This is not mere paranoia. In the last week, I have heard from two sets of parents to whom this has happened. In the first case, a child was brought to an emergency room in Coffs Harbour with a deep cut. The doctor recommended a tetanus vaccine for the child which the parents readily agreed to. The doctor, however, was extremely zealous and decided to give the child a DPT shot and the oral polio vaccination as well without asking the parent's permission first. VAN (Vaccination Awareness Network) has put these parents in touch with a solicitor who is presently considering the case.

In the second instance, a mother brought her 16 year old son into the emergency room after he had an accident which lodged a piece of timber well up under his skin. The doctor suggested a tetanus vaccine which, once again, the parent readily agreed to. On bringing the boy back to his mother after removing the piece of wood, the doctor informed her that he had been given the oral vaccine as well 'as long as he was there'. The mother was furious but doesn't feel she can take any further action since she is married to a complementary medical practitioner whose livelihood depends on referrals from physicians.

It is only a short step from harassment in hospitals to being kicked off of Medicare altogether. After all, the doctors will count the number of cases of measles and whooping cough and all the other so-called vaccine preventable diseases. They will shake their heads sadly and say something like - well, well, we've had 2,500 cases of measles in the last 12 months. It is obvious that the unvaccinated children are sicker than those who are vaccinated (of course, never mentioning that 2,000 out of the 2,500 cases took place in vaccinated children!). Why should the whole country pay for the complacency of a small group of parents? If they're too lazy to vaccinate their children, well let's get those kids off Medicare and make the parents pay for treatment themselves. This may sound a little far-fetched, but I feel sure that it's no accident that this register has been placed on the Medicare database.

Our children's privacy has been co-opted by our government who insist that they have no ulterior motives while they inform us that any child whose vaccination goes 90 days overdue will be visited at home by a health worker who will administer an on-site vaccination. If this is not an assault, what is? I pity the poor health worker who gets to visit my house to try and vaccinate my baby - they will be very sorry they got out of bed that morning.

But what about the parent who hasn't been researching this subject for 7 years. What about the mother who hasn't vaccinated just because it didn't seem to be the right thing to do at the time? Or the father who didn't vaccinate because his friend's child had a bad reaction?

How much pressure from the health worker standing on their doorstep will it take to get them to vaccinate? What if the worker says that if they don't vaccinate, their child stands a good chance of dying from mumps? That there is currently an outbreak of whooping cough going around and if they don't believe her, they should go to the hospital and sit by the side of some poor child who is dying from it.

Now, you know and I know that isn't the case. We know that nobody dies from mumps and if there is a sick child in hospital with whooping cough, chances are that they were vaccinated against it as well. But this poor parent hasn't got a clue. So, let' s say that they give in and let this person vaccinate their child. And let' s say, just for argument's sake, that the child has a severe adverse reaction. What is the health worker going to say?

Sorry. This happens so rarely - it only happens one in a million times. But you, being a good citizen did the right thing. Your child may be brain damaged, but at least they're now protected from these diseases. Well, kind of protected - in 30% of the cases. And of course, you can't hold the health worker responsible. You gave them the permission to do this to your child. True, you weren't given enough information to make an informed choice, but then again, no parents are.

And who is going to take care of your child for the rest of his life? Who will pay the medical bills, who will give you a break so you can go out for a morning and leave your 16 year old infant home? Not the government whose policies caused this tragedy. Not the health worker who was only doing their job. Still, won't you find it comforting to know that you did the right thing?

The government's $80 million advertisement campaign says that if immunisation doesn't catch on, disease will. Well, don't worry, because if immunisation does catch on, the disease will always be there.

As if the current situation were not bad enough, VAN has been contacted by the Australian Council for Immunisation Information (ACII) in Sydney about another development in the ACIR travesty. One of the members of the ACII has worked in a law office for many years. She has taken it upon herself to go over all of the ACIR information with a fine-toothed comb and has discovered that the wording of one of the clauses indicates that it would be possible in an outbreak of infectious disease (and an outbreak is defined by the government - what is it? One case, two - who knows?) for the government to decide that it is necessary to vaccinate every child for the good of everyone. It would then, theoretically, be possible for government nurses/doctors to forcibly vaccinate children against their parents' wishes.

The ACII has enlisted the help of a Barrister in Sydney for the purpose of deciding exactly what this portion of the ACIR information means and exactly what we can do about it. I will be sure to keep you informed of any updates. I want to stress, however, that this is serious - deadly serious. This is not an overdramatization, this is not just paranoia. This is compulsory vaccination. Having lived in the US and read the stories of parents losing their children to such totalitarian tactics as this, I can only say that the time for action is NOW and we need your help.

Meryl Dorey is Co-ordinator of the Vaccination Awareness Network, NSW (VAN). The above is her Editorial from the January 1996 issue of the VAN newsletter. To contact VAN, write to PO Box 177, Bangalow NSW 2479. Phone (066) 871699. (Originally taken by permission from CAFMR, and reprinted in Australasian Health and Healing, Vol 15, No.3.)