Good Enough Read online

  It’s not as if I wasn’t expecting this, really. In fact, like a fortune teller with obscenely good, erm, fortune-telling skills, I foresaw this outcome the minute my editor asked me to write the article. But what is it that I’ve written that’s earned the ire of so many mums around the nation? Did I write about the advantages of disciplining small children by beating them with a chair? Or write an exposé with a positive slant about how excessive cocaine use during pregnancy can speed up your labour and help you deliver a smaller baby? They’re the kinds of topics about which I could certainly understand a poisoned missive. No, no I didn’t. I wrote a piece on (drum roll please) . . . immunisation.

  Now, throughout my journalistic career, I’ve written a lot of stuff that has ticked a group of people off in one way or another but it’s been my experience that nothing, and I mean NOTHING, gets Australian mums worked up quite as much as a piece on vaccinating your children, regardless of whether it has a negative or a positive slant, or if you even manage to stay as neutral as Switzerland. It’s just one of those topics.

  Staring down the list of people I will have to respond to (we had a rule where we had to respond to every reader), I age ten years and glance back at my original article. I can’t even say it’s an inflammatory piece, really, it’s just a Q&A-style news report on whether or not you should vaccinate your child. I have done hours of research, read insanely boring scientific papers, interviewed a host of experts and worked hard to remain completely subjective (which is difficult when you’re passionate about something) and I’m proud of the finished product. I’m also offended and freakin’ outraged. ‘Dear Crazy Bitch,’ I begin my correspondence to my first hater. ‘Are you fucking kidding me? All this research and you still have the nerve to tell me, a journalist, that with one or two visits to an anti-vaccination website, you already know more about this topic than all the medical experts I have interviewed who have literally DECADES of expertise in this area? You need to take a long, hard look at yourself and think about your actions. Sincerely, Dilvin’ is precisely what I don’t write. (But oh, how I want to.) Instead I throw around the media standard, ‘I’m sorry you choose to feel this way but . . .’ (insert lengthy explanation about the who, what, where, when and how). Then I just hope to God they go away. They usually do – people rarely follow up on their complaints once I respond; most just need a moment to vent before recovering their humanity.

  All in all, it’s a rough day but I know regardless of how many people hate me right now, I have it easy compared with other media outlets who choose to report on this topic. A friend who works at a popular parenting website tells me that whenever they publish an article on vaccination, their comments section is jammed by those who are anti-vaccination scrambling to revolt against ‘the mainstream media’s mindless brainwashing of the mothers of Australia’. ‘Some people will post more than thirty times using fake names and IP addresses just to bulk up the numbers,’ she says. ‘And we spend a lot of time moderating and removing inappropriate posts – it’s exhausting and infuriating.’ It’s no surprise, then, that while she doesn’t have any children of her own, she hates the topic with a passion. Hmm, so what is it about this subject that gets us so riled up?

  Well it’s a fairly new trend, that’s for sure. Up until recently most of us gave our kids their shots, happy and safe in the knowledge that by doing so we were protecting them from life-threatening diseases which kill millions of children in Third World countries. But in the 90s, following a scientific paper which has long since been discredited, some concerned parents styled themselves into experts on the topic and began a hardcore anti-vaccination group (which shall remain unnamed). They campaign vigorously and misleadingly against vaccination, targeting vulnerable new mums who don’t have the time and energy to do hours of research of their own.

  Some of their major claims include: vaccinations have never been tested to ensure safety. ‘The gold standard of medical science is the randomised, double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial, which has never been performed on any vaccine currently licensed in Australia,’ they say. They claim vaccines contain toxic additives and heavy metals such as formaldehyde 3, and are contaminated with human and animal viruses and bacteria including the cell lines from aborted human foetuses (which is exactly what every new mum gazing at her newborn longs to hear). They also say vaccines can cause serious immediate side effects such as convulsions, epilepsy, brain damage, SIDS and even death, and are also linked to asthma, eczema, allergies, autism, schizophrenia, cancer and more. Doctors are written off as whores to the pharmaceutical world, with the website claiming they are ‘paid salesmen for vaccine products’ and that they receive healthy payouts from the government to push said vaccines. It’s also said pharmaceutical companies have paid for almost all vaccine research to date and that doctors and health professionals rarely, if ever, report vaccination reactions. And my personal favourite is lucky last: ‘Some childhood illnesses have beneficial aspects and therefore prevention may not be in the best interest of the child . . . Unvaccinated children continue to be among the healthiest children in our society.’

  For the record, I can see why these parents have their concerns: it all goes back to a ‘groundbreaking’ 1998 British study claiming a link had finally been established between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The author, Andrew Wakefield, originally asserted in his paper that several children who had been exposed to MMR developed autism after the vaccination, but it was later discovered half of these children had already been displaying symptoms before they were vaccinated. The article was eventually withdrawn and Wakefield was struck off the medical register by the British medical council, but with anti-vaccination groups still pushing the myth, the fear continues to haunt parents pondering the ‘should I or shouldn’t I vaccinate’ question.

  The frightening thing about it all (aside from their actual accusations) is how well their scaremongering works. At first I thought it was just brain-dead, illiterate women out in the middle of Woop Woop who were driving up the figures of unvaccinated, unprotected children, but then I saw with my very own eyes how far the insanity has reached. ‘I just don’t know if I want to vaccinate my baby when I have it,’ announced my pregnant friend Pia recently. ‘I don’t want them pumping mercury into my child, rendering it autistic.’ I almost choked on the blood that was rushing to my head, so surprised was I at this point of view of a dear friend of mine. ‘What the hell are you talking about, Pia?’ I half screamed in the least supportive manner imaginable. ‘Where on Earth did you hear such rubbish?’ Pia looked at me defensively and crossed her arms. ‘Well we can’t all be journalists, Dilvin, but I’ve been reading about how dangerous they really are on websites and our bloody government is just covering it all up in order to pad their back pockets.’ Now Pia is not a dumb woman; she’s university educated and as smart as a whip, but our conversation was proof that for some people a quick Google search and an official-looking website is enough for them to believe that their own research is superior to decades of science.

  I wouldn’t pass these people off as backwards in any way, shape or form. I can certainly understand how these websites can be confusing. First of all, they have very official-sounding names and their reports are well written. For time-poor mums who don’t have piles of research papers on hand, it would be easy to come across one of these websites and be frightened off immunisations for life. I’m not saying immunisations are perfect – they’re not, but I’m a fervent believer they offer our children the best protection against fatal illnesses we could possibly give them. Yes, some viruses are grown on cell lines in a lab that were obtained from aborted foetal tissue many years ago. But it’s not like someone’s just dunked a fork into a jar of pickled baby, either – when a virus is grown on cells like these, it’s extensively purified and prepared into a vaccine many, many steps down the track. As for all the heavy metals in the vaccines, scientists are happy to admit they contain formaldehyde – a trace element –
but in far smaller amounts than what your body produces naturally every single day. As for their biggest argument, that these vaccines have never safely been tested (meaning they’ve not undergone randomised, double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials), here’s the thing: to do this, you would need to take two groups of gorgeous, healthy kids and give one group the vaccine and the other a placebo, then expose both groups to the disease to see which one survives. Doesn’t take a genius to work out how that little experiment is going to end.

  Of course at the heart of the immunisation argument is autism and our fear of it. The unfortunate fact remains that the autism rate is out of control – doubling every five years – and if that figure isn’t frightening enough, we still don’t know what causes it. The biggest problem with doing in-depth studies into autism is that population studies aren’t designed to have the statistical power to find subgroups like that if the subgroups are small. In plain English, this means we’re not studying the right people because it’s damn near impossible to. With autism, doctors and parents can’t and don’t know the children have those vulnerabilities until they are aggravated and thus can’t find a proven link between the two.

  No surprise, then, that Australian mums are running scared and our children have started dropping dead of illnesses we thought we were done and dusted with. Studies by the Federal Health Department, CSIRO and the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance show that while 90 per cent of Australian children are still being vaccinated, in certain areas such as northern NSW, the levels of ‘conscientious objectors’ (people who refuse to vaccinate their children) has soared, while in the well-to-do northern and eastern suburbs of Sydney, it is claimed many parents ‘forget’ to vaccinate due to their regular overseas holidays and whatnot. This means that for the first time in decades, clusters of deadly diseases such as whooping cough have sprung up again. The rate at which whooping cough has begun appearing in these areas? Three hundred per cent more than elsewhere in Australia with strong vaccination rates. And it’s not just happening here. In 2012, the UK had a record 2000 cases of measles – a huge jump from the couple of dozen or so it used to have annually. This can be directly linked to the decision by many parents not to immunise their children at the turn of the century, so influenced were they by Wakefield’s (now discredited) findings.

  Obviously I’m never going to be pH neutral when it comes to immunisations. I know they’re not without fault but vaccines are the best and only way to protect babies and children from diseases such as whooping cough that can kill them. That’s not to say there aren’t side effects – they can happen, but most are mild and even in serious cases the risk is about 10,000 times less than the real infection. The risk of encephalitis as a side effect of the MMR vaccine is around one in a million. To put this into context, in a measles epidemic, the risk of encephalitis is one in a thousand; for mumps, it’s one in two hundred. For babies who get diphtheria and tetanus, risk of death is one in ten and two in ten respectively. And one in every five babies who gets whooping cough will need to be hospitalised; one in four hundred of these babies dies.

  It’s not perfect, but as much as it sucks, sometimes it’s a simple matter of having to choose between the lesser of the evils.

  The facts about immunisation

  What’s the difference between immunisation and vaccination?

  Vaccination means having a vaccine – that is actually getting the injection.

  Immunisation means both receiving a vaccine and becoming immune to a disease, as a result of being vaccinated.

  How does immunisation work?

  All forms of immunisation work in the same way. When a person is vaccinated, their body produces an immune response the way their body would after exposure to a disease, but without the person suffering symptoms of the disease. When a person comes in contact with that disease in the future, their immune system will respond fast enough to prevent the person developing the disease.

  What is in vaccines?

  Vaccines contain either: a very small dose of a live, but weakened, form of a virus; a very small dose of killed bacteria or virus or small parts of live bacteria; or a small dose of a modified toxin produced by bacteria.

  Vaccines may also contain either a small amount of preservative or a small amount of an antibiotic to preserve the vaccine. Some might also contain a small amount of an aluminium salt which helps produce a better immune response.

  What childhood vaccines contain thiomersal?

  Thiomersal is a compound used in small amounts to prevent bacterial and fungal contamination of vaccines. It is partly composed of mercury in the form of ethyl mercury. Mercury causes a toxic effect after it reaches a certain level in the body. Whether or not it reaches a toxic level depends on the amount of mercury consumed and the person’s body weight. As a result of these concerns, in particular for newborn babies and very young children, thiomersal was removed from or reduced in vaccines. Currently, all vaccines on the National Immunisation Program for children under five years of age are now either thiomersal free or have only trace amounts (the tiniest presence).

  Why should children be immunised?

  There are two reasons for immunising every child in Australia:

  1. Immunisation is the safest and most effective way of giving protection against the disease. After immunisation, a child is far less likely to catch the disease if there are cases in the community. The benefit of protection against the disease far outweighs the very small risks of immunisation.

  2. If enough people in the community are immunised, the infection can no longer be spread from person to person and the disease dies out altogether. This is how smallpox was eliminated from the world and polio has disappeared from many countries.

  How safe are vaccines?

  All vaccines currently available in Australia must pass stringent safety testing before being approved for use by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). This testing is required by law and is usually done over many years during the vaccine’s development. In addition, the safety of vaccines is monitored once they are in use by the Adverse Drug Reactions Advisory Committee (ADRAC) and other organisations.

  Before vaccines are made available for use they are rigorously tested in thousands of people in progressively larger clinical trials. These trials are strictly monitored for safety and the approval process can take up to ten years. As a result of such detailed testing, a number of vaccines that failed in these early tests have never been released.

  From the Department of Health website, used by permission of the Australian Government. For further information, visit immunise.health.gov.au

  I’m a helicopter parent

  ‘Look at me, Mummy, look at me!’ screams Cella as she bounces up and down on the trampoline we bought her last Christmas. She is ecstatically waving at me as she throws herself around on the mat like a rag doll, her confidence increasing with every leap. As always, I watch her from a metre away, hands on my hips, heart in my mouth, waiting to spring into action should anything go wrong.

  ‘Whee!’ she shouts out with glee as she throws herself down on her tummy and springs back up again like a jack in the box. Knuckles in my mouth, I resist the urge to do a little shouting of my own, something along the lines of, ‘Cella! If you don’t stop doing that, you’re going to break your back and end up a quadriplegic so would you please, please get down?’ I’m being ridiculous, I know that. For a start, Cella’s trampoline is nothing like the trampolines you and I would remember from our childhood days – the ones we’d spend lazy Saturday mornings falling headfirst through the springs. Nope, in line with today’s souped-up safety standards, Cella’s trampoline is a heavily padded number with Alcatraz netting around the whole frame and a lowered base. No danger of getting fistfuls of hair caught in the springs, no danger of toppling off the side, absolutely no discernible way of actually harming oneself.

  Cella chooses that moment to come down hard on her stomach and bends backwards into an i
mpressive C shape. No big deal you might think, but it’s exactly how you react to this situation that determines which side of the parenting camp you belong to: ‘helicopter’ or ‘free’. Helicopter parents (so named because they’re always hovering over their children) will run screaming towards their child ready to administer CPR for their poor darling who is clearly banging loudly on heaven’s door. On the other hand, free-style parents (who, as the name suggests, give their kids a lot of freedom) might glance up from reading their book if the child screams for long enough, see that their child is unharmed, and go right back to doing what they were doing in the first place. No prizes for guessing which category I fall into.

  ‘Crap!’ I scream as I fall over myself rushing to open up the double-sided security zip, but I needn’t bother because Cella is more than fine. She’s back up again bouncing up and down like nothing happened. ‘Honey, are you okay? Did you hurt yourself? Does anything feel strange?’ ‘No Mum!’ she shouts back. Hmm, she seems fairly able-bodied but I’m still not satisfied. ‘Are you sure, honey? Because if you have hurt yourself, you won’t get into trouble, I just need to know, okay?’ I know I sound like I’m crazy, but I swear to you I’m not. I mean, didn’t the American Academy of Pediatrics recently come out guns blazing, frothing at the mouth about how dangerous it is to bounce on trampolines at all? I wouldn’t ordinarily say so, but they’re doctors, so that has to be worth something, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?