A pro-vaccination group have asked Immigration Minister Peter Dutton to deny a controversial American anti-vaccination campaigner a visa to speak in Australia.
American osteopath Sherri Tenpenny is planning a speaking tour of the country to lecture against vaccination.
Dr Tenpenny believes vaccines cause autism, asthma, ADHD and auto-immune disorders.
“What is actually in those vaccines? There’s a whole lot more coming through that needle than you can possibly imagine,” said Dr Tenpenny.
The March series of seminars are aimed at parents of babies.
Seminar organiser Stephanie Messenger, of Brisbane, said the doctor was an “excellent speaker”.
“She’s only been to the CDC archives and got a lot of information – that’s the Center for Disease Control in the US, so a Government place – and got all the information and I think parents have a right to know what the Government knows and is not telling people,” Ms Messenger said.
She said people calling for Dr Tenpenny’s visa to be denied “clearly don’t believe in freedom of speech”.
“They do believe in censorship and they don’t believe that parents have a right to have information,” she said.
Talks target ‘vulnerable parents’
Stop the Australian Anti-Vaccination Network member Dave Hawkes said he helped to start a petition calling for Immigration Minister Peter Dutton to deny Dr Tenpenny a visa.
“I guess the thing is you’re looking at the difference between people whose views you disagree with and people who are actually endangering people’s health,” Dr Hawkes said.
“By spruiking these seminars to tell people to not vaccinate, that’s actually endangering their health.”
National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance director Professor Peter McIntyre said he was concerned Dr Tenpenny was targetting vulnerable parents.
“People going along to a talk which is billed about as being about raising healthy babies and children may well be very concerned about the best outcome for their children, but at the same time confused about some of the information,” Professor Peter McIntyre said.
“I think there’s, yes, justified concern that someone in that situation might be misled by the sort of nonsense which Dr Tenpenny will be talking.
“We really want to see good quality and strongly-supported evidence being presented to people, not half-baked anecdotal sort of information which really doesn’t help anybody.”