Australian Vaccination Network crashes and burns on seminar tour

As many know, Australia’s leading anti-vaccination lobby group, the deceptively named Australian Vaccination Network recently finished it’s “tour” of Western NSW.

The tour itself was an abysmal failure. Billed Vaccination and Health Rights – a seminar for parents and health professionals it attracted mainly aged hippies and conspiracy theorists. The most compelling development was rumoured to be Greg Beattie shouldering Meryl Dorey out of the spotlight.

Subtracting the obligatory four heads of the Doreys and Beatties, attendance was likely anything from 4 to 15 across various venues. This silliness may have cost over $7,500 if food, fuel and dodgy accommodation is included. To the surprise of many it cemented the disgust which with Meryl Dorey, Greg Beattie and the other misguided members of the antivax movement are regarded.

The “fury” expressed by residents of Tamworth appears typical of the reception the AVN received. The vicious online reception that the public of Tamworth laid out and the pummeling the AVN received in the comments attached to that article ensured Tamworth attracted the highest attendance.

Another piece, Controversial AVN vaccination group in Tamworth briefly covers the event. It includes the grab for money the AVN is known for;

Participants paid $12 to attend the meeting and were given information on the AVN legal fighting fund appeal where they can donate money to help the AVN fight their own pending legal cases and also to support the “fighting fund for non-vaccinating partners.”

The group says it helps parents in court proceedings fight their ex-partners or spouses who seek orders of the court to vaccinate their children.

Sounds darn tootin’ except “the group” has never done any such thing. Nor do they have any pending legal cases. This is a bald faced lie and an outright scam. I can be no kinder.

So, their largest turnout included critical journalists and the “ninja academic”, Scotty Harrison. Scotty is an Armidale local and PhD candidate in Health Economics. Scotty – the most qualified individual on the entire tour – took the stage and worked his way quickly to evidence based figures on the history of vaccines. Within 12 minutes he had demolished the thrust of a life time of deception from Greg Beattie (video below).

Greg Beattie: His antivax lies were demolished before his eyes

Scotty didn’t just lay bare the lie that decreases in mortality before vaccination, supposedly refute the efficacy of vaccination. Improved living standards led to increased recovery – but not reduced incidence of disease. He also raised the reality of vaccine preventable disease-induced disability. Then furthermore spoke of his own struggle with ADD, asthma, allergies and eczema. There is no evidence they are due to the vaccines he received as a child, he concluded.

He makes it quite clear vaccines brought about the elimination of the incidence of disease. When pre-vaccine recovery meant a lifetime of scarred lungs or severe brain damage or being bed ridden with multiple organ damage, the onus is upon people like Beattie to convince us just how vaccines are supposedly useless. As seen below the video, even in the present day (wherein no changes in living standards have occurred) the impact of vaccination on disease is striking.

Delightfully, Dorey and Beattie didn’t expect any presentation that might be in dissent to their theme. They refused Scotty’s invitation to return the next night. Keep an ear out for the spontaneous applause on Scotty’s point on how poorly the vaccination “debate” is being conducted. Strange then that this enthusiasm vanishes once his content is known.

As much as one may want to support the AVN in their quest for legitimacy, “because every story has two sides”, I’m afraid that’s presently impossible.

This trip was an unmitigated disaster.

Over to Scotty…