Anti-vaccination: Wendy Tuohy on Miranda Kerr being face of women’s hospital

MAKING a celebrity who endorses anti-vaccination “literature” the face of a public women’s hospital insults grieving families, writes Wendy Tuohy.

“No one doubts that Miranda Kerr is a well-meaning exponent of healthy lifestyles.” Photo: Don Arnold

MODELS do great work raising awareness about stuff they know about; think plus-sized super model Robyn Lawley on loving your body, or the trio of models who posed nearly nude to highlight toxic chemicals in fur-lined kids’ clothes at this year’s London Fashion Week.

But using a model who has publicly endorsed a book by a Melbourne “celebrity” chiropractor that links vaccines with multiple sclerosis, cancer, leukaemia, autism and allergies is not a medically sane move. Nor is it a good choice for public health.

Today’s news, as discussed by the panel on Nine’s Today Extra (which I was on), that a number of doctors have complained to the board of Sydney’s Royal Women’s Hospital about a huge marketing campaign for the hospital featuring “holistic health” exponent Miranda Kerr is welcome.

Miranda Kerr. Picture: Richard Dobson

That Kerr put her name and image to the child-health book Well Adjusted Babies, with its anti-vaccination propaganda presented in the guise of “pro-choice” is well known.

Kerr may be an adored fashionista and successful businesswoman but her vocal advocacy for alternative medicine — alternative to scientifically proven that is — should rule her out of representing a major public hospital promoting life saving, evidence-based medicine.

The book by the Middle Park-based practitioner Jennifer Barham-Floreani, who has been reported to be a member of the Vaccine Free Australia Facebook group, could scare parents off routine vaccinations by putting them on the same level as smoking and asbestos in terms of potential health risks.

Given asbestos, thalidomide and cigarettes were once considered safe, chiropractor Barham-Floreani asks: “Are our children now the innocent ‘guinea pigs’?”

Miranda Kerr glowingly endorses the book with the line “Our little Flynn is definitely a well-adjusted baby”. A sweet picture of Kerr kissing Flynn in a photo with that statement on it has been used to promote Well Adjusted Babies.

Kerr has also suggested having an epidural during childbirth can leave babies “drugged” — which has been disproved.

No one doubts that Miranda Kerr is a well-meaning exponent of healthy lifestyles but making her the emblem of a prestigious public hospital gives views at odds with science-based medicine borrowed credibility.

It potentially detracts from the credibility of doctors in that hospital working tirelessly to promote vaccination.

Those same doctors may well have had to treat babies stricken with whooping cough, many of whom have died in recent years in areas of the country where vaccination is dropping as the fashionability of “alternatives” takes off.

Ironically, many of the vaccine avoiders are well educated, middle class parents. But Kerr’s appeal goes even further than that demographic and branding the hospital with her image could easily help spread the idea vaccination is “a choice” -- as the book Kerr also endorses suggests.

Kerr’s mother, Therese, has also been outspoken about her “vaccine scepticism”.

Divine Baby founder Therese Kerr, mother of model Miranda Kerr. Picture: Richard Dobson

Kerr senior was reported by the Daily Telegraph in 2015 to be a friend of Dr Barham-Floreani, who revealed she has not vaccinated her children.

The website Mamamia reports today that several doctors have written to the board of the Royal Women’s Hospital in Sydney echoing the concerns of mother Catherine Hughes, who lost her baby Riley to whooping cough and says “I can’t understand why an evidence-based hospital would want to select someone from a family who frequently discourage evidence-based health practices like vaccination.”

Riley died at just 32 days old from the highly transmissible and vaccine-preventable disease of pertussis (whooping cough). After the family tragedy, Ms Hughes helped found the Immunisation Foundation of Australia and the Light for Riley campaigns to help fund and share information about the need to vaccinate.

You’d hope our own esteemed Women’s Hospital would never value celebrity face-value more keeping the scientific credibility of mainstream medicine above question — insulting grieving parents such as Catherine and Greg Hughes in the process.

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