From Robin Birch
Until 2015, I knew very little about vaccines. Through my interest in holistic healing, which I developed in the 1980s, I believed vaccines were not necessary for health, and indeed were bad for the immune system, but I had no opinion about vaccines beyond that. As I have not had children, it was not much of an issue to me.
I knew I felt contemptuous of the flu jab when I saw it advertised, and I steadfastly refused to vaccinate my cat, and that was all. I had heard of autism, but only regarding Rain Man.
Then in April 2015 I saw Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s announcement of the No Jab No Pay legislation. I immediately thought “that’s wrong”, and posted something on Facebook, complete with a Leunig cartoon. The reactions thrown back at me, that vaccines are “rigorously tested” and “reduced infant mortality”, and so on, I had no answer for.
But I felt strongly that the legislation was wrong, so I started researching.
I did a science degree in the 1970s at Monash University here in Victoria, Australia, majoring in biochemistry and pharmacology. I then did the Honours year in biochemistry, which involved doing biochemistry research in a lab, which in turn involved reading many science papers, some of them in French (using my school French dictionary), because one of the few labs in the world working in the same field as me happened to be in France.
This, incidentally, is more science than medical doctors do, unless they take up science after graduating.
After that I did Dip. Ed. and taught science, chemistry and biology in schools and other educational institutions. Along the way I have had to research and learn information from many fields.
So I felt fairly confident I could research vaccines.
The first solid information I found was about the Andrew Wakefield saga. I spent many hours watching videos of him speaking and was completely gutted – for what Andrew had been enduring but mainly because of the children’s terrible gut pain and the trauma being suffered by both the children and the parents.
Like many people, my first reaction was that I had to get this information out, and as I do WordPress websites, I created this website. Gradually the site has grown, and although it is not big, I hope you find it useful.
And how I wish I could go back to those now ex-friends on Facebook and show them the proof that vaccines are far from “rigorously tested” and did nothing to “reduce infant mortality”.
Leunig cartoon, from the period Australia introduced mandatory vaccination for school attendance (however the AVN lobbied successfully to include a philosophical objection).
