From time to time, letters consisting of pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo about the alleged dangers of vaccination appear in the press. They follow a set formula - dark comments about the medical profession, government and sometimes drug companies, with allegations about conspiracies between them to foist "dangerous" chemicals on the unsuspecting public. The swine flu vaccine has been a recent target of such correspondence.

These letters should be treated with the utter contempt which they deserve. Vaccination programmes worldwide have eradicated smallpox and have now confined polio to only three countries, with great hope that it will disappear within 10 years. Diphtheria, tetanus, haemophilus meningitis, polio, all significant causes of mortality and permanent disability in the western world, are now entirely or virtually non-existent. Measles would also have been eradicated by now, had the unfortunate and unfounded scare about MMR not surfaced a few years ago.

Most of these diseases are viral and are, therefore, untreatable once they take hold.

I say to those peddlers of fictional warnings that they should carry each case where individuals decline vaccination having read some of this nonsense, and then suffer grievously for it on their consciences. I challenge them, for example, to sit and watch a sufferer die of tetanus - I have had to do so, and it is pretty awful.

Vaccination is not perfect - nothing on this earth is! However, it has proven to be an extremely safe and effective tool against what have been, and, in some cases, still are, dangerous and unpleasant diseases.