van at om.com.au (Meryl & Ken Dorey) writes:
>AVN DEFENDS FREEDOM OF CHOICE
> The Australian Vaccination Network, Inc. (AVN) deplores the recent
>decision by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission in
>upholding an illegal act of discrimination by the Maroochy Shire
>Council who had denied two children a place in child care because of
>their vaccination status.
> The Council's contention in this case was that unvaccinated children
>can put vaccinated children at risk. Not one of the expert witnesses
>sponsored by the Council was able to show anv evidence that this was
>so. In fact, Mr. Beattie was able to show documentary proof from
>refereed medical journals that children who have received live-virus
>vaccines such as polio, measles, mumps, rubella, influenza, etc. can
>contract these diseases themselves or transmit them to those they are
>in close contact with. Despite this, the 50% of Australians who have
>chosen not to vaccinate their children have not demanded that
>vaccinated children be excluded from child care centres, preschools
>and schools.
I guess Australian health policy is none of my business, being a
citizen of the USA, but the argument above seems a little odd.
Are you trying to say that vaccination increases the likelihood
of illness and contagion? I don't know...if that is the case,
how can you explain the extinction of smallpox, and the very
sharp decline in other communicable diseases, following universal
inoculation policies in industrialized countries?
I would be surprised if anybody asserted that inoculated kids
were at risk from diseases against which they are inoculated
by the presence of uninoculated kids. More likely it is the
uninoculated who are at risk from other uninoculated kids.
Vaccines tend to greatly increase an individual's resistance
to a given disease.
If the council wants to require these kids to be inoculated,
then its is probably for the protection of the uninoculated
(themselves included.) People who are immune to certain
diseases can still possibly pass these diseases to those who
are not immune.
