Vaccination hysteria
The face of Nathaniel Eason is being splashed across Australian TV screens and newspapers nationwide. His message, according to the government, is that if we don't vaccinate our children, they too will soon be hospitalised with whooping cough. Once again, the media has not let the facts get in the way of a good story.
For instance, has anyone noticed that Nathaniel's mother, who was interviewed on TV, claims that her son had no known exposure to older children and she had no idea where he picked up whooping cough? Despite this, both the government and the media continue to claim that he got it from an "older unvaccinated child".
This might not be such a huge assumption to make if it weren't for the fact that the majority of people who get whooping cough in Australia have been vaccinated. For instance, in the CDI Bulletin (May 29, Vol 21; No. 11), it says that, "notifications ranged from 2.0 per 100,000 population in 1991 to a peak of 30.5 per 100,000 population in 1994 despite pertussis vaccination coverage approaching 90%". The South Australian Health Commission says that of the more than 1000 cases of whooping cough to have been reported in that state in 1996, only 6% were unvaccinated.
Clearly, this is not a case of failure to vaccinate but rather a failure of the vaccine to provide protection.
This advertising campaign is nothing more than a deliberate attempt to turn the community against those families who have made a legal choice not to vaccinate their children. If these same tactics were being used against children who were positive for Hep B or AIDS, the community would be up in arms — and rightly so! Why then is there not the same outrage at the government's cynical attempts to use fear and anger against healthy, unvaccinated children who are within their legal rights under the Australian Constitution?
Let the government start to provide parents with real information about the dangers and ineffectiveness of vaccines and let them put their money into research rather than advertising and parents will begin to listen. Until that time, the vaccination rates in Australia will continue to decline as parents become more and more knowledgable about this issue.
President Australian Vaccination Network
Bangalow NSW
Epidemic threat
Robyn Marshall (GLW #282) described bacteria evolving into antibiotic-resistant forms by Darwinian processes. Incestuous, anti-racist bugs, displaying solidarity seldom seen in humans, giving life-saving genetic material indiscriminately to each other. But seriously, Marshall didn't mention heavy metals, except cadmium in passing.
Heavy metals are antibacterial, and used as such for centuries. Researchers admit reducing incidence of antibiotic-resistant bugs when mercury (Hg) based disinfectants in hospitals are ceased, and there have always been unsuccessful calls for cessation of Hg based medicines — e.g. a tetanus shot contains Thiomersal, a Hg based preservative. Dental researchers have shown gastrointestinal bugs become resistant to several antibiotics after placement of "silver" fillings — they are 50% Hg and decorate the mouths of 75% of western people.
To my knowledge, medical authorities haven't investigated the resistance producing role of hundreds of kilos of raw Hg missing each decade in hospitals — spillage from blood pressure machines and broken thermometers. The effect cannot be neutral. Ironically, these instruments are allocated per patient to prevent infection spread when used communally, and this proliferation coincides with the increasing role of antibiotics in medicine.
Brisbane
Response to Left Alliance
Andrew Charles, in his letter on behalf of Left Alliance in GLW #283, claims that a recent article about the occupation of the Melbourne University administration building "effectively points the finger" and opens members of certain political organisation to "criminal charges" and "potential state repression". This argument is unsustainable.
The article, which argues against the positions taken by several political groups (namely Left Alliance, the ISO and Socialist Alternative) during that occupation, does not mention the names of specific individuals, it does not claim the groups did anything illegal (only that they "proposed" throwing files out the window) and does not state anything about these organisations that is not generally known to all and sundry in the student movement in Melbourne.
There is no conceivable way that such an innocuous statement could be used against the groups, or members of the groups, involved. More worryingly, by raising the spectre of previous state attempts to intimidate student activists (such as the recent prosecution of the Rabelais editors), Charles implies that such cases mean that the left shouldn't debate publicly questions of its tactics and strategy for fear of prosecution.
Such an implication is not only false but amounts to the left bowing to the state's attempts to intimidate us. Even if this was the implication of the Rabelais ruling, we'd still be seeking to push the boundaries of it and defy any such restrictions on free speech. Resistance would welcome some debate on the issue of occupations and their place in our overall strategy, and we'd certainly appreciate a response to our criticisms from Left Alliance, but Charles' letter, by focusing on a non-issue, dodges this.
Resistance
Sydney
Film exaggerates history
As an ex-inmate of a Japanese concentration camp I would like to protest against the exaggerated emotion-mongering and the hysterical behaviour of the inmates and guards in the film Paradise Road.
Of course we suffered badly, but this was mainly because of the central directive from Tokyo of having us starve to death by gradually diminishing our food supplies. Illnesses such as malaria, typhus, etc. took their toll too.
In our camps, Poeloe Brayan and Aik Paminke, Sumatra (some 7000 inmates), occasions such as projected in this film were seldom experienced. The Japanese army was extremely well disciplined; a misdeed such as rape or robbery was dealt with by execution on the spot. Between Japs and inmates the communication was done through our white women leaders. Physical abuse was extremely rare, mainly when caught smuggling.
Racial tension, bitching, sniping and snarling among the women themselves was completely non-existent; we were all one against the Japs, making the most of a bad situation. We kept our spirits up by exchanging favours like hairdressing, swapping recipes, looking after the sick, or playing cards at night, because during the day we were too busy working in the camp and in the fields. Also teaching primary and secondary classes with smuggled books and bits of paper written on with lead pencil, later on to be erased in order to be used again for the next term.
Boys reaching a certain age were shifted to the men's campus — with heartache, but without the raging bull behaviour depicted in the film.
Missing in the film was the news from clandestine radios that kept our spirits up and also the great relief when hundreds of Indonesian servants came to our camp after capitulation, with baskets of eggs, fruit and vegetables, chickens, etc. because they knew we were starving. Our second camp, which was in a rubber plantation, nothing would grow except ferns.
To sum up — the women's camps showed much more spirit and had a higher rate of survival than the men's camps. Psychologists — take note!
I write this only because I feel that the film was extremely exaggerated and after fifty years I feel it is a bit late to start hate-mongering. After all, what did Australia do in Vietnam?
South Perth
Hanson accuses 'Communists'
Giving a speech at the launching of her One Nation Party at Geelong, Pauline Hanson said about protesters, "I will call them by their right name, 'Communists'". I am an extremely strong protester against Hanson. I am not a communist. I do not belong to any political party, but I would rather be a communist than a Nazi, a member of the Ku Klux Klan or a xenophobe.
Nicky Kirby
Inala NSW