ARE your child’s vaccinations up to date? Not an unreasonable question, you might think, for a doctor or health visitor to ask a parent. But in the form of a fabricated filmed appeal by a series of small children rehearsed into learning words they would never say, it is disturbing and unethical.
Yet this is exactly what the government has just produced to pressgang parents into compliance. This week Dame Jenny Harries, CEO of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), made her way to Liverpool and Manchester to launch an expensive marketing campaign to drive up childhood vaccination rates, specifically for measles and whooping cough. The 19-second commercial has already been condemned as ‘exploitative and unethical’ for using tiny children to target parents with such highly emotive appeals as these: ‘Our generation’s risk of illnesses like measles and whooping cough is rising’, ‘If we’re not vaccinated, we’re not protected’ and ‘We could get seriously ill, risking life-long disabilities’.
This video is to be shown on TV and across social media and other platforms over the next few weeks, and will be viewed by potentially millions of adults and children. According to the UKHSA’s press release, the campaign materials were developed by the agency in partnership with Department of Health and Social Care Marketing, Liverpool City Council, NHS England, NHS North West and NHS Greater Manchester, and informed by input from parents in the North West. No little of our taxpayers’ money has been spent on this helping hand to Big Pharma.
You can watch it here and judge for yourself.
What concerns me, as well as this cynical manipulation of parents, is that the MSM has bought uncritically into a fearmongering exercise for which there is little foundation but significant risk. The Sun, for example, though critical of the video, does not question its premise or ask what the evidence is exactly for this purported alarming measles outbreak.
I questioned this measles mania a month ago in these pages. On what basis were the government’s public health agencies ramping up the message in the media, insisting that children must get ‘up to date’ with their MMR vaccines and as quickly as possible? The answer, I found, was remarkably few cases. Across the whole country since October 1, 2023, the UKHSA had reported just 650 laboratory-confirmed cases of measles, and 183 in the four weeks since January 29, 2024. Of these relatively low numbers of cases I found no media reports of serious illness or deaths to justify this disturbing new campaign.
So why, I am left asking, is the UKHSA pushing this expensive and monomaniacal child vaccination campaign, not least that it is not risk-free and when there are so many associated and concerning issues? The UK Medical Freedom Alliance (UKMFA) has set them out in a video statement here. The full text follows:
‘The UK Medical Freedom Alliance is appalled at the new UK Health Security Agency video which uses children in a highly coercive way, showing them pleading with parents to get them vaccinated in an apparent attempt to emotionally blackmail parents to accept vaccines for their children.
‘The claims made in the advert are highly sensational and the risks of the illnesses to individual children appear to be exaggerated and unquantified, promoting parents’ fear for their children’s safety.
‘No medication or vaccine is without side-effects or completely safe, yet there is no mention of any potential side-effects from the vaccines. This violates the law on informed consent, which requires full disclosure of risks as well as benefits from any medical intervention, to allow an individualised risk v benefit analysis.
‘The statement “If we are not vaccinated we are not protected” is factually inaccurate, as it ignores the innate protection provided by a healthy immune system that will enable the vast majority of children to sail through childhood infections without complications, especially when they are nursed well and supportively.
‘Instead of fearmongering, the Government and public health authorities should be empowering parents with the information that there are treatments to reduce the severity of measles and almost eliminate the risk of complications. In particular, high doses of Vitamin A, as advised by the World Health Organization in their guidance for prophylaxis and treatment in measles outbreaks.
‘Using children to advertise vaccinations is exploitative and unethical and we believe may be in breach of the Advertising Standards Authority code of advertising and the Government’s own advice on advertising medication. It is also highly likely that older children will see and be influenced by this advert to demand the vaccine through fear for their own safety, which would further breach these rules.
‘We deplore this cynical use of children to propagandise parents (and older children who may see this video) to accept a vaccine for their child that they may not personally benefit from and which they may experience harm from. This is not an ethical, sober or responsible way to practise medicine.’
