About now, your local doctor and nurses will have been provided with the Ministry of Health’s July 2008 latest propaganda DVD called “Immunise your Children”. This DVD will come as no surprise to those who have listened to the increasingly dictatorial and strident messages behind the closed doors of the annual IMAC immunisation conferences, or who saw the writing on the wall with IMAC’s 1997 brochure, which redefined the word “choice”. It’s important for parents who don’t want to vaccinate, to see this DVD for two reasons:
- Know the tactics they use on you.
- Understand just how little most people who vaccinate their babies actually understand about the real risks of either the disease or the vaccine in terms of what they are doing.
The DVD starts out by ASSURING YOU, not once, but three times, that vaccines WILL protect your children against ALL these serious diseases (and that they are tested and safe).
That message is constantly reinforced right through the DVD…
Right at the end of the video, is the comment that these vaccines, “protect your children from these diseases throughout their lives.”
Pro vaccine people, please read those sentences again. And again, if necessary. The MoH DVD says: ALL the vaccines WILL protect your children against ALL these serious diseases throughout their lives. Okay? Ad nauseum. Make it your mantra, please!
And don't contradict it.
So how is it then, that, in the DVD, lots of parents start expressing concerns that people who don’t vaccinate will bring back epidemics into the community? One father even said that when the number of unvaccinated children grows, “you lose your group immunity”?
Did he miss the main message of the DVD?
Did he perhaps not listen?
Perhaps these parents really didn’t understand those two words… “WILL PROTECT”.
Why is it, that the Ministry of Health misses the huge cognitive disconnect that the belief expressed by many people, that unvaccinated children would cause the vaccinated to lose their group immunity, is a contradiction to their own core message that vaccines will protect their children right through their lives.
Right here ... in their own DVD? Either vaccines protect, or they don't. Which is it to be, MoH?
Or is this a deliberately framed message in order to generate an illogical holier-than-thou type indignation, pitting parental vaccine defenders against those who say no, and refuse to go with the flow? Hopefully even provaccine parents who see this DVD have brains enough to see the stupidity of this contradiction.
No doubt, Wiremu Grace from ImagiN8tive Productions, and Heather Kizito from Zebra Associates asked loaded questions provided to them by MOH, which were worded in such a way to get the ‘responses’ wanted to accompany the simplistic MoH drawings.
Perhaps these parents didn’t know the whole "script", and had no idea what the end result would be? Maybe they did, but didn't really "think" about the implications of what they were saying.
Another piece of scripted insinuated dogma we are asked to believe, is that it will ONLY be the unvaccinated who then bring in disease, and spread it to the vaccinated. Perhaps the Ministry of Health can get away with such porkies, for the simple reason that NOT one person filmed for the DVD would have realised that whooping cough in this country is primarily contracted and spread via the fully vaccinated majority. Exactly how many MeNZB vaccinated people still got meningitis?
This country is littered with parents who can tell you about their measles vaccinated children who still got measles.
The description of the immune system is insulting, but fits the current IMAC/MoH modus operandi of KISS (Keep it simple, stupid!). Looking at this DVD, you’d be left believing that the only part of the immune system that really matters, is antibodies.
There are, to the astute listener some very revealing comments in this DVD, which I’m surprised the MoH left in there. Like those saying that vaccination ...“is just what you do”…"it's not something we really had to think about...". There were a whole swag of comments, which to the truly informed show that the parents interviewed had NOT taken the time to seriously research the issues.
A nurse talks to the pakeha mother and maori father about the vaccines, the times they are given, the National Immunisation register, points to some things in a pamphlet and asks, “Are you happy with the information?” What sort of question is that? The parents nod. She then asks if they are happy for her to go ahead and vaccinate their baby and they eagerly say yes.
I did not know that I was NOT happy with the Health Department information, until I found all the information they had NOT told me, in their own medical journals. Two years before, I too would have just believed what I was told.
The disease section of the DVD, tells parents ONLY the worst possible case scenarios about what might happen if a child gets any of the diseases "covered". (Love the use of the word "covered". More "framing"!)
Parents will not know that for all the diseases mentioned, the majority of people who contract them will not experience any of the clinical symptoms spoken about.
Parents WILL think that if their child gets the disease, they WILL suffer serious complications and/or die.
Does this DVD inform parents honestly about the real issues surrounding the diseases, and the vaccines, that they need to know? No.
Does it brain wash parents into assuming these diseases all maim and will cause problems in their child if they don't have the vaccine? Yes.
Does it condition parents to assume that vaccinating is a no-brainer and that if you love your child, you will immunise your children? Yes.
Does it infer that parents who don't vaccinate their children are irresponsible? Yes.
What does this DVD really do?
It conditions parents to submit to peer "knowledge", and follow the herd. It’s puts the IMAC/MoH slant on the words choice… i.e. you chose to immunise your children. To the MoH/IMAC, choice is not about a 'yes' or a 'no'. There are a couple of places where lip service is given to the word "no", but the total message is not about informed decision making. It’s all about herd compliance, peer pressure, and social conformity.
In the booklet with the DVD (which parents will not see) called "Educator's Guide", the back page has a heading: Informed consent. In that paragraph the booklet says that it is a parent’s choice to immunise their child or not. It also says that, “The doctor or nurse will check that parents have sufficient information to make a decision about whether or not to immunise their child.”
In my experience and opinion, few practice nurses or doctors are in a position to give both sides of the story, because they are contracted TO immunise, their practice immunisation returns are dependant upon their compliance with MoH policy, and most of them only read the pamphlets and information handed to them by IMAC.
Neither will parents have sufficient information for an informed choice after reading the Health Department Immunisation Handbook 2006. Key concepts important for parents have NOT been discussed in that book either.
Why has the Ministry of Health put out a DVD based on emotional blackmail concepts? Because medical studies have shown, when parents are just given the cold hard facts with no emotional blackmail, immunisation rates drop, not rise. Medical studies also show that when thinking parents are given ALL the information, they often decide NOT to vaccinate.
This DVD, and the accompanying MoH pamphlets are designed with one thing only in mind.
Community coerced compliance.
That is all.
Oh, one final thing.
Don’t ask questions of Execam, Wiremu Grace or Heather Kizito about why the debate was framed in such a condescending, ignorant or insulting manner, because they were just earning their bucks; the footage is copyrighted to MoH; and the back of the DVD refers all questions to the MoH... which is exactly where they should be directed. It's not fair to shoot at the shovels who put the message together.
And of course, the MoH will stand on the Fallacy of Authority to shut up any questioners.
After all, what Med School did you go to?
