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.”
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.”
Top Comments
I saw this video for rent through my AppleTV... I don't understand how this film hasn't been banned from itunes/apple tv.
I think you will find the USA's 1st Amendment prevents US corporations from limiting freedom of speech in this regard.
Censorship just makes it worse. i think I might watch it myself online - just because I am curious about what he has to say and can then form an argument against the points made.
I have been watching anti- vaxxers online, and I think seems most think their own child has been vaccine damaged even when an real and much more likely scenario is that they were born with brain damage. It's a lack of knowledge and a mistrust of "big pharma" ( who to be fair are not exactly scrupulous and trustworthy- just like anyone with something to sell like "big herbal" )
Others just want to blame something or someone for something that may never have an answer.
I honestly think the way we white wash any concerns about any vaccines with "they are safe and effective" with a more realistic list of stats- like how many people were infected and seriously harmed before vaccine, how effective is the vaccine? How many people are saved by each vaccines?
How many people are harmed? Which ones form part of herd immunity, which ones don't? What is the patterns of reemergence of disease like whooping cough and measles? Is it lack of vaccination, or it wearing off after so many years? Is it clusters of non-vaccinated kids all in one area like Byron Bay?
Real answers not propaganda.
Real answers to their real questions. Trust regained and informed consent.
Not all vaccines are equal either, some are without doubt effective and the rate of serious harm in 1 in a million or much less. Others are less effective, the diseases less likely to happen and a parent should be able to weigh that up and decide for themselves.
Right now it seems the pro-vaxxers keep shutting down the anti-vaxxers voices, then they just go underground spreading their misinformed, very biased messed up thinking like wild fire. Without any voice of sanity to calm the hysteria.
I'm definitely pro vaccines to the point where I pay for additional ones i.e. Flu and Meningococcal B. But I like to be well informed too and agree the message is too vague to convince the antivaxers. Your questions posed above are valid and well thought out.
As an aside though, surely the antivaxers must think autism is preferable to death due to infection from the illnesses they are vulnerable to (not that I think autism is in anyway linked to vaccines - I think there is great research going on around gut bacteria and links to autism).
As to your second paragraph, I don't think that's what they think. The two scenarios aren't autism from vaccine or death from no vaccine. In many cases they believe that the illnesses themselves either aren't anywhere near as bad as they're made out to be, or that their children are too healthy to contract them in the first place.