A Film Festival In Victoria Is Screening A Controversial Anti-Vax Doco And People Are Pissed
'Vaxxed' was pulled from New York's Tribeca Film Festival after protests by scientists and filmmakers.
The organisers of a small film festival in country Victoria have faced a significant publish backlash over their decision to show a controversial documentary that links childhood vaccinations with autism.
Jimmy Kimmel And Some Incredible Doctors Have Gloriously Smacked Down The Anti-Vaxxer Movement
The Castlemaine Local and International Film Festival will host the Australian premiere of Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe. Directed by disgraced British doctor Andrew Wakefield, whose since-discredited 1998 “research paper” is frequently cited by anti-vaccination campaigners, the film made headlines earlier this year when it was pulled from the program at Robert DeNiro’s Tribeca Film Festival following protests by doctors, scientists and filmmakers.
Speaking to The Age, the festival’s creative director David Thrussell said that festival staff in Castlemaine have been subject to “a professional campaign of intimidation,” and that several of them have had their Facebook accounts hacked. Nevertheless, he said that the festival would go ahead with the screening.
“It strikes me as undemocratic to not listen to dissenting voices,” Thrussell declared, a point that actually sounds pretty reasonable until you consider that fact that the dissenting voices in this case have literally no evidence to back up their claims, and that giving them a microphone is actually really dangerous.
Dr Michael Gannon, president of the Australian Medical Association and a man who presumably holds at least one more medical degree than Thrussell, told The Age that “nothing good can come from the public screening of this film.”
“Every time we see a one or two per cent reduction in the rate of vaccination in our community we give the opportunity for preventable infectious diseases to take a hold,” he said.
Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe will screen at the Castlemaine Local and International Film Festival on Saturday October 8. Don’t go see it.