Manufacturing dissent: double standards in defending vaccine denial

If you happen to pop past the AVN Facebook page you might notice this entry:

Pretty straightforward. A post with three comments. The three comments are…

Oh. So there seems to be a comment missing. In fact it was the original comment, and here it is:

A paying member was censored. In fact their comment was deleted so that a fairly basic request to have emails answered could be hidden. The issue at play is that the AVN owe over $180,000 in magazines for which they have already taken fees. 11 magazines have not been delivered. Already 2 this year on the back of 5 last year. Yet this member appears to have sent at least two emails requesting clarification and they have clearly been ignored. Still the AVN website censors the fact it is in trouble. It is brazenly seeking new members claiming:

Membership includes 6 editions of Living Wisdom magazine (either hard copy or digital or both if you choose) and there are discounts available for 12 and 18 issue memberships.

If you pay extra as a “professional member” you get a “free listing” in the AVN magazine that does not exist.

In the conclusion of Making Censorship Backfire, co-authored by AVN supporter and full member, Dr. Brian Martin, we read:

An examination of cases where censorship backfires provides some valuable lessons in how to make this happen. The first important point is that the censorship should be exposed to audiences who will be outraged by the act of censorship itself or by the disproportion between the act (speaking out) and the censoring response (a heavy-handed attack). It is essential to have solid documentation, which means that only some cases of censorship can be exposed in this way.

It is important not to be intimidated. Censorship is often backed up by threats of what will happen if those who are censored do not acquiesce. It can be rewarding to see these threats as potential opportunities. By exposing the threats, the backlash can be made all the stronger. Targets of censorship need to be prepared for further attack – including personal invective – should they challenge the censorship.

It is unlikely wide exposure of this would help the member Dorey has ripped off. The information quoted above is interesting in that the best response would be to politely reply arguing that Meryl has had ample time to respond. Furthermore you have serious concerns about the AVN selling magazine subscriptions when overdue issues are now clearly unlikely to eventuate. This raises questions of Fair Trading and advertising under false pretences. It would be in the interests of all concerned if members could discuss this in an open forum fashion.

Of course, as has happened many times before, this member would be banned (if that hasn’t happened already) and the entry deleted. What follows is touched upon in the quote from Dr. Martin above. Dorey writes scathing and vicious reviews of individuals and her loyal members swoop in to attack them on other social media. Claims of being threatened and bullied and having to hire security to defend herself from bullies who don’t believe in free speech, health choices and your right to choose gradually take on a life of their own. The “backfire” works to Meryl’s advantage.

Dr. Martin’s writings on censorship are part of his much larger body of work on dissent, including struggles for autonomy and democratic rights for citizens oppressed by malignant governments. His work often has an artistic choreographed appeal that whilst interesting reveals an untested work in progress.

What is of interest to this article is his defence of antivaccination lobbyists censoring information in order to convey a fallacious and sometimes dangerous message of authority and accuracy to unsuspecting readers. As I suggested recently extremely serious questions can be asked about Dr. Martin’s moral and ethical conviction. This is only reinforced in finding that altruism is not a feature of his work yet saying and doing what one wants, when one wants regardless of the consequences, are features of those he willingly assists.

Muddying the waters further are his attacks upon community volunteers who have themselves raised dissent. The failure of government regulators to challenge what is a litany of legislative transgression, charity scams and antisocial behaviour by Australia’s so-called Australian Vaccination Network is undeniable. Devoted to attacking conventional medicine and vaccination, the group continued unimpeded for 17 years until individual activists raised dissent with government agencies.

Dr. Martin holds his PhD in physics but does not work in any related area. Apart from being president of Whistleblowers Australia, he is presently Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong. Thus use of the term “Doctor” is quite misleading in qualifying his skill as a social scientist. It is unclear if he has any requisite understanding of ethics or moral responsibility as it pertains to social sciences and indeed, society as a whole.

One may venture to suggest it is of course unsurprising then, that Martin also writes about “dissident scientists” who work in dissent of what he terms “paradigms”, disagreeing as to what theories are correct. We are left only to ponder how a physicist has found himself well versed in the mechanics of “scientific dissent” whilst at the same time defending the denial of evidence as if it were dissent.

In startling misunderstanding of the scientific method and the value of evidence he notes incorrectly in Grassroots Science:

Dissent is central to science: the formulation of new ideas and the discovery of new evidence is the driving force behind scientific advance. At the same time, certain theories, methods, and ways of approaching the world – often called paradigms – are treated as sacrosanct within the professional scientific community. Those who persist in challenging paradigms may be treated not as legitimate scientists but as renegades or outcasts. […]

For example, there are many individuals who have developed challenges and alternatives to relativity, quantum mechanics, and the theory of evolution, three theories central to modern science. […]

Western medical authorities at first rejected acupuncture as unscientific but, following demonstrations of its effectiveness, eventually accepted or tolerated it as a practice under the canons of western biomedicine, rejecting its associations with non-Western concepts of the body. […]

At the same time, some mainstream medical practitioners and researchers are hostile to alternative health. This is apparent in pronouncements that taking vitamin supplements is a waste of money or in police raids on alternative cancer therapists, the raids being encouraged by mainstream opponents.

Many proponents of alternative health say that mainstream medical science is distorted by corporate, government, and professional pressures. In this context, grassroots medical science presents itself as being truer to the ethos of science as a search for truth unsullied by vested interests.

Whilst one is grateful to Dr. Martin for seeking to identify certain dynamics it is apparent that his reinterpretation of the facts serves evidence denial and pseudoscience very well. Arguably “dissent” as he terms it here may well prove valuable to science. But one might venture to add it’s primary value has been in provoking the need to examine dissenting theories such that they ultimately bring about their own demise.

He has misrepresented vitamin therapy and acupuncture, falsely accused scientists of holding “paradigms” sacrosanct and completely ignored the value of randomised controlled trials in revealing the validity or not of “outcasts” theories. I think it’s fair to accept the final paragraph as an observation, whilst also noting it’s inexcusable to omit that the evidence favours this as a distorted conspiracy. Alternatives to medicine have flourished in Australia, crept into educational institutes and been subsidised by health insurance for many years.

It would be pointless to continue with examples, which go as far as criticising the dismissal of anecdotal evidence by mainstream science. For the purpose of this article this would include vaccines causing autism, SIDS, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma and diabetes. I have chosen those examples deliberately. Whilst The Australian Immunisation Handbook specifically states research has constantly replicated no link Martin is supervising a PhD student conducting a literature review, but no research, who continually states vaccines have been shown to cause these conditions.

What is clear from the errors above and the Grassroots Science article in general is that Dr. Martin either has no grasp on the concept of evidence and it’s importance to science, or seeks to misrepresent application of the scientific method to the extent of devaluing it to the status of merely discerning an opinion. One cannot ignore the parallels between the tone of his writing and that of his PhD student Judy Wilyman.

Many have sought to have Brian Martin answer how he can ignore the devastating impact of his support of the AVN. As I noted recently this goes as far as making excuses for Ms. Dorey’s refusal to engage in scientific discourse with those who seek to challenge many of her claims. A substantial amount of his work claims to expose censorship and the tactics of those who refuse to accept “dissident” or “grassroots scientists”.

Thus it is deeply troubling that he defends Ms. Dorey’s censoring of material. More troubling is his making excuses for Dorey’s refusal to accept to enter into discourse as a “grassroots scientist”. Yet most bizarre is his championing of Dorey actually censoring material to sabotage engagement as a “grassroots scientist” – and actually blame this on those who were censored despite them offering Dorey an avenue to provide evidence.

Consider this recent censorship by Dorey. It served to censor the truth and defend several demonstrable errors. In Martin’s view Dorey has no need to engage because people have “attacked” her. Despite this being a self serving interpretation, what it demonstrates is the perpetuation of misinformation. This is exactly why individuals have raised concern about overlap as an academic, an advocate for truth in evidence, the supervisor of Judy Wilyman and defender of Meryl Dorey.

This post below appeared on AVN’s Facebook page with the following comments. The first from Dorey makes the head spin. There is only one type b strain of Haemophilus influenzae (called Hib). Yet she informs readers that the Hib vaccine caused an increase in diagnosis of other types of Hib caused by yet even more Hib strains. Later she mentions “Hib (all strains)”:

Later this reply was added:

And yes, it was part of the thread:

Now if you pop back you’ll find it has been deleted and the other poster to take issue with Ms. Dorey’s creativity has now taken issue with Tristan’s rather divisive “us” reference.

The individual censored is also a member of the AVN and yes, is also wondering whatever happened to the magazines promised so long ago. Is this honestly how paying members are treated by Meryl Dorey? If so then one must begin to wonder exactly how Dorey and Dr. Martin are so certain that anonymous threats apparently come from people who have not been schemed, dismissed and discarded.

In Suppressing Research Data: Methods, Context, Accountability, and Responses, Martin writes:

Censorship, fraud, and publication biases are ways in which the availability of research data can be distorted. A different process is distortion of the perception of research data rather than distortion of the data itself. In other words, data is openly available, but efforts are made to shape people’s perception of it.

There appears to be little doubt of a significant conflict of interest. Martin is well aware of and extremely deft with tactics used to deflect the problems noted above. He is defending censorship and fraud at the AVN and his student has an exclusive history of publication bias. More recently Martin himself has distorted data by selectively using a misrepresentation of usual chatter on the Stop The AVN Facebook page. The aim – as he himself offers above – is to shape the public perception of those who challenge Ms. Dorey in such a way as to vilify and defame them.

As time passes I’ll endeavour to look closer at Martin’s work attacking those who essentially accept the overwhelming evidence on vaccination. Already we can dismiss his defence of impartiality. Yet so blatant and unethical is his present state of evidence denial a close look at parallels between defending antivaccination groups and his earlier work is warranted.

Given that Judy Wilyman and Meryl Dorey rely almost entirely on imagined conflicts of interest, this very conflict of interest within a conflict of interest to bolster manufactured dissent from outright denial and censorship is beginning to look very tacky indeed.

I do hope the University of Wollongong have a clear conscience.

Meryl Dorey’s Great “Compulsory Vaccination” Swindle

Your donation to the AVN will help support freedom of vaccination choice and oppose compulsory vaccination in Australia!

Meryl Dorey 30th April 2012

Only 12 days after the AVN had its Charitable Fundraising Authority reinstated we found the very same old scams waiting to greet us.

We can trace this trick right back to early editions of the AVN’s “Doing The Rounds” newsletter. This screenshot from February 2007, hassling members for money could have been lifted from Meryl’s most recent Facebook plea.

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The next month Dorey had been “meeting with our barrister in Lismore” about how to “approach this huge injustice”. Oh… and send more money!

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Don’t you just love the manufactured urgency. “Frantically busy… phone calls… nursing students, medical students and hospital workers who are all up in arms because of the mandatory vaccinations….”. 

Before you could say, “Mandatory Donation”, it’s May 2007 and we read, “Mandatory vaccination for all is on our doorstep”, and “Urgent Funds” are needed (min. $2,000) to stop mandatory vaccination of girls with HPV vaccine. Meryl breathlessly tells us:

Yesterday I was told by a trusted media contact that NSW health is considering taking away the right for parents to refuse this vaccine (HPV). As many of you would know, this is exactly what we predicted would happen once vaccination became mandatory for health care workers.

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Arguably, in 5 years the only constant in Meryl Dorey’s noble quest to slay the Demon-spawn policy that threatens health workers and patients with protection from vaccine preventable disease has been the flow of cash into the AVN Black Hole. More to the point Meryl takes this message on the road to her “seminars” at which psyched up Earth Mother Moonbeam types throw cash into the AVN donation tin. In the past what happened to this money? It vanished. March 2008:

From Inverell Forum March 2008

Of course we don’t need to get overheated. Surely Meryl is sticking to the facts here. It’s only about health workers facing a requirement to be vaccinated if employed in certain areas, right? Besides we can check a recent newspaper article that just happens to deal with those who argue Meryl is committing fraud.

The AVN is appealing for donations to help oppose compulsory vaccination in Australia.

SAVN claims that appealing for and collecting donations for a government policy which does not exist constitutes fraud.

In response Ms Dorey accused SAVN of libel, claiming vaccination in Australia was compulsory.

“There is compulsory vaccination in Australia. It exists for health professionals,” Ms Dorey said.

Hmmm. Fair point. It is only for health workers. On the other hand there’s not much to draw the eye of the donor to “health professionals”, in the tweet above or the slide used in her “seminars”. One could conceivably be misled. Particularly with the overarching urgency that YOU must do something. Perhaps Meryl clears this up in subsequent slides?

Ooops. That was 4 years and 3 months ago. Let’s tally up shall we?

Total correct: Zero.

It appears that an excessive amount of time is spent scaring the public about non-existent policies. Sure, Meryl can plead it’s only existing vaccination mandates in her sights. Yet the premises upon which an inducement to donate is made are what’s important here. Stop The AVN seem to have a very strong case.

Meryl also argues that vaccination of health workers places patients at risk of infection from the vaccinated staff. No evidence is ever provided to qualify or quantify these statements. Meryl also ignores that the health of nurses, doctors, assistants and other staff who qualify for vaccination is also of the highest importance to Occupational Health and Safety.

Let’s examine this notion of vaccinated staff spreading “infection”. Cases in which immunity wanes, such as influenza and pertussis, conceivably qualify for Meryl’s shocking third point above. Staff fully vaccinated against influenza may still contract another virus or a strain not present in a seasonal vaccine. Here also we can point to the doomsday scenario in red above. But quantify these rare events and they have no measurable impact. More so the word “infection” is generic.

So let’s say a health worker receives the influenza shot yet catches another viral infection or a rare influenza strain not in the vaccine. If passed on to a patient it’s likely this will be identified in short time. Or pertussis. A health worker boosted with acellular pertussis varieties may contract and pass on a weakened “strain” not present in the vaccine, producing mild symptoms in a patient. This would also be identified.

Has the vaccine caused this transfer? No. Is it in any way responsible for the transfer? No. But Meryl wants her audience to believe vaccinated staff will make unvaccinated patients sick. Vaccinating staff against influenza has been shown to halve patient mortality, according to studies well before Dorey drew up these slides. Clearly Dorey is misleading her audience to create a fallacious impression of a life saving policy.

Unvaccinated staff are required to wear masks, refrain from situations of potential infection and strictly adhere to international standards of infection control. I doubt sincerely there are no cases of unvaccinated staff spreading disease. Exactly how Dorey can make this claim remains a mystery.

One of the most sickening scams I’ve seen Meryl pull – and there have been many – is in the slide below. No NSW nurses are threatened with job loss. There is no record of this incident (or anything like it), and when challenged for source material Ms. Dorey could produce none. It does seem to be an entire fabrication.

Why didn’t Meryl cite this tragedy to the Northern Star 19 days ago? A good question indeed.

An even better question however is what would Meryl like to say about her comment during the proposed American Airlines audio-visual Executive Report? Meryl appears to be strongly denying she is seeking donations to prevent compulsory vaccination for anyone other than health workers. So, this audio transcript is seemingly out of synch’ [bold mine]:

Interviewer: The debate over vaccinations has received an increasing amount of attention in recent years as questions have been raised regarding the safety of compulsory vaccines. And joining us now to give her view is Meryl Dorey. […]

Meryl: Well, vaccination is a medical procedure and it carries with it risks and benefits. So parents need to be aware of all of the information. We need to have real access to information and vaccination should never be compulsory because it is not 100% safe, and no government has the right to say “you have to put your child’s health at risk because we have made this procedure compulsory”.

Ooops. Not much ambiguity there. Not so much as a nurses roster sheet floating on the breeze. That firms Stop The AVN’s argument that Meryl is seeking donations for non-existent policies or imminent policy changes. In fact the clincher here is what Meryl doesn’t say when placed on the spot. The above out-take is quite clear and the interview finishes with a referral to the AVN website.

Let’s tie a couple of loose threads together by hopping around a bit. Up above Dorey warns fictionally of “exactly what we predicted would happen once vaccination became mandatory for health care workers”, suggesting the same is about to happen to schoolgirls with HPV vaccine. Interestingly enough these predictions about mandatory vaccination pop up here and there. Here’s one from July 2009 at the height of the H1N1 vaccination is a plot to cull humanity hysteria, that could rightly be said to instill great unease in the gullible.


Now, lets nick back to May 2007 again. In this case a nurse decides to donate her NSW Nurses Association membership fee to the AVN because, as Meryl says:

After all, we are the ones who are helping nurses (and doctors, and physiotherapists, and everyone else who works in hospitals and is going to school to train in one of these areas) so she felt that we deserved her support as well. Thank you for that and if anyone else out there would like to do the same, that would be wonderful!

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My favourite piece is actually the second paragraph. Meryl claims to have lobbied Federal Government to ensure vaccine objectors continue to receive certain allowances including the Maternity Immunisation Allowance. It’s a bogus claim of course, but Meryl seizes the moment to argue that kind donors have given their allowance to The AVN because without the AVN they wouldn’t get this or the Childcare Benefit.

Then 2 1/2 years later, in October 2009, we get a very similar combination. Meryl has been overrun with nurses suffering the horror of vaccination, cruelly ignored by colleagues. She recounts this, then presents the option of Pain Free Fundraising. Once again, some kind donor suggested handing over to Meryl their Maternity Immunisation Allowance which, without the AVN lobbying away in Canberra, they wouldn’t have. And nor would they have the Childcare Benefit either. Amazing how history repeats is it not?

I’d say it’s a safe bet the AVN will continue to maintain the momentum on imminent sabotage of civil and health rights as a means to make money. Just the right amount of fear, calculated misinformation and restrictions on the truth should work out to be a nice little earner.

They are after all, rather good at it.

The Real Australian Sceptics

A short time ago the Skeptic community received a delightful tickle on the collective ribcage.

A rather intellectually dishonest blog appeared with the title The Real Australian Sceptics under the pretence of “critiquing” articles. It was, predictably, Meryl Wynn Dorey’s latest shot at the ontology of her assumed foes. Those worshippers of evidence and scientific consensus: The Skeptics. It’s an old tactic. If you can’t sustain an argument attack the party that holds an opposing viewpoint.

This isn’t the post to dissect the intellectual absurdity of Ms. Dorey’s attack on Skeptics. Suffice to to say – again – this game of provocation wherein Ms. Dorey futilely seeks to alienate and besmirch skeptics has it’s genesis within stratospheric errors she has made in the wake of being held to account.

The blog itself is monumental dreck. To date it’s emerging as a rehash of all the disproved antivaccination creeds and attacks on accepted evidence. Magically, everything old is new again. The usual rules of ultra-strict comment censorship apply.

If you’re keen for your daily dose of Merylisms, The Real Australian Sceptics doesn’t disappoint, opening with an attempt at selective deception in the first sentence.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a sceptic is defined as, “a person inclined to question or doubt accepted opinions”.

Actually the Oxford English Dictionary entry reads:

1 a person inclined to question or doubt accepted opinions.

  • a person who doubts the truth of Christianity and other religions; an atheist.

2 Philosophy: an ancient or modern philosopher who denies the possibility of knowledge, or even rational belief, in some sphere.

Meryl appears to take advantage of the phrase “accepted opinion”, by omission of the widely accepted opinion of theistic persuasion as a working example. Furthermore the second entry refers to philosophical denial of the possibility of knowledge or even rational belief. Having falsely defined “sceptic”, this then leaves the door open for Meryl to potter about on the very fringes of rationality and knowledge, wearing the guise of evidence whilst ranting about science.

Surely even with limited use of “accepted opinions”, we must include Naturopathy, Homeopathy, Home Birth, Vaccines causing Autism, Vaccine Dangers, Pharmaceutical bias, etc, etc. These are all irrefutably on the scale of accepted opinions. An opinion moves toward fact or mere belief based upon the amount of evidence that sustains it. The subtitle of Dorey’s blog is Accept Nothing. Question Everything. Apparently then, this is applied only to suit the author.

I think we can see, straight out of the blocks as it were, problems with her method of attack. Like two Meryls in a particle accelerator one is shooting off counter-clockwise at the speed of light confident those Wascally Skeptics will finally get theirs. Another Meryl is shooting clockwise questioning everything, accepting nothing… including the existence of the other Meryl. Eventually they collide head on in a great splattering mess.

Meryl also takes a shot at “the American spelling”: Skeptic. Wrong again. In doing this she’s really having a go at the Skeptic movement. Nothing new here, and as we’ll see her tactics are also copied and pasted from others whose beliefs have failed to endure scientific scrutiny. Skepticism is not cynicism or denial as we might associate these concepts with climate science denial, vaccine denial, HIV/AIDS denial and the steadily growing denial of conventional medicine.

Colloquially, Skeptics can be said to seek the evidence, consider existing evidence or ask for evidence when presented with certain claims. Skepticism is the rejection of predetermined ideas that aren’t supported by evidence. Skeptical activism may be described as where evidence, science and consumer and/or human rights overlap. Under What Is Skepticism? Brian Dunning writes in part:

The true meaning of the word skepticism has nothing to do with doubt, disbelief, or negativity. Skepticism is the process of applying reason and critical thinking to determine validity. It’s the process of finding a supported conclusion, not the justification of a preconceived conclusion… The scientific method is central to skepticism. The scientific method requires evidence, preferably derived from validated testing. Anecdotal evidence and personal testimonies generally don’t meet the qualifications for scientific evidence, and thus won’t often be accepted by a responsible skeptic; which often explains why skeptics get such a bad rap for being negative or disbelieving people. They’re simply following the scientific method.

Okay. So Skepticism is not Accept Nothing, Question Everything. It revolves around the scientific method and evidence. Yet in attacking science Dorey clumsily raises the notion of “true scepticism”.

There are those in Australian society today who call themselves sceptics (or skeptics – which is the American spelling of that word). Yet by their actions and stated beliefs, they are far removed from true scepticism.

Now we can see the purpose of the second definition in the Oxford Dictionary. I doubt Meryl is aware of the metaphilosophy of True Scepticism, most commonly associated with David Hume, the 18th Century Scottish Philosopher. Nonetheless in a roundabout sort of way Meryl has painted herself into a very tight corner wherein she is seemingly defending denial of knowledge and rational belief, as a means to critiquing scientific arguments and articles.

Oh my.

We need a term for these traitors of true scepticism of course. Some time back on her Facebook page Meryl spotted the term pseudo-skeptic. She decided there and then it was “a keeper”. Unfortunately it was already being kept and here is where it all gets a little more silly.

RationalWiki has an entry on Pseudoskepticism. Interestingly is does not describe anything like Meryl’s contention. There is Legitimate use. The use by those who deny climate change science, vaccine success, etc. In fact it does a good job of describing Meryl Wynn Dorey. The description includes:

In this case the word is simply a synonym of denialism, as there is a vast amount of real evidence which is simply willfully ignored by these pseudoskeptics. The use of the phrasing “I am skeptical of X” is to sound more rhetorically reasonable that “I don’t accept X and never will regardless of the evidence”, even if the latter is more accurate.

Then there’s the delightfully headed paragraph on Usage By Woo Promoters, which also describes Meryl Wynn Dorey:

It is perhaps more often used as a loaded term by promoters of woo to dismiss skeptical criticism of their beliefs as unfounded… Given the difficulty of absolutely disproving even the most absurd hypothesis they then go on to maintain that all those who ask for evidence are “pseudoskeptics”.

Oh, snap!

We seem to have established Meryl’s hijacking of terms for the purpose of provocation and revenge. With the greatest of respect to Meryl is must truly be the nadir of her two decade assault upon scientific knowledge. The world is full of those who despise the notion of skepticism because it quite simply requires evidence for ones claims. Dorey has no evidence. She deals in falsehoods. Very lucrative falsehoods. Scams.

The abuse of authority or the demanding of privilege based upon certain claims crumbles before skepticism’s quiet and calm request for evidence. Meryl’s fraudulent donation campaigns, subscriptions for a non existent magazine, promised vaccine tests and boasts of phoney “protection” from mandatory vaccination evaporate in the presence of just one skeptic.

In some strange anger driven fever, Ms. Dorey seeks to discredit the Skeptic movement by making absurd claims about the nature of reality and science. Suddenly claiming something isn’t true does not make one a skeptic. Nor does it remotely undermine the accepted notion of Skepticism. Accepting nothing cannot be any further removed from the outcome of scientific research. Science, as skeptics understand and accept it, is not about belief. It is about conclusion. The weight of evidence.

There is nothing wrong with doubting and questioning. Far from it. Yet at some point we need a method from which to exploit our knowledge – not a mangled pseudoskepticism that denies knowledge exists in the first place. That method is the scientific method. Proper doubt and proper questions are what give us scientific consensus.

Because of doubt, questions and the demands for evidence that skeptics and scientists continually entertain, scientific consensus can and does change. Because it can change it is arguably fragile and unfairly criticised by opponents of skepticism. Yet because of what is required to change scientific consensus, it makes for an incredibly robust source of evidence. Thus “accept nothing” is naught but a position of intellectual paucity.

Accept Nothing, Question Everything is sheer, utter denial. It demands to be seen for the intellectual cowardice it really is: Shirk Certainty.

Meryl Dorey is happy to quote Hippocrates when it suits her. I hope she is aware of this quote:

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

The Real Australian Skeptics is an emerging cornucopia of contrary, provocative nonsense based upon grossly misunderstood notions of evidence, opinion and philosophy. Whatever it is intended to be, it is certainly not a place for truth.

It is presently the very home of Ignorance.

Meryl Dorey’s Great “Vaccine Testing” Swindle

It doesn’t take much digging and delving to discover that Meryl Wynn Dorey is committing fraud and always intended to commit fraud.

In what will be the first post to examine fraud capers perpetrated by Meryl Dorey we’ll have a look at the false promises and schemes used to mislead members about the always imminent “vaccine testing”. One may wonder, where is that money now?

Charity fraud is known to be the choice of cowards. The callous, the cruel, the weak. Fines are so puny as to render the prospect of prosecution remote. The maximum fine for an offence (regardless of it’s size) that can be imposed upon the guilty is $5,500. Little wonder then that in NSW the OLGR has prosecuted one person in seven years. Jesse Phillips informed us of this last July 24th, when writing Why Charity Fraud is The Softest Crime.

He also noted:

Gaming and Racing Minister George Souris has pledged that investigating charity fraud will be a priority and that he will initiate prosecutions where appropriate. […]

Reports of bogus charities were rare but all complaints about suspicious charities were investigated, he said.

Last year the office cancelled the fundraising authorities for Solutions to Obesity Problems and the Australian Vaccination Network.

Solutions to Obesity Problems had its charity status revoked following publicity from radio presenter Ray Hadley while the AVN’s charity status was revoked after it was found to have breached charitable fundraising laws and potentially misled the public as its appeals were not done in good faith.

Neither was prosecuted.

I suggest checking The Charitable Fundraising Act 1991 (NSW Legislation) for a better understanding of “fundraising appeal”, “participating in a fundraising appeal”. etc. Do note however that Section 10 Participating In Unlawful Fundraising states:

A person who participates in a fundraising appeal which the person knows, or could reasonably be expected to know, is being conducted unlawfully is guilty of an offence.

So let’s ease in to the “vaccine testing” swindle with a generic gimme ya money appeal, that sort of morphed into having a partially stated purpose of vaccine testing. Around June of 2006 Meryl was availing her members with a magazine called Doing The Rounds. In this first issue Meryl opines that the catchy themed “$26 donation from every member donation drive” has yielded a puny $1,700.

Unfortunately, the $26 from every member donation drive has been floundering. After a flurry of donations and pledges in the first days of our appeal, the not-so-grand total to date is just over $1,700. Considering the fact that we have over 2,000 AVN members and another 800 or so readers of this email who have never joined but are reading this information, I hope that this tally can be lifted substantially in the next week or so. If you haven’t donated yet, please do so and if you are not a member, have a think about joining. Also, remember to forward our information on to friends, family and acquaintances who you think might be interested in joining.

Nothing like a bit of flounder to get an Aussie interested. By issue two of Doing The Rounds the total was $6,016 – “a fantastic start” Meryl enthused. We also learn there’s a total goal of $52,000. The detective in you has spotted that 52,000 divided by 26 suggests 2,000 members. And Meryl has put the guilt trip on another “800 or so readers”.

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Also great news! Meryl has announced “Our First Project With These Funds”. She has arranged with an independent laboratory to test two different vaccines for the presence of heavy metals. One will be a “supposedly mercury-free shot”. Also this money should now be going into a trust account with a stated purpose.

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Issue 3 of Doing The Rounds brought more updates. Another 2 grand had hit the target, but there was $48,000 to go.

As you no doubt remember, we are looking for total donations of $52,000 which equated to a donation of only $26 from each one of you. Since the last newsletter, we have raised an additional $2025 in donations which is lovely but means that we still need more than $48,000 to get to our goal.

And there was a graph headed “How Close Are We Getting?” to prove it:

Next came Doing The Rounds Issue 4. Since July 1st $3,114 had rolled in. One generous donor had given $2,000. Two things also happened in Issue 4. The promise of putting the $2,000 toward testing vaccines for heavy metals “such as mercury” was made. This now locks the AVN into certain conditions laid out in The Charitable Fundraisng Act 1993 (NSW Legislation).

  • Division Three: Application of funds raised

20 Proceeds of Appeal

(1)  Any money or benefit received in the course of a fundraising appeal conducted by the holder of an authority is to be applied according to the objects or purposes represented by or on behalf of the persons conducting the appeal as the purposes or objects of the appeal.

21 Investment

(1)  Money received in the course of a fundraising appeal which is not immediately required to be applied to the purposes or objects of the appeal may be invested only in a manner for the time being authorised by law for the investment of trust funds.

The Charitable Trusts Act 1993 notes:

In this Act:

charitable trust means any trust established for charitable purposes and subject to the control of the Court in the exercise of the Court’s general jurisdiction with respect to charitable trusts.

Effectively money raised toward “vaccine testing” must go toward vaccine testing, or into a charitable trust. Other monies not earmarked for vaccine testing, but raised from the $52,000 donation drive must be invested in a charitable trust as money raised in the course of a specific appeal.

Also, The AVN had applied to be a tax deductible gift recipient. Perhaps being over confident of success changes were made to their constitution. It all got confusing when they accordingly opened a new bank account called Australian Vaccination Network Inc. Gift Fund. Although the AVN’s application “to be a tax deductible gift recipient” was, to this day, never accepted (like say, with Charities), the practice of switching between these two accounts remains a feature of this and future scams.

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Next up is Issue 5 of Doing The Rounds. There’s $8,541.59. $2,500 has been “set aside” for testing vaccines for the presence of mercury. I do hope you have no liquids in your mouth dear reader, because it was also announced that a new goal of submitting the “results of these tests for publication in a mainstream medical journal”, had been established.

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So to date there should be one trust account holding $8,541.59 as the total so far of the “$52,000 donation drive”. And another trust account holding $2,500 for vaccine testing. The confusion with money going into Australian Vaccination Network Inc. and the meaningless Australian Vaccination Network Inc. Gift Fund bank accounts should also be corrected.

Things go a bit quiet on the Vaccine Testing front for 15 months, until January 2008. Members are then told about Your Donations At Work. Or rather, it seems their donations are not doing much work at all.

No more gushing detail about totals is forthcoming. Indeed members will never hear of any financial total related to vaccine testing again. They will also never hear of the fate of the $52,000 donation drive. Exactly how that $11,000 in total of theirs in the above screenshot is to be (or was) spent is a mystery. The fate of that money is never mentioned again.

Oh, never fear though. There were other feverish donation and fundraising drives in the meantime. Girls were being savaged with “mandatory HPV vaccination”. Only an “urgent $2,000” could save them. Legal action was to be launched by the AVN to save hospital employees from immunisation. I’ll cover those later. But in January 2008, Dorey had cranked up ye olde “vaccine testing” myth again.

You see, the donations aren’t at work because the AVN now needs a “couple of people with expertise in [vaccine testing]”. Perhaps a Laboratory Scientist, a Research Scientist, a Graduate Scientist or a medical or healthcare professional previously involved in research. They still “plan on submitting it for publication in a medical journal”.

Then came February 2008. Can You Help With Raising Funds For This Project? Suddenly donations weren’t at work anymore. In fact, they apparently weren’t even enough anymore.

I don’t have a problem with total donations not being enough to test vaccines for heavy metals. In truth the entire hoped for $52,000 would have delivered little in that respect. It’s the way this phoney caper is presented that’s concerning. And we see more polish to AVN’s standard conspiracy laden scheme of them saving members from the danger of vaccines.

The call for money blurb was:

In 1999, the Australian government ordered the removal of mercury from all childhood vaccines. It was several years however before the old mercury-laden vaccines were actually used up and in all that time, children continued to receive mercury – a known killer of brain cells – in their shots.

Recent vaccine tests conducted by HAPI (Health Advocacy in the Public Interest) indicate that many if not most childhood and adult shots may still contain this toxic heavy metal. Independent testing is needed!

The Australian Vaccination Network is planning on testing every currently-licensed vaccine for the presence of toxic heavy metals. Funding is required to perform these tests properly. Without proper independent tests, Australian children and adults may continue to be poisoned by the failure of the government to ensure the removal of toxic ingredients from vaccines.

This continued on for four more months. You can check in Doing The Rounds March, April and June 2008. Of course it’s entirely bogus. Whatever amount was needed was never conveyed. Clearly they were not consulting, or knew it was financially prohibitive. Whatever total was raised was also never conveyed. It was a crude grab for dollars. Nothing less.

Nobody ever heard of this “scheme”, any respondents to the request for research help, the proposed medical paper or a single cent related to it again. Nonetheless every AVN publication during and since 2006 have provided options for donating, getting slicker and more bold over time.

To the delight of AVN watchers however, Meryl Dorey did make one other attempt to keep the “vaccine testing” scam afloat. Heavily weighed down with donor dollars Dorey was off to the USA in October 2010. Donors had paid for multiple iMacs, iPads and countless flights around Australia. Why not a trip to good old USA? Why not indeed?

Exciting Times Ahead! gushed the October 2010 edition of Living Wisdom/AVN newsletter. Meryl was off to the Freedom For Family Wellness Summit in Washington. Just in case you were wondering what Meryl was doing jetting off to the USA almost 5 years after first promising to spend your money on Vaccine Testing you got this *:

Of course no feedback followed and no-one was kept up to date with what is essentially the last entry (to date) in the sorry saga of Meryl Dorey’s promised vaccine testing.

Just this one example indicates that the up to 25 breaches of The Charitable Fundraising Act uncovered by the OLGR were not “minor”. Indeed the most basic requirements have not been adhered to. No member has a clue where any money is, exactly what it has been spent on, or in this and other cases at what stage, and indeed how likely, the fruition of certain projects are.

All that is constant is the ongoing siphoning of money from a rapid turnover member base. Rather than accusing her critics of libel Ms. Dorey would do well to address the damning evidence that comes from her own hand. That is published under her own name.

In closing one can only be drawn again to consider the many claims of threats and harassment Dorey claims comes her way from Stop The AVN or members of various Skeptic groups. It’s a tired old line and few believe it. Her critics work from evidence not emotion.

However, if it were true I’d be worrying about the thousands of members schemed and lied to for financial gain.

Maybe someone really wanted vaccines tested.

* I’m indebted to an alert AVN watcher for knowing where to recover this text.

Vaccine Package Inserts: Not all you should be reading

If the AVN do make it to Canberra during this first quarter, “to lobby for changes to Federal legislation protecting the rights of Australians to choose not to vaccinate or to vaccinate selectively”, I’ll be particularly interested in the worth of item 5 on their list:

All parents to be provided with the manufacturer’s package inserts to the vaccines they are supposed to be giving their children with the ingredients, side effects and contraindications highlighted. We want this information to be provided well in advance of them having to make these decisions to allow them time to ask their healthcare providers questions about both safety and efficacy.

Of what possible use is this complex clinically relevant information to parents who need advice on vaccination? How often have we heard antivaccination lobbyists rattle off the worst of the worst as if they are guaranteed in all cases? Just who will these opportunistic “healthcare providers” be who finally chat with the wide eyed terrified parents thinking of an alternative? This particularly immoral intent of Meryl Dorey’s overall scheme to sabotage vaccination in Australia is born of connivance of such intellectual paucity as to demand it be placed in context.

Assuming Meryl will be flying to Canberra, let’s imagine for a moment, it is not vaccination but air travel that’s being targetted as dangerous and thus in need of informing passengers of all “adverse side effects” to flying. This becomes compelling when we note that deaths from MMR and attributed to DTap vaccination remain at zero. Studies examining the that myth DTap – or any vaccination – is related to SIDS found the rate of SIDS in those recently vaccinated was equal to chance.

Around 1990 Hannah Buxton was injected with contaminated MMR. 18 months later she was dead due to the contaminants, not MMR, and her parents were awarded £20,000. A BMJ article (also citing Hannah) published in September 1994 notes over 100 families had won the right to seek (operative word “seek”) compensation for the death and disability of their children following MMR. In the 1990’s vaccines were looking like big business for injury compensation lawyers and this BMJ article is cited as desperate “proof” of MMR fatality. Yet that’s a distortion of the truth. No fatalities have been attributed to MMR. Encephalitis from vaccination is so rare and from measles comparatively so common that to refuse MMR on these grounds is to be grossly misinformed.

Let’s imagine if an airline took this “package insert” logic seriously and chose to inform all passengers of all risks prior to flying. We’ll exclude specifics like metal fatigue and focus on injury and death. To cover “discussion” with a healthcare professional they might add descriptive accounts of what happens to passengers involved in accidents. It could be worked in to the pre flight briefing.

Here’s my proposed “report”, using entirely accurate information and statistics, of flying with such an airline. Airlines that believe in informed choice. Let’s say I’m in need of a decently priced flight, scanning the internet for a bargain…

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One caught my eye. Package Insert Airlines: Where Informed Choice Matters. “Strange”, I thought. I called the number and spoke to the charming lass on the other end. Yes, they had a seat going my way at exactly the time I needed it. Good price too. Just before I hung up, I asked about the name. She explained to me that the airline had been set up by a small consortium who made their fortune printing vaccine package inserts.

“Before take off we explain everything you need to know about your safety and flying”, she gushed happily, “so you can make an informed choice about staying on board”. Wow. Sounded generous. I packed a quick bag and headed off.

After booking in I had a while to wait but before I found an uncomfortable chair, we were paged to start boarding. It didn’t take long for the airliner to fill up. A few moments later an air hostess with a name badge reading Johanna took her position as the standard safety recording started. She pointed out the exits and toilets then, keeping up with the recording, helped demonstrate the possible effects of crashing on take off.

16% of on board fatalities occur during take off, the recording informed us pleasantly. Passengers are usually burned horrifically beyond recognition in a giant fireball. The unspeakable agony felt by those not immediately toasted is at times expressed in blood curdling screams but this is hampered by inhaled high temperature air igniting throat, larynx and lung tissue, poisonous gases and melting facial tissue, particularly the nose, lips and tongue. Loved ones in the terminal are ensured an excellent view. 

Johanna did her best to imitate writhing dying passengers with melting faces, finally letting out a high pitched scream and then finished with a pleasant smile. The recording continued. 14% of onboard fatalities occur during the initial climb, usually due to catastrophic systems failure. Cabin staff will wander by lying to you that everything is just fine. The pilots are trained to try to guide the highly explosive jet-fuel filled plane in for an emergency landing. You will guess something horrible is wrong and the plane will veer dramatically as we return to the tarmac. Johanna gestured pleasantly out the window, smiling all the time.

The angle of descent will be simply horrific, the recording went on. The fuselage and wings will shudder under the force of descent and you will be convinced you are about to die. Passengers must remain seated, but may pray, swear, scream and make hurried calls to loved ones not in the terminal. Due to the extreme strain placed upon the aircraft systems, small fires may well break out burning, choking and gagging you. Any fires near the fuel tanks may result in a catastrophic explosion creating quite a spectacle. Your loved ones in the terminal will have an excellent view of something like this. Johanna turned to point at a large image that had come up on the screen behind her:

Assuming we do not make it in for a safe emergency landing there is information available in small packages on the back of the seat in front of you. Please remove package insert one, instructed the recording. “Ah, Package Insert Airlines“, I mused staring at a bunch of information I couldn’t really understand. Surely this was written for scientists, or experts in this field. It was about G forces and deceleration and how much energy the cabin would absorb.

Please turn to Table One said the pleasant recording as Johanna held up an example of Table One:

Assuming we will be crash-landing and not emergency landing you should familarise yourself with the pain and suffering that possibly awaits. As we observe, up to a 40G deceleration may result in nasal fracture, compression of a vertebral body (the bones of your spine), a broken lower jaw or a fracture dislocation of the top most bone of your spine – on which rests your skull – on the vertebral bone beneath. The classic “hinge fracture”. At this point any sudden or unnecessary movement as opposed to say, lying motionless, will sever your spinal cord leaving you paralysed for life. Except for your facial muscles.

Johanna beamed and highlighted her face like she was selling moisturiser. The recording continued with Johanna doing her best to imitate horribly injured and dying passengers. “Around 50G the maxilla, or front of your face, breaks up and may pierce the skin of the face, but will certainly lacerate the upper mucosa of the lip and cheek. Bleeding will be profound. The major vessel carrying blood to and from the heart spontaneously sprouts big leaks and that can be bad.

Above 80G it just rips open and blood quickly fills your thorax or abdomen, choking you in a grotesque display of gurgling and gasping as blood forces it’s way out from the lungs to the mouth and nose. Johanna was writhing dramatically upside down over the back of a seat gagging and snotting like a trooper. Your bladder and bowel, the recording went on, if not having done so already, will empty spontaneously and dramatically. Please remain seated. I looked at Johanna expectantly but she gave a gentle shake of her head.

 Above this level as we enter 100G plus, the pelvis will fracture of it’s own accord. Please refer to package insert 1A for information on how crucial the pelvis is for ambulation, spinal health, organ protection, core stability, bladder and bowel, sexual health, reproduction, sitting comfortably… on and on it went covering every tiny detail of a fractured pelvis, pain, rehabilitation and permanent disability. People had for some time been leaving in ones and twos. A mother grabbed her baby and screamed that we were all insane before sobbing her way off the plane. I was starting to forget exactly what I was doing here myself.

Vertebral body transection means the bones of your spinal column split transversely and slice front to back or back to front, with part of the vertebra slicing through the spinal cord. This can occur at multiple points. It is important to remember, the recording intoned, that these injuries are not exclusive. So a crash landing deceleration at around 200G may include a fractured nose with the front of your face crumbling off but stuck under the skin, vertebral compression and transection with almost certain quadriplegia or paraplegia, your insides filled with blood that you gurgle and splatter from your nose and mouth and a shattered pelvis, leaving you to wallow in your own waste, until you die are burned or perhaps rescued to begin your life as a permanent patient.

Johanna had been mimicking at extraordinary speed, pulling grotesque faces, shuddering with vertebral injuries, shaking her head violently back and forth working up to a grand finale in which she gasped wide eyed, spluttered and with tongue hanging out collapsed in a heap on the aisle floor, twitching and writhing. Those of us not vomiting into the sick bags broke into a round of applause. She stood up beaming, adjusting her hair. Thinking this must surely be the end of a compelling but pointless exercise a few of us settled down until, horribly, the recording started again.

13% of fatalities occur during the latter stage of the climb once flaps have been raised. Please open package insert 2 and note injuries, suffering and death are much the same as for the initial initial phase of climb. You will note on package insert 2A we have included Total Body Fragmentation which applies to both failed ascent and descent and is pretty much what it sounds like, the soothing voice continued. We shall cover this in due course but it is important to stress that you may be killed during the latter part of ascent.

Once at cruising altitude you may be comforted to know that only 16% of fatalities occur up there in the cold, cold air. Although the same quantity as take off fatalities you may feel assured that on average, 57% of flight time for a 1.5 hour flight is spent cruising. Package insert 3 covers uncontrolled decompression. For our purposes please note Explosive and Rapid cabin decompression effects upon the body which you may experience alone or in tandem with high altitude injuries and hypothermia.

Should a large hole appear in the fuselage, perhaps due to a bomb, maintenance failure, metal fatigue, cargo door failure or just really bad luck passengers may expect explosive decompression. Contrary to the urban myth your body will not “blow up” killing you instantly and painlessly. As air escapes from the cabin in about half a second it will suck all the air from your lungs rupturing pulmonary tissue whilst you find it impossible to inhale as blood flows freely from your mouth and nose.

An extraordinarily rapid heart beat will only make this worse. Try try remain calm. Oxygen masks will drop down in front of you. Of such little pressure, they are useless and serve only to distract you in your final moments of life which are excruciatingly painful and unimaginably terrifying. Please keep an eye out for flying passengers, body parts or projectiles which will hit you with the force of bomb fragments, or slice, rip and tear your body into pieces.

As the freezing air fills the cabin the relative humidity changes rapidly, causing a dense fog to form. Depending on your distance from the cause of decompression, Johanna gestured to the front and back of the plane, you may experience the effects of rapid, not explosive cabin decompression. Blood and lung tissue is less likely to splatter in your vicinity although lung tissue damage to yourself and others is still likely. The further from the cause of decompression and the better restrained the more adverse reactions that can be expected over time and the more painful your slower demise.

Should you be unfortunate enough to be seated or standing near the decompression zone you will exit the aircraft at high speed experiencing physical decompression, pulmonary damage and bleeding, retinal bleeding, hypothermia, edema, numbness, wind sheer and insomnia. As you plunge toward the earth you may reach speeds that tear clothes, hair and skin from the body.

For those still on board, hypothermia sets in within a few minutes but not before hypoxia begins to kill off brain cells and precipitate organ failure. As you lapse in and out of consciousness you may notice the frozen vomit blocking the blood and pulmonary edema discharge from escaping the oral cavity. Limbs, hands and feet begin to swell as fluid escapes the blood stream and lymph vessels to build up in the tissues. Your retinas may hemorrhage as your body temperature rises to fever levels. Cerebral edema will creep up on you the longer you find the captain is able to control the plane through an interminably long descent. This brain swelling will lead to blinding headaches and more lapses into unconsciousness as life threatening hypothermia sets in. 

The recording continued on like this for a while with Johanna diving and falling and rolling about the cabin. She pleasantly gestured to where body parts are most likely to become wedged, and gave a realistic impression of someone trying unsuccessfully to breathe through the drop down oxygen masks. She sat in the seats most likely to accompany decapitation given the chosen place of decompression and managed a sterling performance as a hysterical young mother trying hopelessly to stop her toddler from being sucked out of an imaginary gaping hole in the fuselage.

I couldn’t see the point to all this convoluted intricate information. I suspected it had some legal purpose but I was 19 times less likely to die like this than in the car I drove to the airport. I couldn’t imagine the stupidity involved in thinking such highly specific and biased information had any bearing on flying whatsoever, beyond creating the illusion there was something to fear.

I tuned back in at times as this marathon of irrelevance continued to inform me that another 16% of fatalities occurred during descent and initial approach. 25% occurred during final approach and landing. Then they got onto multiple injury specifics. 45% of intact (Intact?!) fatalities had a spinal fracture. 47.6% of accident victims had a ruptured heart and 35% also had a ruptured aorta. Only 20% of fatalities don’t have limb fractures the recording pleasantly informed us adding that a sound knowledge of Total Body Fragmentation would help us make an informed choice.

Thorax injuries were the most common. Liver, spleen, diaphragm. GI tract injuries were the least common. Skull, brain and facial destruction was very common. Great I thought. Your turds survive but your brain is mash. Neck, spine, wrist, femur, humorous, tibia… then combinations… and fatalities… until I couldn’t think much beyond Total Body Fragmentation sucks man. “Flying Causes Total Body Fragmentation”, I wanted to yell. Which free speech suppressing scientists had been holding back such vital information? I needed to know this, didn’t I? I couldn’t just trust one of the most successful, safest industries in the world, could I?

Then I realised something. Total Body Fragmentation was an incredible rarity. So were aviation accidents. It was Informed Choice that really sucked, and looking around it had emptied a good deal of the plane, having filled people’s heads with nonsense.

I hoped they weren’t driving home.

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So, dear reader. If you’ll pardon the foray you can appreciate just how nonsensical this obsession with package inserts is. There is however, a sinister side to this apparent “information”. As I hinted at above, using it to educate people is fatally flawed. Parents need to know about the probability of adverse events of all types, including disease affecting their children. The fact that extreme events are possible is completely irrelevant to making an informed choice.

It’s simple mum. MMR does not kill and measles is 1,000 times more likely to leave your child with irreparable brain damage. If they must, parents need to speak to a doctor about this information, not be lured into panicked confusion. Dorey’s request is just as much a statement: You are not being given safe advice. And that, is an outright lie.

Yet there’s more to consider. As I note above studies have been done on the myth of vaccine induced SIDS. This is not on package inserts, nor is Shaken Baby Syndrome. Yet Dorey insists both these causes (and others) of death are side effects of vaccination. Toxic poisoning without “prior testing on infants” is happening right now via vaccination, she claims.

In her mind extremely rare possibilities must be advertised as likely probabilities. As must a growing number of invented fictions: immune disorders, failure to thrive, leaking intestines, heavy metal build up, slow learning and almost any ailment is blamed on vaccines, water or medication. So if by chance she is granted her wish, it will only be the beginning.

I set out above to highlight what we take for granted. The fear of flying is considered irrational. A phobia. In short Dorey seeks to propagate a phobic fear of vaccines that may cripple critical and safe decision making.

Meryl Dorey is well aware that “informed choice” is in this case, “Meryl’s choice”. It is not free speech, but plain deception.

Parents deserve facts, not irrational fear.

Risk From Disease vs Risk From Vaccine