The text below has been taken from the preface of the Korean publication of my book in 2005.

The book was written almost ten previously. It begins with a story from the 1920s in the town of Bundaberg, on the east coast of Queensland. A clinic on one afternoon in the small town vaccinated 21 children and brought the lives of twelve of them to an end. This was to shake the foundations of the medical community for many years.

Ironically, in 2005, Bundaberg is in the headlines again. According to months of daily news articles, speculation, accusations and legal action the town is again the centre of health attention in Australia. This time it’s not vaccines.

A doctor (dubbed ‘Dr Death’ by the media) who worked at the Bundaberg hospital has been implicated in a spate of deaths and adverse outcomes. Calls from the public and whistleblowers have led to a very public inquiry. The result? Well, there’s a way to go before we see the full fallout but so far the Minister for Health, along with other high ranking health officials have either resigned or been asked to leave their post by a mob hungry for answers and justice. The enquiry has been shut down by the supreme court amid claims the Commissioner was biased. Dr Death, who has since left Australia, has been asked to return to the country to face charges. He hasn’t done so.

The focus of the inquiry shifted fairly quickly from ‘Dr Death’ to the hospital at Bundaberg to the administrative hierarchy in the health department. The lack of adequate funding, the inappropriate registration of overseas trained doctors, the inadequate provisioning of specialist-trained personnel… the entire health system was declared a failure. An administrative failure, mind you. Not an ideological failure.

What does this have to do with vaccination? Bear with me.

I want to talk about hospitals briefly. Many thousands die each year in Australian hospitals. Some die because of injuries they have suffered and others from disease. There is a subset however who die not from their affliction but solely from the medical treatment they receive. Poor decisions, bad judgement, error… you name it, it’s all lumped under the category ‘medical error’ and carefully described as an administrative problem. I am about to talk about this subset. If you are not familiar with the following figures prepare to be staggered.

The official estimate is that 18000 people die each year in Australian hospitals as a direct result of the medical treatment they receive – not from the complaint that brought them to hospital but from the treatment they received once they got there.

Now you may say sure, these treatments carry a risk… we all know that… but they are administered with the best intentions. That may be, but 18000 people a year! Australia has a population of around 20 million.

When we speak of people dying or being injured by medical treatment we are not speaking about a new phenomenon. It is as old as medicine itself and has been given a name – iatrogenic disease. Iatrogenic disease is disease caused by your doctor – that is, disease brought on solely by medical treatment. Iatrogenic death… well, we can work that out. Right now I don’t want to discuss the nature of iatrogenic disease or death, but its scope. In Australian hospitals its scope is currently around 18000 deaths per year and 30000 permanent disabilities.

To put this into perspective, road deaths in Australia claim around 1600 lives each year. That’s less than one tenth the number of iatrogenic deaths!

 Many consider that driving our family in a thin metal capsule at high speed on the road, with all its pitfalls (including driver distraction, mechanical faults, weather conditions, traffic congestion, road rage, drug/alcohol impairment etc), is our daily dice with death, but understand this… On any given day the chance of ending up in an Australian hospital and dying from bad medical treatment is more than ten times greater!

In fact, if we consider all deaths from external causes (as classified by the Australian Bureau of Statistics these include all accidents, plus poisonings plus all forms of violence) we still only come up with less than 8000 deaths per year – that’s not even half the carnage caused by medical treatment.

             

When these comparisons are presented graphically, as above, one begins to wonder… how bad are the administrative skills of health workers? I must admit I can’t work it out. I mean each year these people are killing twice as many as the rest of us put together… through administrative bungles!

Can this colossal statistic really be attributed to administrative error? Wouldn’t any reasonable person suggest some measure of ideological failure here? Is there something intrinsically wrong with the craft of medicine?

With the glaring statement made by these figures what safety-conscious parent would take their child to a hospital for treatment? Under which circumstances?

Two further points… Firstly, this phenomenon is not confined to Australia. It’s happening all over the world. In the United States of America it is estimated that deaths caused by medical treatment in hospitals is approaching 200 000 – or the equivalent of three jumbo jet crashes every two days! Secondly, these figures don’t include treatment outside of hospitals, so they are only a part of the picture.

Clearly, putting yourself into medical care is a very dangerous thing to do. Chances are you won’t hear this from your doctor so, I guess, you have to ask yourself before visiting them whether you accept this situation. Would you choose medical care if you were sick? How sick?

Now, if those questions don’t leave you perplexed perhaps this one will. Consider you are well but you are offered some medical treatment anyway in the hope it will prevent you becoming unwell. Would you accept it?

With all potential threats to our lives we instinctively seek safeguards. We install security screens and alarm systems in our homes. We choose the speed at which we drive our car, we choose the type of car, and we choose in which areas and at what times we will drive it. We choose the area in which we live, the friends we make and the way we deal with people. In the area of medical treatment, the most dangerous of all, our only safeguard is our freedom of choice. When we are offered medical treatment we can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

This brings us to vaccination. Aside from birth the first major dealing our offspring have with the medical system is vaccination. They are well but we are offered medical treatment for them. It is claimed this treatment may protect them from certain diseases? The treatment, called vaccination, has become one of the most questionable medicine has to offer. Not only because it carries an unquantifiable danger but because its claims for doing any good whatsoever are still being questioned. Its usefulness has been the subject of debate at all levels of the scientific hierarchy.

Mind you vaccination stands out in another way. Not only is it offered, it is demanded to varying degrees throughout the world. In Australia it is a prerequisite for entry to many government-run childcare centres. In the United States and some other countries it is a requirement for admission to school among other things. So who is behind the push? You guessed it – the same institution we discussed above… the one with all the ‘administrative’ mistakes. So it gets kind of messy.

Then, to top it all off, when a child dies or is harmed this same group has the final word on whether their treatment was to blame.

It is my hope that after reading this book you will be in a better position to make the decision of whether to submit your children to vaccination. Whatever your decision I urge you to join the growing army of enlightened people around the world in declaring our freedom to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to medical treatment, and in particular vaccination, one of our basic human rights. It must be preserved.