Jabbed (ATOM Study Guide)

How do we decide whether to vaccinate, or not ... and what are the real risks?

Jabbed (2013), made by 2012 Emmy Award–winning Australian documentary filmmaker Sonya Pemberton, traverses the globe to look at the real science behind vaccinations, and the real cost of opting out. Two years in the making, this thoughtful and wide-ranging documentary is packed with surprises for vaccine supporters and opponents alike. We hear from vaccine makers, alternative healers, psychologists, immunologists and anthropologists, and parents who have, and have not, chosen to vaccinate their kids. What they have to say will confound your expectations, whatever your position on the most important and divisive public health question of the decade.

Highlighting real cases, Jabbed tracks outbreaks of communicable diseases and demonstrates just how fast they can spread – and how many people can fall sick – when a community's immunity barrier falls. The documentary also reveals cases where children have become ill after having routine inoculations. Is the vaccine really to blame, or is there something else, something unseen, at work?

Meanwhile, all this is monitored in London by a crack team of rumour-trackers, who map exactly how single pieces of half-truth expand and mutate, via the internet, into front-page scare-stories that can terrify parents and plunge them into asking the potent question – to vaccinate or not to vaccinate? What would you do to protect the ones you love?

Diseases that were largely eradicated forty years ago are returning. Across the world children are getting sick and dying from preventable conditions because nervous parents are skipping their children's shots. And it's not just kids: adults, too, are being hit hard. Yet the stories of vaccine reactions are frightening, with rare cases of people being damaged, even killed, by vaccines. How do we decide whether to vaccinate or not, and what are the real risks?

Curriculum links
Jabbed has curriculum application across several key learning areas. As a topic of national importance it is relevant to Civics and Citizenship discussion and debate at senior school levels. However, in particular, Jabbed is applicable to the Australian Science curriculum for Year 9.