Claire Harvey: Anti-vaxers, you are baby killers

I’M sick of being polite about anti-vaxers. They kill babies, because they just don’t give a shit about anyone else, Claire Harvey writes.

WOULD you kill a baby today? Would you put him through horrific pain? Would you take away his oxygen and let him suffocate to death?

Well, if you haven’t vaccinated your own children, you are doing all those things. You killed four-week-old Riley Hughes, who died this week.

You killed the twelve babies who have died of whooping cough in the past six years. You are responsible. And you have no excuse.

I am sick of being polite about people who oppose vaccination. I’m sick of hearing politicians give parents the right to be ‘conscientious objectors’ to vaccines. I feel like screaming with rage when I hear someone talk about how a vaccination caused autism.

It didn’t. It doesn’t.

There is an enormous weight of scientific evidence that vaccinations save children’s lives. They have — or should have — eradicated polio, diphtheria, cholera, tetanus from our society. We have the world’s highest level of infant survival, thanks to vaccines.

And yet some people in Australia, in approximately eight per cent of families, refuse to have their children vaccinated because they just don’t give a shit about anyone else.

That’s the truth. Vaccine refusers are so selfish, so ignorant, they will willingly take the risk that tiny baby Riley will catch an illness like whooping cough and die in misery before he is old enough to be vaccinated.

We’re all so afraid of terrorism right now — but there are terrorists living among us; next door, in our Facebook feeds.

Imagine if ISIS unleashed a biological weapon on Sydney; a virus that killed children. There would be panic in the streets. We would all be howling for protection.

And yet the anti-vaccine terrorists are allowing biological weapons — those deadly diseases — to thrive because they won’t have their own children immunised.

And we’re all too polite to say anything. We don’t want to offend.

Well, today I say it is your business.

Go to your childcare centre on Monday and tell them you don’t want them to admit any unvaccinated kids.

Tell your friends not to come over if they haven’t had their needles.

If you don’t want to say it, I’ll say it for you. I don’t care if people hate me for this.

We have to make it a social crime to have unvaccinated kids, or to spew rubbish about how vaccines cause autism.

Greg Hughes cradles Riley, who died of whooping cough last week.

Let me just point out the nonsense behind that claim, by the way.

In 1998 a quack doctor published a study in Britain saying 12 children had contracted inflammatory bowel disease after getting the measles vaccine.

They hadn’t, by the way.

The article went on to speculate (with no evidence) that these children could get autism because their intestinal tracts weren’t absorbing nutrients properly.

Imagine if ISIS unleashed a biological weapon on Sydney; a virus that killed children. There would be panic in the streets. We would all be howling for protection. And yet the anti-vaccine terrorists are allowing biological weapons — those deadly diseases — to thrive because they won’t have their own children immunised

This article was retracted by the journal and the British Medical Council struck off the doctor who led the study, finding him guilty of ‘serious professional misconduct’ for having published such lies.

That’s all it was. Lies. And yet the lie has lived on, and people in Clovelly and Byron Bay believe it’s true.

There are some kids who are allergic to vaccines: fewer than one in a million. These kids can be diagnosed by GPs, who put them on a modified vaccine schedule or take them off vaccines. Some other kids can’t have vaccinations because their immune systems are compromised by conditions like leukaemia.

And they are the ones who desperately need everyone else to be vaccinated, like when a measles outbreak happens, as it did in the United States earlier this year.

Along with them will be the tiny babies. It could be your child. It could be mine.

Back in May 2013 I drove a ‘No Jab, No Play’ campaign in this newspaper, reported by Jane Hansen, which has seen NSW change laws to force parents to either have children fully vaccinated or to get an exemption certificate.

It means all you have to do is to go to your GP and say you’re a ‘conscientious objector’.

Tony Abbott promised to change the law, as we asked, by making family tax rebates and childcare payments accessible to vaccinated kids only.

He hasn’t done a thing about it.

Today we publish a survey that shows a 86 per cent of people want childhood vaccinations to be compulsory.

That figure that makes my heart sing — and it makes me realise there is a huge silent majority of us out there.

We all know vaccines are right, but we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by being loud and proud.

So please, in memory of baby Riley, raise your voice — to your friends, your family, to everyone you know.

Your courage might change a mind. It might save a tiny life.

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