ANZAC Day usurped for Bressington’s anti-science balderdash

Hear, hear Mr Maher! And, as the grand-child of two World War I veterans (both of whom died of injuries sustained during the war), the grand-daughter of a World War I nurse, and the daughter of a WWII veteran, I cannot stand idly by and let Ms Bressington’s ANZAC Day post go unchecked. I am appalled and offended that Ms Bressington chose to couple her conspiracy theories about vaccination with our national day of commemoration for those who fought on the battlefields and in the trenches.

Why? Because so many of those who died in WWI died of two diseases which are now preventable by vaccines – influenza and tetanus.  Had those vaccines not been developed in the years between 1918 and 1939, the horrendous death toll of World War II would, undoubtedly have been higher.

Before launching into her ANZAC day tirade, a few minutes on Google might have informed Ms Bressington that between September and December 1918, more men on both sides died of the flu than were killed by weapons. In total, about one-third of the soldiers who died in World War I died, not from bombs or bullets, but from influenza – now, thanks to vaccination, a preventable disease.

And the carnage continued after the war. In Australia, nearly 12,000 people died of the flu, after the virus was brought in to the country by returning soldiers. Around 50 million people worldwide died of the Spanish flu, as opposed to ‘just’ 16 million in the First World War.

Just imagine the deaths that would have been prevented, the young soldiers who would have returned home to their loved ones, if a flu vaccine had been available! Does Ms Bressington really think that those soldiers and their families would be railing against the ‘BIG PHARMA’ that funded, researched, developed and made available those life-saving vaccines to their children and grand-children?

Quite apart from the Spanish Flu, our WWI soldiers also had to contend with tetanus. During the first years of the First World War, nearly 8 in every 1000 Allied soldiers on the Western Front died of tetanus. An anti-serum developed by the end of 1914 helped to prevent many deaths, but also caused many deaths due to allergic reactions.

Direct, active immunisation was later developed with negligible allergic reactions to the toxoid. Due to the introduction of a tetanus vaccine in the inter-war years, there were only six fatalities from tetanus in World War II and those who died were later found not to have received the vaccine.

Using ANZAC Day to promote one’s own ideological agenda is bad enough. But using it to promote an unscientific, conspiracist argument against scientific and medical breakthroughs that would have saved the lives of millions of soldiers and civilians during the conflict being commemorated is obscene. And, no, Ms Bressington, I am not on the pay roll of ‘BIG PHARMA’ or any other organisation. I am simply an advocate of critical thought, responsible research, scientific method and human decency – all of which you seem to reject.