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Parents have been warned against a secret screening of a controversial anti-vaxxer film.

Parents have been warned against attending a secretive screening of a controversial anti-vaccination documentary in Perth on Friday night.

The film, Vaxxed: From Cover Up to Catastrophe, was written and co-directed by British medical researcher Andrew Wakefield based on his debunked research linking vaccinations with autism.

“This film is lies and playing on people’s emotions,” Dr Andrew Miller from the WA Australian Medical Association told 7News on Tuesday.

“(This is) an advertisement that’s been made by a discredited ex-doctor.”

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The location of the screening will be withheld from ticketholders until half an hour beforehand but is believed to be in the southern suburbs of the city.

The film has been shown several times in other Australian states despite having been widely panned by the medical community and scrapped from a number of international film festivals.

In September last year, it was axed from the program of the Castlemaine Local and International Film Festival in Victoria after a community-led campaign.

Immunisation campaigner Catherine Hughes, whose baby Riley died from whooping cough, hoped other WA parents would know better than to be duped by the film.

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“I’m confident that most parents will be smart enough to ignore the screening of this widely discredited film,” she told the West Australian on Monday.

“I feel sad for those parents who have been conned into believing there is a link between autism and vaccines. I would hate to think that this film influenced parents not to vaccinate, because no child should unnecessarily suffer from a vaccine-preventable disease.”