Review of the book Ideological constructs of vaccination by Dr Jayne LM Donegan:
"...It is a minutely researched, scholarly and very readable piece of work that will not disappoint the most thorough researcher or parent who is wanting to have the multiple topics and references to do with vaccination and health policy in one logically ordered resource. (...) The information she presents is based on hundreds of current studies and graphs constructed from official statistics in the USA, UK and Australia, which she uses to take the reader on a journey through what is the actual state of vaccination, vaccinatable diseases and scientific evidence. (...) Dr Cernic takes each of the accusations with which questioning parents who have not yet vaccinated their children are lambasted, by Governments (especially in Australia) and shows that they are not based on science or reality. (...) For anyone wanting to have a comprehensive, one volume, reference work to read about every aspect of vaccination science and policy, this is the one to get. I cannot recommend it too highly. Buy it and read it. You will be pleased that you did."
"This book is an expanded and updated version of Dr Cernic’s 2014 Doctoral thesis of the same name, for which she was awarded a PhD by the School of Advanced Social Studies in Nova Gorica, Slovenia where she currently teaches.
It is a minutely researched, scholarly and very readable piece of work that will not disappoint the most thorough researcher or parent who is wanting to have the multiple topics and references to do with vaccination and health policy in one logically ordered resource.
Information and views on vaccination can be very polarised. The author, having researched the topic has her own views but these are not what form the basis of the book. The information she presents is based on hundreds of current studies and graphs constructed from official statistics in the USA, UK and Australia, which she uses to take the reader on a journey through what is the actual state of vaccination, vaccinatable diseases and scientific evidence, as opposed to the unevidenced statements of safety, efficacy and reduction in mortality rates from infectious diseases for which there are vaccines, since the vaccines were introduced in the nineteenth through the twentieth and onward into the twenty first century.
Having done a large amount of reading and research into vaccination and disease ecology myself, there are two aspects of Dr Černič’s’s work that I find particularly interesting:
1. The inclusion of figures, studies, policies and views of scientists from countries which might loosely be called central or eastern European. So much of what is generally cited is centred on the USA, UK and the loud voice, even if not evidenced based, of Australia. To anextent this is because some the papers and books are not written in English, but Dr Černič has read and translated them and presented them in her book for viewing, and how very interesting are the writings and thoughts of this group of thinkers from the medical and social sciences to whom I had never previously had access.
2. The inclusion of social science paradigms to explain both the powerful place of vaccination and current health ideologies in society today and the relationship between who is acceptable to be regarded as an expert: study, qualifications, prestigious position in the medical community and what removes them from this elite group: questioning any part of the narrowly defined dogma that is the current orthodoxy. This ‘discourse’, as she quotes Foucault (1981), “is in every society controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain amount of procedures whose rôle it is to ward off powers and dangers.” This is the experience of any medical doctor or scientist, no matter how eminent. Once their investigations lead them to question the prevailing orthodoxy – vaccination or otherwise - they are immediately reclassified as ‘quacks’ by their less enquiring, more subservient, and possibly lazy colleagues who close ranks to protect themselves, their practices and their jobs.
Dr Cernic takes each of the accusations with which questioning parents who have not yet vaccinated their children are lambasted, by Governments (especially in Australia) and shows that they are not based on science or reality, particularly the idea that unvaccinated children are the germ carriers endangering all good, vaccinated citizens. She shows European and USA marketing authorisationsthat state specifically that the vaccines for which they are granting product licences are not developed to stop people getting infections, only to produce certain levels of antibodies, though it is well established in science that antibodies do not equal ‘protection’.
There are no immune correlates for pertussis (whooping cough) or human papillomavirus infection, tetanus is not an infectious diseases, you can’t ‘catch it’ from anyone and in addition, both tetanus and diphtheria vaccines are toxoid vaccines, designed to give antibodies to toxin from the organisms, not to stop carriage in the case of diphtheria or transmission. People vaccinated with measles and pertussis vaccines become infected, silently, so others do not even know that the vaccinated people are carrying and spreading the infectious organisms, not to mention the recipients of live vaccines like ‘flu, measles, mumps, rubella and oral polio vaccines who spread the viruses through the community (read the package inserts which tell you to keep away from immunocompromised / cancer patients if you have been vaccinated). It is the vaccinated children of whom one should be aware, not the unvaccinated!
In addition to minute inspection of mortality rates from vaccinatable diseases and vaccine constituents, the actual meaning of the oft repeated mantra, ‘vaccines are extensively tested and are shown to be safe and effective’, is gone through with a fine toothed comb, completely referenced, brimming with examples and studies published in peer reviewed journals, she also tackles head on the big question: WHY?
From her background in sociology she dissects the notion that the ‘authorities’ always have our best interests at heart. She takes us through the American eugenics movement (forerunner of the Nazi’s), “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover the cutting of the Fallopian tubes.” (Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes 1927), through experimentation on orphans in children’s homes in the USA with HIV drugs in the 2000’s, to 2012 in England where an Italian mother was ordered by the Court to have a Caesarian section, and her child adopted, forcibly, against her will, because she had the misfortune to be in the UK on a conference when she was 35 weeks pregnant and had a psychotic episode, from which she fully recovered – beware of social workers. The last few chapters also look at the close intertwining, or stranglehold, of multinational pharmaceutical companies with the development and practice of medicine, the numerous times pharmaceutical companies are found guilty of malpractice and how their penalty fines, though millions of dollars, are as but a drop in the ocean compared to their profits.
For anyone wanting to have a comprehensive, one volume, reference work to read about every aspect of vaccination science and policy, this is the one to get. I cannot recommend it too highly. Buy it and read it. You will be pleased that you did."
Dr Jayne LM Donegan
MBBS DRCOG DCH DFFP MRCGP MFHom
London NW4 1SH, UK
jaynelmdonegan@yahoo.com
jayne-donegan.co.uk/
Dr Donegan is a GP & Homoeopathic Physician with Certified Specialist Accreditation in Medical Homeopathy from the Faculty of Homeopathy, London.