One of the most impressive speakers I’ve had the pleasure of hearing is Seth Berkley.
Seth is CEO of the GAVI Alliance. The incredible life-saving machine known as “the GAVI model” has prevented over 5 1/2 million future deaths through the immunisation of 370* million children since 2000.
* – May 2012 projection
GAVI’s mission encompasses a bold, compassionate vision, effective strategies, education and commitment. GAVI has pulled together very specific dynamics of international development, finance organisations, donor governments, the pharmaceutical industry, developing countries, WHO, UNICEF, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank into a single “decision-making body”.
This uniquely complex approach allows the central part of the GAVI vision to be realised:
Saving children’s lives and protecting people’s health by increasing access to immunisation in poor countries
GAVI has every right to be proud that its model has permitted “a single-minded focus to the urgent task of closing three critical gaps in the provision of vaccines”:
between children for whom immunisation is a given and the 19 million children worldwide with no access to vaccines;
between the introduction of a new vaccine in rich countries and the average 10-15 years required for the same vaccine to reach low-income countries;
between the need for new vaccines in developing countries and the lack of research and funds to provide them.
In 2009 UNICEF reported that more children are being immunised than ever before and this is “directly attributable” to the success of the GAVI model. With the support of GAVI, 18 developing nations had begun to introduce the pneumococcal vaccine by mid-2012. Better still this vaccine will soon be part of routine programmes in half of GAVI-eligible countries. Pneumonia is the cause of 18% of child deaths in developing nations.
Another 18% of deaths in children is due to diarrhoea, primarily caused by rotavirus. By the end of last year 20 GAVI-eligible countries had been approved for support in implementing vaccines against rotavirus. It’s wonderful that by the end of last month Sudan was joined by Rwanda, Malawi and Ghana as the first African nations to see GAVI help roll out rotavirus vaccines.
Consider for a moment, Ghana. The first GAVI supported country to introduce both rotavirus and pneumococcal vaccines together, Ghana can now directly address and prevent the cause of 36% of childhood fatality.
GAVI have excelled in meeting demand. In the middle of 2011 more applications than ever before were made to GAVI for both new and underused vaccines. Late last year two thirds of GAVI programmes met demand for both rotavirus vaccine (representing a nine fold increase) and pneumococcal (representing a doubling of demand). The diagram below indicates how GAVI commits funds to specific purposes.
Meanwhile in the developed world we continue to enjoy the luxury of faux “vaccine injuries” and other hoax reasons proffered as cause to deny children immunisation. This itself is an indicator of, and direct result from, the success of mass immunisation. Vaccine induced immunity and herd immunity protecting the unvaccinated, remains out of reach in poorer nations wherein one child dies from a vaccine preventable disease every 20 seconds.
Where vaccination regimes have been successful such tragic suffering is forgotten. Indeed, subtracting the impact of vaccine denial, there’s virtually no evidence of it in our midst. But this does not mean we may have cause for complacency – no matter how strong both specific and herd immunity might be. Influenza pandemics remain a serious threat to humanity. It’s been estimated that the likelihood of such a Massively Fatal Discontinuity, able to kill up to 100 million people in the next 50 years, is 100%.
Back in February 2010 Seth Berkley looked at the importance of vaccines to human health, and our survival.
Less than a month after Sydney coroner Mary Jerrum referred a provider of naltrexone implants to the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission, the Christian Democrats’ Reverend Fred Nile revealed he wants them used as compulsory treatment for opioid addicts.
Naltrexone implants are not backed by any convincing evidence but the rapid opioid detoxification [ROD], opioid blocking properties they offer appeal greatly to anti-drug crusading Christian evangelists. Long opposed to harm reduction measures and evidence based treatment of addiction, such as methadone maintenance, far right Christians and conservatives see naltrexone implants as a moral masterstroke. Muscling into the action in recent years are the profit-focused, such as Sydney’s Ross Colquhoun, director of Psych ‘n’ Soul.
I’ve previously written about Dr. Stuart Reece, who features in the video below with the same title as this post. His abuse of patients with naltrexone and Jesus saw 25 of them die in 20 months. His career is the epitome of callous faith based pseudoscience which uniquely targets evidence based harm reduction measures. When I posted on a faux “research” paper he had co-authored with other members of Drug Free Australia, I referred to an exchange on an email list hosted by the Alcohol and Drug Council of Australia. It was on this list years ago that I first read Ross Colquhoun defend naltrexone implants as “common sense”. Indeed his evidence free defence of implants led me to conclude that his “common sense” was the equivalent of the religious zealots’ “belief”.
Both individuals are signatories to Drug Free Australia’s so-called position statement which includes funding of naltrexone implants as an “urgent pro-active change to our illicit drug policies”.
Handing down scathing findings into three deaths, the coroner recommended that the HCCC consider proceedings against a doctor working at Colquhoun’s Pysch ‘n’ Soul, Dr. Jassim Daood. According to the ABC she noted, “a number of disciplinary cases have already been completed about some of the clinic’s other staff”. The scale of potential problems becomes clear when one considers the implants have never been approved for use, eager staff have little or no training and post-implant support regimes are entirely absent. For over a decade these implants have been available via the TGA’s Special Access Scheme, which is designed to allow patients access to otherwise unavailable drugs to treat conditions deemed potentially fatal in the absence of that drug.
In this case the Scheme is being exploited as a loophole whilst the implant option itself has left in it’s wake a litany of failure and fatalities. Colquhoun is unlicenced to perform ROD but ignored requests from the NSW Health Department in mid 2010. SMH wrote on October 20:
Despite this direction, Colquhoun resumed the treatments while still unlicensed between July and September of that year, only desisting when Grace Yates, a 23-year-old with a five-month-old baby, was given ROD and naltrexone at the clinic on September 29, 2010. She suffered a heart attack and died two months later, having never regained consciousness.
It’s worth considering this failed treatment option is likely to be expanded under a coalition government. As health minister in the Howard Government, Tony Abbott provided the funding for the launch of the evangelical Drug Free Australia from the Tough on Drugs/Assets of Crime kitty. Describing themselves as “Australia’s Peak Drugs Body” they failed to meet the conditions of the funding, choosing instead to sabotage related health policy basics. Without doubt they have proven to be to addiction treatment what the Australian (anti) Vaccination Network is to the management of vaccine preventable disease.
Abbott also sent $50,000 they way of Psych ‘n’ Soul in the same year, showing exceptionally poor judgement. There is little doubt with enemies of Harm Minimisation such as Bronwyn Bishop, Sophie Mirabella and Christopher Pyne on his proposed front bench, Australia’s strong evidence based approach to addiction management would suffer. As the coroner noted:
It appears that a patient only had to present at the clinic to be enthusiastically recommended for rapid opioid detoxification, no matter what their history or situation, without alternatives being discussed or considered or any information given out of the risks involved.
Another death related to the attempts at ROD Psych ‘n’ Soul is now infamous for, involved Michael Poole, 48. He was described as “delirious and delusional” after ROD and died at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney two days later. The third death involved James Unicomb, 23 who died from drug toxicity following a poly-drug overdose, which followed the ROD and occurred whilst an implant remained active. This lack of appropriate follow up of patients is perhaps the most appalling failure related to the practice of ROD and implants.
Rapid detox’ doesn’t treat addiction. It removes cravings and leaves patients open to the possibility of overdose. Often they are dependent upon high doses of benzodiazapines which raises the risk of opioid induced respiratory depression. As addiction is not treated, behaviour cannot be expected to change. It is for this reason follow up should form the most important aspect of rapid detoxification. It is for the same reason that implants have such a high failure rate in “curing” addiction.
One can only imagine the profit made and moral crusading accomplished from treating now dead addicts who were essentially exploited, not treated. Of course, testimonials abound. Whether it’s those who adore Reece for showing them the way to Jesus or Colquhoun’s (third time lucky) performer in the below video, let’s not kid ourselves. The dead cannot speak.
Alex Wodak, director of Sydney’s St. Vincents Hospital Alcohol and Drug Service observed:
How they are allowed to be used for routine purposes in several states in this country beats me. It goes against all the normal regulations and I think the only explanation I can understand is that this is allowed in this case because they’re only drug addicts. […] We really need a national independent inquiry into the regulatory failure, the serious regulatory failure that’s gone on with Naltrexone implants for over a decade.
Indeed we do.
Naltrexone implants backed by zealotry but not evidence
A radical conspiracy theorist who once reasoned infant and childhood mortality was a necessary price to prevent fictional “genetic deterioration” she blames on vaccines, has added up to 200 Australian women per year to her body count.
University of Wollongong student Judy Wilyman responded to the release of a Victorian Cancer Council advertisement (below) by republishing misleading information about HPV, and the HPV vaccine Gardasil as part of her ongoing anti-vaccination campaign. The advertisement targets cervical cancer and the importance of pap smears. Judy is unhappy that the Council correctly observe that women “only need to have sex once to risk cervical cancer”. Wilyman writes [emphasis hers]:
This statement is not reflective of the risk of cervical cancer. The majority of women in Australia are not at risk of cervical cancer even if they are infected with HPV 16 and 18.
Yes, cervical cancer makes up only 1.6% of cancers that Aussie women face, leading to about 750 diagnoses annually. The main cause of cervical cancer is HPV – human papillomavirus. Genotypes 16 and 18 are responsible for most cases of cervical cancer. As late as 2007 mortality from cervical cancer was 1.9 per 100,000. Looking at ABS population figures for 2007 this translates to something like 200 women and teens – minus young females.
Wilyman plays semantics with the reality that HPV 16 or 18 “rarely” progresses to cancer. I accept this is important and comforting knowledge. Just as I know road users will “rarely” drive into telegraph poles or be “rarely” hit with severe force from behind. Wilyman then lists what is in the Gardasil vaccine in a typical attempt to scare.
Whilst there’s a lot to pick fault with in both the article and the so-called fact sheet, what I found compelling is the insouciance with which Judy Wilyman regards the death of others. Deaths that can be prevented by vaccine and are thus accepted collateral damage in her war against this aspect of public health.
Using the figures above we can see that 53% of cervical cancer cases are terminal. Put another way a woman may need only have sex once to have about a 50/50 chance of dying from cervical cancer. This would be notably rare. Yet it would also be vastly more probable than the one in a million chance of anaphylactic shock or severe reaction following MMR that Wilyman presents as a near certainty. It would be incalculably more likely than the never substantiated deaths from vaccination.
It seems Judy Wilyman can understand risk-benefit when it suits her. She writes:
HPV 16/18 is a common infection in women in all countries but 90% of infections do not progress to warts or cervical cancer
In 2004, before the vaccine was introduced, the death rate from cervical cancer in Australia was 1.9/100,000 women. This represents a very low risk to Australian women
It’s just too bad if you’re in the 10% or one of the 200 Aussie women to develop cervical cancer each year. But this isn’t Wilymans only stint at suggesting death should take precedence over vaccination.
At an Australian Vaccination Network seminar at the W.A. State Library in mid 2010, Wilyman told the audience that “it is known” that vaccines switch on otherwise dormant genes. “This is called predisposition to disease”, Wilyman continued without providing evidence. “Things like autism, diabetes and asthma”.
This has been refuted in reproduced studies across the globe. The Australian Immunisation Handbook lists these three conditions along with SIDS, inflammatory bowel disease and MS as conditions in which “research has constantly replicated no link”. Wilyman, who wrote to Australia’s federal health minister in November 2011 contending incentives to immunise are a “crime against humanity”, defends this falsehood with two criteria.
Firstly she conveniently dismisses scientific consensus and reputable government backed advice as part of a “conflict of interest” conspiracy driven by profit. This includes the media for publishing reports of fatalities from vaccine preventable disease and even the parents of deceased infants. The practice of accusing grieving parents of being paid to promote vaccination or even to not blame vaccination as the cause of their child’s death is common within the AVN. Despite public claims to the contrary it is a practice sanctioned by AVN president, Meryl Dorey.
The second criteria Wilyman exploits is the misrepresentation that environmental factors that may influence DNA include vaccines. Wilyman asserts vaccine components have “synergistic, cumulative and latent effects” on both health and DNA. Well aware that components are not present at toxic levels, Wilyman set out to scare her W.A. audience:
Your doctor will say “oh yes but they’re only in trace amounts”. I say to you, what is a trace amount? How much is a trace amount? It sounds minute, it sounds small but it’s all relative. And I’ll say to you, what is a safe level of a safe amount of a trace amount in an infant? How does a trace amount of mercury combined with a trace amount of aluminium adjuvant react in an infants body? They don’t know. It is counterintuitive to suggest adding toxins to infant’s bodies makes them healthier. It doesn’t make them healthier. Black is not white.
Wilyman then goes on to misrepresent a 60 year old quote from Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet. Burnet notes that infant and childhood mortality is (to be blunt) a way in which seriously defective genes are removed from the gene pool. He observes that preventative and curative medicine may have an impact on this. Wilyman quotes Sir Frank:
In future years we may have some hard thinking to do. It may be that we will have to realise that mortality in infancy and childhood in the past has been the necessary price that had to be paid to prevent genetic deterioration and that some of our modern successes in preventative and curative medicine, may on the longest view be against the best interests of the state.
A rather challenging ethical and moral dilemma to ponder indeed. Fortunately in the sixty years since Burnet apparently made that statement the science of genetics, modern medicine and our grasp of what it means to be human have marched forward. So much so that we now seek to enrich developing nations with the same advances that have dramatically improved our lives.
We cannot ignore either that modern successes of that time are now long passed. We’ve pursued and realised preventative and curative medicine Burnet could only have dreamed of. Today the hard thinking we have to do surrounds our potential to select genetic perfection.
Yet Wilyman is either so deluded as to see what isn’t there or so deceptive as to bend its meaning to suit her own fantasy. I strongly suspect the first. Whilst Burnet’s comment can be seen in proper context, there’s no doubt Wilyman selected that passage to convey that vaccines inflict such “synergistic, cumulative and latent effects… epidemics of genetic diseases“, that it’s time to realise infant and childhood mortality is arguably a necessary price.
“Today”, she offered publically, the “overall health of children in the 21st century would appear to be supporting Burnet’s prophecy”. Genes, the environment (vaccines) and timing “interact together in the occurrence of disease.”
The intellectual paucity of her so-called reasoning is truly stunning. There is absolutely no evidence that “the chemicals” in vaccines are deleteriously effecting children’s health so as to be placing our genome at risk of deterioration. That the research Wilyman wants to see is deemed unnecessary by experts, does not by default validate her wild speculation.
This is a fiction of her own making. The scale of paranoia and delusion driving her belief in conspiracy has already made way for the callous abuse of others and a career of deception. That the lives of innocent women and seemingly infants and children rate lower than adherence to an ideology is perhaps not surprising.
Judy Wilyman is supposedly “researching” to complete a PhD under the auspices of anti-vaccine academic, Brian Martin. To date no actual research has been produced.
One hopes the University of Wollongong will ultimately address this matter ethically.
This years Australian Skeptics National Convention looks set to cover a huge range of topics.
Active skepticism – changing for the better is the theme, and subjects involving skeptic and science activists and advocates loom large.
Anti-vaccination, non-evidence based alternatives to medicine, attacks on medical science, science and reason itself will feature during keynotes and panel discussion. Consumer scams, regulation of therapeutic goods, dodgy new age diagnostics, the changing role of social media, upcoming challenges and changes and more, more, more.
Along with Aussie favourites such as Ken Harvey, Dr. Rachie, Richard Saunders, Adam vanLangenberg, Lynne Kelly, Chrissy Wilson, etc will be James Randi, D.J. Grothe, Brian Thompson, Rebecca Watson and more.
Grab all the details and ticketing information from the video below and remember to keep up with developments.
Dates: Friday November 30th to Sunday December 2nd.
Losing In The Lucky Country 