by Ann Roberts
A billboard erected in Perth in June, caused quite a stir in the community and across the globe. It asked the simple question, ‘Do you know what’s in a vaccine?’ and was subsequently deemed a form of child abuse.
When a group of concerned Citizens in Perth, the most remote city in Australia simply wanted to make people think about the ingredients which are injected into themselves and their children via the medical procedure of vaccination, the result was more than they bargained for – the result was a media frenzy that went viral and received international coverage.
The media maelstrom occurred because, according to WA’s McGowan Government, the message threatened public health. Plastic Surgeon Dr Mark Duncan-Smith from the Australian Medical Association stated that the billboard was ‘effectively a form of child abuse’. It would appear that the term, ‘child abuse’ requires a broadening of its definition.
Posing such a question to the public is obviously one the WA Government and AMA does not want the public to know the answer to and one which they did not answer for themselves. The billboard unleashed a barrage of pejoratives, such as ‘nasty’ ‘devious’ ‘cunning’ and ‘scaremongering’- This would indicate that the collective nerves of government and the peak medical body became, well, just a little nervous.
The Perth-based Light for Riley Facebook page, originally brought the billboard to the attention of the greater public but censored out the Learn the Risk website address,a website they described as ‘promoting dangerous misinformation’
Within a week of the Light for Riley FB page reporting on the billboard, the WA Health Minister, Roger Cook, in a press conference in which he himself stood beneath a purported public health risk, reassured the public that the government would look at all options to have the billboard removed. These options included looking at the Public Health Act to see if there was a clause to warrant an action of removal.
“It’s dangerous and misleading and puts people’s lives at risk,” said WA Health minister, Roger Cook
The AMA responded with their own Facebook post: ‘Dangerous, irresponsible and completely misleading messages on vaccines have absolutely no place on billboards…’ but much to the AMA’s chagrin, most of the post’s commentators called
for the right to freedom of speech regardless of their own personal views on vaccination.
Premier Mark McGowan said the State Government was looking at its options to take down the billboard on Brisbane Street. “We want to encourage people to vaccinate, so we’re looking at what options we’ve got available to us,” he said
Brandy Vaughan, an ex-Merck pharmaceutical employee and creator of Learn the Risk.org, whose mission is to raise people’s awareness of the dangers of pharmaceutical products, including vaccines, commented on the AMA post: “If there’s nothing to hide, why are you so afraid of the board? As parents, we ask questions about BPA in bottles, tainted formula, toxins in children’s toys, but we are not allowed to ask questions about vaccines?…”
Perth academic, Dr Judy Wilyman, claims that the billboard question “Do You Know What’s in a Vaccine?” does not spread an anti-vaccination message as scurrilously suggested by The AMA, Roger Cook and Premier McGowan.
Dr Wilyman states…. “We’re talking about the public interest in government vaccination policy and that requires knowledge of what’s being injected into healthy people. This is all about choice in the number of vaccines we use. The government is dismissing all questions from parents as ‘anti-vaccination’. These are the issues that parents want to debate, and we want to debate it with the science from the medical journals, but the government is trying to suppress this debate that is in the public interest…. to remove that board is a suppression of the public’s interest in government vaccination policies.” Lawyers interviewed by local media stated that Australia’s Freedom of Speech rights would make the removal of the billboard by the government a difficult task.
As it turned out, the billboard was vandalised, saving Mr Cook and the AMA any further headache about a very dangerous question and its threat to public health – a viral question. Calls to spray paint the billboard were rife in comments on Facebook pages such as Light for Riley. The illegal act of spray painting the billboard was applauded by the media and CCTV footage of the crime was broadcast on Channel 7 which also commented …” The person cheekily answers the question “Do you know what’s in a vaccine?” with “A: common sense”.” Channel 7 cheekily promotes vandalising private property, which is not what one would call setting a healthy precedent.
Online commenters, who were pro freedom of speech and medical transparency were instantly rebuked by those lobbying for vaccination. According to the vaccine lobbyists, removing the billboard had nothing to do with the freedom of speech, but rather their concern was that the ad would deter the general public from vaccinating if they researched the ingredients such as formaldehyde which can cause cancer in humans.
Recently it was announced that the PERTH Children’s Hospital (PCH) will house the only international hub for a New York-based research program developing one-shot vaccines against major infectious diseases and cancers. The Telethon Kids Institute will lead the paediatric component for the Human Vaccines Project, a global research program developing single vaccines to protect people against all strains of particular diseases. Co-funded by the PCH Foundation, the project will focus on next-generation paediatric vaccines to be given early in life and provide lifelong protection with the aim of wiping out infectious diseases globally.
Perhaps a billboard like this, or the question it asks threatens this new project. Since the billboard was removed due to being vandalised, and not re erected due to complaints, it is clear that the spectre of informed consent and the likelihood of parents researching what’s in a vaccine are a real threat to the WA Government’s bottom line. The bigger concern is do people have the freedom to ask a simple question, a question that concerns every one of us, a question that needs to be answered.
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FREEDOM OF CHOICE in Australia 
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