In early December 1989 I was living with my family in Hobart, Tasmania. My two sons and I went in to see my GP for my youngest son’s 18 month medical checkup.

The doctor coerced me under duress (basically alluded that I was being a negligent mother if I didn’t vaccinate my baby son) and in the process conned me into having a whooping cough booster with my children.

No problem, I thought. It was to demonstrate to my sons that we all copped injections as a matter of course in life.

Within a month we all had whooping cough – that lasted the full three months.

During this time we went to South Australia to attend my mother’s marriage to her second husband. Yes we coughed through the entire ceremony.

It would otherwise be unremarkable except that at the time we did not have access to phone and internet services like we do now.

I used the opportunity, while at my mother’s place, to call my South Australian family doctor who asked me where we received these vaccinations. I told him.

He sighed and said something like how he was not supposed to tell me what he was about to say but that in Adelaide and Hobart there was a trial being done with a new live cell whooping cough vaccination.

Apparently it had created an epidemic and we had been caught up in the net. He was extremely apologetic and said we simply had to ride it out. After this, nothing more was heard about it.

He said that the medical community were hoping that it would not get any worse than it already was and said that from what he had observed so far that we should be “ok”.

The point for me though was that we had been subjected to an experimental trial and had not been informed of this prior to the injections and the doctor in Hobart who had administered this had been particularly persuasive.

That was when I woke up. I am thankful that we were not injured more than we were. However I think as it was my eldest son’s second injection it did affect him more than my youngest son who never had any further vaccines.

Neither have I.

I don’t know if this is a story that would interest you or if you have had other readers who have contacted you with a similar experience. Neither am I sure how it would be possible to find out more about this.

Thank you for reading my story,