A former federal health minister has dismissed as "crackpots and conspiracy theorists" those who would actively discourage Australians from having their swine flu vaccine.
Dr Michael Wooldridge says the anti-vaccination movement was leading a push against Australians taking up the offer of the free vaccine, but their opposition was putting more people at risk.
"We are of course dealing with the first pandemic of the internet age which poses its own problems," says Dr Wooldridge, who says a misinformation campaign was now underway on the internet.
"The number of people who are actively opposed to immunisation is tiny, in the order of two per cent, but that group is disproportionately heard.
"The media often feels it has to present both sides of the argument ... (but) one side of the argument is almost universally held by the medical profession and most people think the rest are crackpots."
Dr Wooldridge was federal health minister in the Howard government from 1996 to 2001.
One of the achievements of his term in office was the "Immunise Australia" campaign, which saw Australia's global ranking on immunisation jump 68th to sixth in just three years.
He was a panel member on Thursday at an expert briefing in Sydney designed to dispel "myths" about the swine flu vaccine made by CSL Ltd, and which is now being rolled out across the country.
Dr Wooldridge said those who heed the anti-vaccination message - not only in relation to the swine flu vaccine but also a range of immunisations - were placing themselves or their loved ones at increased risk of ill health or death.
"Their message is poisonous and insidious ... they sow seeds of doubt in the public's mind about what is essentially the single greatest advance in public health in the last 200 years," Dr Wooldridge says.
"This group has the potential to do enormous damage, and my personal view is they should treated as the crackpots and conspiracy theorists that they are."
Also on the panel was Dr Alan Hampson, the Past Deputy Director of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza.
He says swine flu continued to pose a risk in Australia - especially to those with chronic illness, pregnant women, and the young - and that it was likely to circulate through summer.
"I'm breaking a leg to get there, I'd like to get my shot," Dr Hampson says.
Professor Terry Nolan, Foundation Head of Population Health at the University of Melbourne, also addressed the "myth" that Australia should have held off the swine flu vaccine roll out until next year, to gauge its effect in the northern hemisphere and allow more clinical trials to be undertaken.
"Waiting ... while we have unprotected, unvaccinated, at risk individuals in our own population, while we have the vaccine in hand that has passed the relevant regulatory hurdle, would be, frankly, unconscionable," Prof Nolan says.
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