PhD Thesis - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

Aberdeen University, who made a study of the effect of pertussis vaccine on the
disease, commented that ‘my advice would be to abandon the vaccine’. 45 In Sweden
the loss of confidence in the pertussis vaccine by paediatricians led to its withdrawal
by the Swedish Medical Society at the end of the 1970s. 46 In Britain, Jeffrey Baker
argued that the ‘British medical profession itself was deeply divided, reflecting quite
real uncertainties surrounding the safety and efficacy of the vaccine’. 47 The rift went
from general practitioners and health visitors right up to George Dick, a member of
the JCVI who ‘criticized in print his own committee’s decision to endorse the vaccine
in 1974’. 48 Trust in the vaccine by parents therefore nose-dived partly as a result of
medical indecision. To try and restore public (and medical) confidence, the
government had to listen to groups such as the APVDC, which had influential support
both outside and inside Parliament. Jack Ashley MP, a member of the Labour party,
repeatedly pressed the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) for
compensation for pertussis vaccine-damaged children and for an independent inquiry
into the ‘value and safety of the vaccine’. 49 Questions were tabled in the House and
Ashley was at the forefront of the campaign in Parliament for several years. This was
in direct contrast to the situation in New Zealand where both the government and the
opposition refused to discuss the SV40 issue and members of parliament seemed
reluctant to take it up.
One of the most important differences was the role of the media. The press in Britain
widely publicised doubts over the safety of the pertussis vaccine, indicating that the
DHSS had only minimal influence with journalists. A study of newspaper articles on
pertussis immunisation taken from British papers in 1982 was undertaken by C. M.
Harding, a Psychology Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. She found that
they tended to emphasise the ‘problems associated with the vaccine…rather than
45 The Times, 13 February 1978, p.2. Times Digital Archive 1785-1985.
http://web6.infotrac.galegroup.com.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/itw/infomark/
46 E. J. Gangarosa et al, ‘Impact of anti-vaccine movements’, p.357.
47 J. P. Baker, ‘The pertussis controversy in Great Britain, 1974-1986’, Vaccine, 21, 25-26, 2003,
p.4003. Dr Jeffrey Baker is the Medical Director at Duke Children’s Primary Care and Assistant
Clinical Professor in the Department of Paediatrics at Duke University, North Carolina, United States.
48 J. P. Baker, ‘The pertussis controversy in Great Britain, 1974-1986’, p.4007. See G. Dick, ‘Reactions
to Routine Immunization in Childhood’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 67, 5, 1974,
49 T. Smith, ‘The Parliamentary Scene’, Journal of Medical Ethics, 3, 1977, p.100. See also Jack
Ashley’s letter to The Times, 1 March 1977, p.15, in the same vein.
243