Is Informed Consent Possible for Vaccines in the Current Political Environment ?
By Dubius Anonymuus
There is considerable pressure for doctors to enforce strict adherence to vaccination schedules, but many patient and parents are not convinced that this is the best option for maintaining good health.
In this setting informed consent is of great importance, however in the current setting most doctors do not know enough about vaccines to actually give fully informed consent.
There are a number of issues that may be of concern for parents, but for the sake of argument the presence of aluminium adjuvants in vaccines is a good starting point.
Recently ( May 2017) the Medical Board of Australia sent out a newsletter to doctors, reminding us (amongst other things) of the importance of the Vaccination Schedule:
http://www.medicalboard.gov.au/News/Newsletters/May-2017.aspx
(May Newsletter Australian Medical Board)
The subject of vaccination is covered about ½ way down this page.
“Vaccination information resources for doctors
General practitioners have an important role in guiding parents about child vaccination issues.
The Australian Child Health Poll, conducted on behalf of Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, found that more than 25 per cent of Australian parents had some concerns about vaccination, although most still vaccinate.
General practitioners are a trusted and frequently accessed resource about vaccine concerns. There are resources available to help doctors skilfully address parent’s worries, including the following:
- Commonwealth Department of Health – Immunise Australia Program – Resources for health professionals.
- The National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance – Available resources include fact sheets addressing the five concerns most commonly expressed by Australian parents, including How are vaccines shown to be safe? What is in vaccines?, available at the
Support And Resources to Assist Hesitant parents with vaccination (SARAH project). - Most states and territories have a specialist immunisation service available to health practitioners and parents, including immunisation recommendations and advice for children with complex medical problems or who have previously experienced an adverse event following immunisation. For example, Queensland Specialist Immunisation Service, New South Wales Specialist Immunisation Service, and . “
I decided this was a good opportunity to test the quality of the resources supporting doctors in decision making”
I initially followed the “Resources for Health Professionals” link:
http://www.immunise.health.gov.au/internet/immunise/publishing.nsf/Content/health-professionals
Finding nothing useful there I followed through to the “Clinical Updates” page:
After a great deal of trial and error I clicked on the link for “The Science of Immunisation Questions and Answers”
https://www.science.org.au/learning/general-audience/science-booklets/science-immunisation
Article “The science of immunisation”
click on hyperlink 2
“What’s in a Vaccine”
Track down to Adjuvants and read:
“In most human vaccines that contain adjuvants, the adjuvant is an aluminium salt (known as alum), which has a track record of safety dating back to the 1950s 49. Some newer vaccines incorporate more active adjuvants, derived from naturally occurring oil in water emulsions, fats from bacterial cell walls, or sugars. These can produce more vigorous and better targeted immune responses against the infectious agent 50.”
Then click on hyperlink 49
Which is the only reference I could find to aluminium in all this mess
- Edelman, R. (1980) Vaccine adjuvants. Rev Infect Dis 2 (3), 370–83.
So the final answer is that after an enormous amount of hunting around the doctor would finally learn that the only reference to the safety of aluminium adjuvants is 1980– 37 years ago.
My first literature review using the terms aluminium neurotoxicity:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=aluminium+neurotxicity
reveals 423 papers
However a more comprehensive review summed up at Vaccine Papers provides very strong evidence linking aluminium (especially at the low doses associated with vaccines) with neurotxicity.
http://vaccinepapers.org/al-adjuvant-causes-brain-inflammation-behavioral-disorders/
So the current situation is that it is almost impossible for doctors to do anything more than say that “The authorities tell me they must be safe, so therefore they must be”. Few doctors would take the trouble to track all the way through these resources, and even fewer of them would know that there has been a great deal of research done on the aluminium adjuvant- brain inflammation link since that 1980 paper. Additionally there never has been research done on a population exposed to aluminium adjuvants versus one not so exposed, but that fact is not accessible to casual investigation. To make matters worse the guidelines for paper selection for ATAGI and the National Immunisation Committee in Australia specifically exclude any studies relying purely on in vitro or animal studies, and thus these guidelines cut the committees off from important information, which would give any individual valid reason to refuse vaccines for themselves or their children.
Given those observations, I suspect that it is actually not possible to give legally valid informed consent for vaccines.
** Dubious Anonymous is a medical practitioner who has enough sense to keep a low profile when offering an intellectual critique of his profession, because he knows they can’t take it
