieving success in immunisation
The Infanrix Immunisation Awards have been developed to reward and share best practice and innovation in childhood immunisation.
The awards will commend programs or initiatives run by immunisation providers implemented over the past five years that have aimed to, or have successfully achieved through demonstrated activity:
The information flyer, an advertisement in a national journal for nurses though I am aware that at least 2 of the major doctor’s publications in Australia also printed this ad, goes on to state that the four winners will be announced at the 9th National PHAA Immunisation Conference in Darling Harbour from the 30th July to the 1st August 2006 and their submissions will be submitted for publication in medical publication.
There is no other word for this sort of bribery than unethical (actually, there are several other words that come to mind but there might be children present …) Drug companies should not be allowed to put out ads to supposedly uninterested third parties announcing bribes for successful drug pushing. We put people in prison for pushing marijuana and I personally see very little difference except perhaps that the risks of marijuana are not quite as clear-cut as the risks of vaccination.
I immediately contacted the Federal Health Ombusdman only to be told that this was not under their jurisdiction. They suggested the ACCC who told me the same thing and suggested that I contact the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners of all things! That is a bit like complaining to the pre-Soviet break-up KGB that you were worried about your rights and your privacy.
Finally, I got someone at the Federal Department of Health who basically told me that this was not an issue they handled but suggested that I file a complaint with Medicines Australia. This is the industry-run body that self-regulates pharmaceutical advertising (and if medical ethics might be considered an oxymoron, what is there to say about a word like self-regulation?). If they feel that this ad breached their code of conduct, then they can take action including requiring a withdrawal of the information and a series of ads to redress the misleading or unethical statements made.
Now, I know that self-regulation is not the best solution, but I’ve been assured that this group actually has some teeth and has taken action against companies in the past so I think it is worth a try and it is so easy to file a complaint!
If you have internet access, visit www.medicinesaustralia.com.au and click on the link at the top of the page that says Code of Conduct. That will take you to a page (http://www.medicinesaustralia.com.au/pages/page16.asp) where you can read the actual code of conduct that governs this type of breach.
Then, either enter the term – lodging a complaint – in the search box or type http://www.medicinesaustralia.com.au/pages/images/Code%20of%20Conduct%20Complaint%20Submission%20Form.doc into your browser and you will get the actual form you can use to lodge a complaint against GlaxoSmithKline for their ad. This can either be emailed or posted to Medicines Australia – again, whichever is easiest for you.
It will need many hundreds of complaints for the authorities to be forced to do something about this situation. If you believe in what we are asking you to do, please take five minutes and complete this form now before you forget. If you know of others who feel the same way, ask them to do so as well.
Thank you as always for reading this and for your help and support - both in the past and into the future!
Until next time - stay well,
Meryl Dorey