Jane Hansen of The Daily Telegraph writes that the so-called wellness industry has an unhealthy dark side that needs exposing.

Increasingly it is revealed parents are not vaccinating their children, and feeding kids potentially deadly raw milk for the “healthy” bacteria on the advice of their alternative therapist.

While most of the professional bodies for alternative practitioners have now come out with position statements in support of vaccination, in practice many are quietly advising their patients not to vaccinate, fuelling a discredited link to autism, and directing parents to feed their kids raw milk to treat illnesses such as autism.

A good deal of the chiropractic sector does not even believe in germ theory. They believe that as long as you pop along for your “wellness” tinkering every week, you won’t fall prey to infectious diseases.

Some leading chiropractors were members of the anti-vaccination group the AVSN, which once boasted that chiropractors were its greatest financial supporters.

Recent comments by Arizona chiropractor Heather Wolfson about a five-year-old who could not be vaccinated, and who died of chickenpox related complications, shows just how deranged chiropractic thinking can be.

“If this mother would have sought out chiropractic care, gave just two simple vitamins A and C, she would have never developed pneumonia … This little girl is dead, not from chickenpox, but from chemicals and poor nutrition.”

I would like to see those chiropractors who don’t believe in germ theory to head to ebola-stricken Africa to put their craft to the test.

The wellness industry lives by the mantra “food is medicine”, a term deeply embedded in the anti-vax movement.

Amid its advice is to drink raw milk. As naturopath Helen Goodwin wrote, this is the only way it should be drunk, “as the beneficial bacteria lactobacillus acidophilus is still alive”.

But Goodwin acknowledges the potential for harmful bacteria is the reason why it is illegal to sell raw milk for consumption in Australia.

It contains listeria and E.coli and other pathogens which recently caused the death of a Victorian toddler.