Tenpenny's Visit Down Under

It's been in the news worldwide, and all over the internet - Dr Sherri Tenpenny plans to tour Australia, speaking about the risks of vaccination and encouraging parents to "Just Say No" to immunising their children. However, as of yesterday, all 8 venues she was booked into have cancelled her talks.

Vaccination can be a controversial topic in the community, with many parents choosing to abstain from vaccinating their children for various reasons (see post "Common Vaccine Misconceptions"). Sherri Tenpenny, an osteopath from Ohio, USA has been a vocal anti-vaccination advocate for 14 years. She has a number of posts online warning against vaccines, a Facebook page which people come to seeking advice about vaccinating their children, and has a large following of people that listen to her opinions about vaccines. From what I have seen online, all of her advice is simply her own opinion. Her claims are not backed by evidence from medical journals, and she has never been published. She says herself in an interview "I am not a scientific researcher", follwed by a segment with a medical doctor who talks about how to design a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to unequivocally prove the efficacy and/or risk of vaccines, but how it would be unethical to deny children a medical treatment that is proven to work, and risk them getting seriously ill from a vaccine preventable disease (VPD). It's like the analogy we like to use in class - you're not going to do a study to test if parachutes save lives; it's pretty clear they do, and you'd kill people trying to prove it in an RCT.

For a look at a post written by Dr Tenpenny, follow this link. It really does demonstrate how ridiculous her claims are and the lack of evidence she has to back up her opinions, and supports how wrong it is that she should be allowed to spread these opinions disguised as medical advice to the wider community.

Dr Tenpenny claims that she is not an anti-vaccination advocate, but an advocate for informed choice. But how can a choice be fairly informed, when the information she is distributing is not evidence based, in comparison to the scientifically backed information GPs and community health nurses distribute to parents? Freedom of speech is an important human right that both the USA and Australia strongly believe in. Some people claim that by denying Sherri Tenpenny the "right" to speak against vaccination, we are going against this belief. However others say that by allowing her to publicise her opinions, public health is threatened through the propagation of misinformation, and we should be protecting the community in this instance.

Dr Brian Moreton, chairman of the Australian Medical Association's council of General Practice, says that the danger of allowing Sherri Tenpenny to speak publicly is that people whom don't have access to the correct information provided in health centres and on evidence based websites, will blindly believe Dr Tenpenny and vaccination rates could fall. Decreasing vaccination rates are already a public health issue in Australia, making the cover of the AMA's "Medicus" magazine only months ago. A country already struggling to keep vaccination rates high enough to achieve herd immunity and protect the young, old, and ill, should not be threatened by anti-vaccine campaigners. The consensus across the medical community is that vaccines are hugely beneficial for the community and have made drastic impacts on public health improvements over the past century.

Parents do deserve to be properly informed, as Sherri Tenpenny says, but they must make sure the source of the information they are receiving is evidence based and backed by medical professionals that want the best for the community.

"The benefits of being vaccinated so far exceed any risks, that it really is a no brainer." - Professor Peter McIntyre (MBBS, PhD, FRACP, FAFPHM), Director of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance.

Sources

http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/2011/01/09/the-ten-reasons-to-say-no-to-vaccines/

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/01/08/more-venues-cancel-anti-vaccination-talks-sherri-tenpenny

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sherri-tenpenny-us-antivaccination-campaigners-sydney-and-melbourne-shows-cancelled-20150108-12jzix.html

http://ncirs.edu.au/staff/policy-surveillance/index.php

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht_QAIBwFFg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-OTm-QdaFk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1421828030&x-yt-cl=84411374&v=pByYy2uhIIU

#australia #community #autism #herdimmunity #vaccinationrates #vaccines