Category Archives: AVN

The Real Australian Sceptics

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Big Placebo, General, Health, Meryl Dorey, Scam, Science by

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

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, AVN, Immunisation, Legal, Meryl Dorey, Scam, Social Media by

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”.

Click to embiggen

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.

Click to embiggen

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.

Click to embiggen

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.

Click to embiggen

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.

Judy Wilyman: proof of vaccines’ success

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, AVN, Denialism, Human Rights, Judy Wilyman, Legal, Skeptic by

We deserve to see the evidence that vaccinating for all these diseases is good and necessary for the community

Judy Wilyman, June 30th 2010

Read the above statement from prominent antivaccination lobbyist and student Judy Wilyman. It’s a reasonable observation. Defending it would be admirable. Fortunately I don’t have to because the evidence, not only for the success of mass vaccination, but of how this prevents death and disability from disease is readily available.

In fact the success of vaccination is so ubiquitous that vaccines themselves have become a victim of it. Judy Wilyman doesn’t understand she is one of the most fortunate human beings in history. Well into the future even after she dies, billions will dream of the quality of life Judy Wilyman enjoys. Born into the affluence of a developed nation she has lived an entire life protected by medical science, robust economies and public health success stories.

Judy Wilyman is one of the luckiest individuals in one of the luckiest generations in one of the luckiest nations as a mere single offspring of around 107 billion human beings to have lived and died on this planet. She is inestimably healthier, more comfortable, more free and importantly more disease free than around 99% of our species to have seen the sky. With her life protected by her own and others vaccine induced immunity, and now already almost twice the age that genetic predisposition alone permits on this planet, Judy will live on for years enriching her life and exploring any manner of experience.

Every day vaccine success is all around her. It’s invisible. It is the absence of suddenly missing school friends, the grief that parents would bear, the devastation that ravaged cities in the late 17th and 18th centuries. It is the message of those little mossy tombstones I passed that, on rare visits to older family graves, my father would stop and read with reverence long before I knew how to read at all.

It’s removed the throat choking sadness that incredibly meant both my maternal grandparents were long dead and even more years passed before their grandchildren discovered they had an uncle on that side of the family. The only male and last born, he had died within weeks of his birth taking with him my grandfather’s dream of passing on a farm.

Vaccine success is the absence of tears often shed. Tears Often Shed child health and welfare in Australia from 1788, published in 1978 was written by Dr. Brian Gandevia. I’ve heard Wilyman reach into the past to condemn vaccines by misrepresenting the scientific context of the times and wonder if she passed this by on purpose. In 1800 Botany Bay held about 1,000 children, half being orphans. Infant mortality was 11% – over 20 times what it is today. In 1827 pertussis appeared, then measles then diphtheria. Mortality was high.

By 1880 Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane had children’s hospitals. That year a measles outbreak hit Sydney. Henry Lawson’s 1899 poem entitled Past Carin’ reflects the tragedy of harshness in Australian living at that time. This is a short out-take:

Our first child took—a cruel week in dyin’, …

I’ve pulled three through and buried two

Since then—and I’m past carin’.

Judy Wilyman weaves myth and junk science to justify make-believe notions that we are not allowed to see the evidence of vaccine success. All the time unaware that she is this evidence. In more ways than one also. Not only is Judy here due to vaccination regimes and medical science, but the vacuum left by the need to simply survive is being filled by the fantastic fraud and fiction that Wilyman produces to malign vaccination itself.

So absolute has vaccine success been that we can now turn our attention to the rarity of the potential of an adverse event. Unlike Lawson, we’re not “past carin'”. In an era of health luxury we can choose what to care about, and with disconcerting ease antivaccinationists, divested of evidence, play human emotion.

Abuse of innocent Australians:

Her W.A. State Library talk was a hack job of the worst vaccine myths on offer. Yet supposedly worth retelling because Wilyman is studying to complete a PhD in an Arts faculty and labels herself “an independent researcher who has been scouring the peer reviewed journals for 10 years”.

At the same talk Wilyman allows a glimpse into ego clashing with conspiracy beliefs:

If vaccination was based on science then the media would not have to work so hard to suppress the information. You will notice the media reports rely on discrediting individuals and organisations and running fear campaigns to encourage parents to vaccinate. Did they mention in the papers that myself and [redacted] are both PhD researchers? Did they mention that the lowest vaccination rates in Perth are… where the majority of doctors and other professionals live? No. This topic is about the control of information.

That final appeal to authority is meaningless. It is a myth that “doctors don’t vaccinate”. Economic advantage has not only been firmly linked to the Dunning-Kruger effect but we’ve known since last century that the same demographic refuse to register their children on the Australian immunisation register, or complete appropriate forms. Linear skill sets (job training) and consequent income rises correlate to big mortgages, not critical thinking.

Moving beyond this slur on class status, Judy works quite hard to evoke a feeling of manipulation and abuse of personal rights in her audience. She produces a slide of the Australian Framework for Environmental Health Risk Assessment.

At the top is “community consultation”. Has anyone here been consulted on a preventative measure such as vaccination for the health of your child? The public is being excluded from this process because we’re told it’s a medical procedure. So I’m asking you tonight why are you vaccinating? Are you vaccinating because you have a good idea of the risk of disease and the risk of vaccines or are you vaccinating through blind faith?

I hate to interrupt but this is a gross deception played on her audience. What a set up! Nothing on the impact of vaccine preventable disease (VPD). Nothing on risk benefit. This comes well after claiming herself and Meryl Dorey are presenting “peer reviewed science” that proves there’s no evidence to support vaccination. They will tell the real story, not the contrived story the government and media tell. “The government treats vaccines as if they have no harmful effects at all”, Judy claims.

This makes Definition of adverse events following immunisation, published by the Australian government along with Post-vaccination procedures (focused on adverse effects) and reports on the surveillance of Adverse Events Following Immunisation in Australia quite puzzling then. Judy also claims “They are promoted as if we can put as many as we like into our bodies without harm”.

Convinced that the government “coerces” Australians into vaccination Judy argues vaccination is a human rights issue, that (with incentives) she described recently as “a crime against humanity”. In order to understand Wilyman’s primary deception it’s crucial to note her invention is that we live in an Orwellian type society that forces coercive and mandatory vaccination. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are free to be as stupid as we wish and place our children in as much danger from vaccine preventable disease as this madness allows. Even better, we can spread exposure to countless others who had no choice in the matter and belittle those who protect our children with herd immunity as “vaccinating through blind faith”.

Quoting “the health ethics that our immunisation principles are based upon” Wilyman then misleads her audience [bold mine]:

“The state retains the authority to regulate the human body in order to protect the health and safety of the general public”.

So it is the government that’s deciding how many vaccines we can put into our bodies

Even though this is complete codswallop, it prompts Judy to come up with two questions that set “the context and the ethics of these fundamental principles”.

  1. Did vaccines play a significant role in controlling and reducing infectious diseases?
  2. What is in a vaccine?

Let’s focus for now on question 1.

Abuse of Australian History:

Judy is a champion of the misconception that a reduction in overall death rates is proof that improved living standards, and not vaccines, controlled and reduced infectious diseases. Her abuse of the work of early public health authorities is demonstrably hypocritical. Let’s examine her abuse of J.H.L. Cumpston and H.O. Lancester. To Wilyman they “confirm” vaccines did not reduce infectious disease. Cumpston (1880-1954) was Australia’s first Commonwealth Director-General of Health. Known as “the father of public health in Australia” he features prominently in Child Health Since Federation written for the Australian Year Book 2001 by a present day population health scientist.

That scientist would be Professor Fiona Stanley. Founding Director of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research she has been receiving awards now for 17 years, and refers to both Cumpston and Lancester in this work. Former Australian of the year professor Stanley is mocked and abused mercilessly by Meryl Dorey of the Australian Vaccination Network for “aggressive commercialisation activities of the Telethon Institute“, being paid off by Big Pharma, hiding the truth and experimenting on children.

She was “invited” by Judy Wilyman to attend the very seminar I’m referring to now. Two days later interviewed on air, Stanley referred to the views presented by Dorey and Wilyman as “bizarre” and “so misinformed that it is scary”.

  • Professor Fiona Stanley speaks about the “so-called” Australian Vaccination Network in Perth

It’s offensive that Wilyman demeans sound legislation and state authority to control disease, just before invoking Cumpston’s name. As Stanley writes in Child Health Since Federation [bold mine]:

He [Cumpston] oversaw the most spectacular falls in mortality and morbidity ever seen in Australia. […]

Essential to this movement was an expert bureaucracy to research, create and administer policy… Other essential ingredients for the success of the public health movement was a competent and independent (from State) group of medical practitioners, devoted to the care of the sick, but willing to accept State interventions for both public health improvements and care (the latter of course on their terms). […]

Throughout the early 20th century, as bacteriology developed, knowledge grew of the role of organisms in disease, and the focus of public health shifted to identifying disease in individuals and control by isolation (quarantine), which opened the way to mass vaccination.

With improvements in sanitation and quality of life came healthier people. Recovery from disease increased and thus mortality fell. But no widespread immunity or viral elimination occurred. Better nutrition certainly increased host resistance to infection. J.H.L. Cumpston died in 1954 just as vaccine success took off.

Citing Ada and Isaacs, Stanley writes:

Infectious deaths fell before widespread vaccination was implemented. However, since the 1950s, mass vaccination has been the single most effective public health measure to reduce the occurrence of infections, to reduce child deaths and to improve child health

There is of course no doubt that access to good nutrition, clean water, public awareness of cleanliness leading to reduced contact with infecting organisms (good hygiene) and a cleaner environment led to improved health. Yet there is no evidence of vaccination as anything but the greatest single contributor to public health. Lancaster as cited by Wilyman (page 6) actually refers to “gastroenteritis, respiratory and other infections”. This in no way supports her claim that vaccines played no role in reduction of disease.

Wilyman is deceptive in other ways also. When writing on pertussis (linked above – page 6 again) her choice of target is 1954 when the NHMRC advised that pertussis vaccine become routine for new born babies. But fatality had fallen to only 15 deaths per year bemoans Judy.

She avoids informing readers that in the 10 years to 1955, 429 deaths occurred (p.2). In the previous decade – that in which the vaccine was introduced (1936-1945) – 1,693 deaths from pertussis were recorded. In the decade before with no vaccine? 2,808 deaths. So, since the vaccine was actually introduced fatalities had been declining dramatically. Period.

Abuse of Alfred Russel Wallace:

Wilyman refers to Alfred Russel Wallace as “the co-designer of the evolutionary theory with Charles Darwin” and mentions his work, Vaccination a Delusion. If anything exposes Wilyman’s lack of scientific rigor it is the abuse of history and the Victorian antivaccination movement. Wallace himself and his three children were vaccinated. His interest in the movement began once his natural science writings had finished. Whilst a source of income, Wallace was also driven by his spiritualism, social reformist views and Swedenborgianism.

Unlike today’s antivaxxers, the Victorian movements based their position on notions and quantitative approaches that were entirely rational for the day. Science itself was unsettled. One approach was prone to blend with spiritualism (experimental psychology, evolutionary biology, and astronomy), liberty and holistic notions. Another took the view that science should be objective, disinterested, factual and that politics should remain separate.

More so, repeated prosecution from 1867 for not being vaccinated against smallpox or having ones children vaccinated was ruthlessly followed through with. Methods like arm to arm vaccination were high risk and equipment (pins, forks, knives and needles) spoke for themselves. But despite his spiritual leanings Wallace was a scientist. An empiricist. He deplored shoddy record keeping and bad statistics – especially assumptions.

So he set to work challenging the gaping holes in epidemiological data. The vaccine status of between 30-70% of people who died from smallpox was unknown. Not because vaccination failed but records were unreliable or absent. Wallace himself probably had good reason to doubt the disease status of fatalities as recorded by doctors. Thomas Weber looked into Wallace’s role here and concluded in part.

The numerical arguments used by Wallace and his opponents were based on an actuarial type of statistics, i.e., the analysis of life tables and mortalities. Inferential statistics that could be more helpful in identifying potential causes did not yet exist. The statistical approach to the vaccination debate used by Wallace and his opponents could simply not resolve the issue of vaccine efficiency; thus, each side was free to choose the interpretation that suited its needs best. However, despite its indecisive outcome, the debate was a major step in defining what kind of evidence was needed. It is also unjustified to portray the debate as a controversy of science versus antiscience because the boundaries between orthodox and heterodox science we are certain of today were far less apparent in the Victorian era. What the scope and methods of science were or should be were topics still to be settled.

So Wallace had many reasons to challenge vaccination in his time, none of them related to the evidence we have today. Indirectly he helped bring about the success of vaccination as we see it presently. Ever the empiricist there is no doubt how he would form his views with contemporary evidence. Wilyman’s appeal to authority this way is quite silly.

Ultimately Judy Wilyman reinforces the success of vaccination. She has no evidence based argument and shockingly has recycled these old myths for years, masquerading as “an independent researcher”. Without fiction she would have little to say. Despite the cloak and dagger tales of “crimes against humanity” and “government coercion” she is simply free. Free to speak, free to be wrong. Completely democratically free.

Judy Wilyman represents the best in Aussie freedom. The freedom to be stupid.

Should Australia’s Federal Health Minister be for the health or the harming of children?

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, AVN, Health, Human Rights, Legal, Science, Vaxxed by

Sign The Petition to Australia’s Health Minister

No doubt this Australia day is a first in that a conspiracy theorist masquerading as a PhD candidate, has just harassed our Federal Health Minister over a delusion.

Australian Vaccination Network member Judy Wilyman has written an extraordinary piece of combined conspiracy ramble and delusion of grandeur to Tanya Plibersek, our Federal Health Minister. In it Wilyman claims to speak for “the community for whom this policy is designed”. That policy would be life saving vaccination schedules. That community would be Australia wide.

Last I checked Wilyman’s extreme conspiracy views are believed by a very small fraction of the 1.7% of Aussies who don’t vaccinate through conscientious objection. I’ve read her work and listened to her speak. Carefully crafted deception arguing that vaccines have had no effect ever, is interspersed with a very strange obsession. A type of appeal to antiquity meets appeal to authority. Eg; Russel Wallace who is considered second only to Charles Darwin in grasping the theory of evolution wasn’t keen on vaccination, borrowing liberally from the Yuk Factor to dismiss the idea.

Wilyman actually reads this stuff out at AVN gatherings. Confusing the drop in mortality that accompanied improved living standards, Wilyman mistakenly believes this is indicating a drop in vaccine preventable disease. Last November she wrote to Nicola Roxon, including:

To the Honourable Ms. Roxon, […]

There is no historical evidence that vaccines controlled any of the infectious diseases listed in government immunization policies – in any developed country. […]

There is no democracy in a country that doesn’t have a transparent government. The Australian government will be committing a crime against humanity by introducing policies that bribe the Australian public into vaccinating by offering $2000 in welfare benefits or by preventing individuals from working in clinical positions.

Both of these points are false. Aussies who choose not to vaccinate are suitable for, and advised on how to receive, all financial entitlements. The Workplace Health and Safety Act 1995 dictates protection of clientele and workers. Employers have a responsibility to ensure the safety of employees, visitors and clientele. Also, employees have a responsibility to comply with a reasonable request of an employer to not endanger themselves nor place at risk the workplace health and safety of another worker.

Contrary to Wilyman’s delusional diversion, this is in accordance with the latest and best scientific advice and research. What would Russel Wallace make of it? I don’t give a toss. It’s no more a “crime against humanity” than being hindered from working on dangerous unguarded machinery, or driving a forklift with no mirrors in reverse listening to a blaring iPod, building and working on scaffolding with no ladders, trap doors and railings or running barefoot through freshly discarded used syringes.

The rest of November’s caper was claiming no proper trials exist, it’s all a Big Pharma conspiracy, science is biased and wrong and the astonishing claim that no proper monitoring of immunisation “side effects” has been done in 50 years.

To think someone claiming to be doing a PhD in vaccine legislation has not seen the reams of government incidence tables and graphs of AEFI beggars belief. Good work to her supervisor, Dr. Brian Martin. It finished with:

The community would like you to address the issues above and ensure that you can provide conclusive evidence and transparency for your policy before introducing any coercive measures into vaccination policies.

Today, much the same has been produced and thrown at Tanya Plibersek. Except Wilyman has cranked it up accusing the minister of making decisions based on corruption. Meryl Dorey claims Plibersek has “been placed on notice – stop the corruption in medicine!”. Wilyman demands the minister herself reply (emphasis hers).

It includes more community buck passing:

The community has lost confidence in the ability of the Health Department to make decisions in the best interests of the public due to the lack of integrity in the science being used and the conflicts of interest in individuals on government advisory boards. There is overwhelming evidence for this and I will list this below. As a result of this corruption of the scientific process the community has lost confidence in the Government’s Childhood Immunisation Schedule as it is clearly driven by profit and not safety.

In 2010 in W.A., speaking for the AVN, Wilyman raised the claim that vaccination policy is corrupt because “the governed” must be consulted. “Well I don’t recall being consulted” she managed incredulously then, “Do you recall being consulted?”.

She serves it up to Tanya Plibersek also:

The government requires “the consent of the governed who have the right to full participation in the decision-making process” before it implements public health policy (NRC- National Research Council, 1996). Therefore, until the issues below are addressed and consumers have equal representation on decision-making boards, the community is rejecting vaccination policy that is linked to financial benefits for parents.

Well I don’t recall being consulted for my opinion as your community member Judge Judy. How about some of that precious “balance” we hear so much about?

Wilyman then lists seven Big Pharma conspiracy themes, two of which are “hidden ties”. One between Big Pharma and peer review editors. The other between university academics and government advisory boards. Her supervisor is conspiracy theorist and post modernist “whistleblower”, Dr. Brian Martin, himself shown the door from any and everything “advisory”. One wonders if the latter is water cooler sour grapes.

Her scientific concerns to Plibersek are that a.) no studies exist into “the chemicals in vaccines.. causing the steep increase in chronic illness in our children.” Also b.) “… no controlled clinical study comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated…”, has ever been done. Clearly no longer in Kansas Toto, she finishes with:

Until these issues are addressed the public is rejecting coercive or mandatory immunization policies that result in the discrimination of healthy individuals. I hope the Health Minister will reply to these community concerns personally.

I’m not sure which is more absurd. The patently fictitious accusations, or this notion of Judge Judy speaking for the community and advising what “the public is rejecting”. I know Judy may not be all that well – perhaps a few screams short of a tantrum in the old currency. But Margaret Court is hard evidence that living a delusion and causing community harm are not mutually exclusive.

Let’s hope Tanya Plibersek steps up monitoring of such individuals and groups along with how they exploit loopholes in legislation and academic privilege to bring harm to our most vulnerable community members.

To put this in better context AVN Facebook member, Wendy Elphinstone bragged in late November of intentionally infecting her daughter with varicella – chicken pox. This is abuse of a child, all to make a statement against artificial “health fascism” and suppression of rights. It is in effect the right to choose gone mad.

You quite rightly can’t smoke a cigarette in a confined space near anybody, much less your own children. Euthanasia is still illegal. So is pot. But you can risk your child’s life, make them sick, scared, miserable and harm them, because it’s the latest fad.

Varicella killed 0.41 per million before vaccination was instigated. MMR and DTap (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine) have no demonstrable history of fatality. This mother will not give her child MMR or DTap, but will expose her to a known risk of death via varicella. A risk of death that is about half of the risk of MMR induced brain injury that is often used as justification for denying vaccination.

Had Wendy Elphinstone’s unwelcome guest been passed on to an infant the risk of death is four times that of children aged 1 – 4. Strangely, Wendy never did explain how she controlled this.

Necrotizing Fascilitis is better known as “flesh-eating disease”. You can catch it from serious skin wounds, weakened immunity (such as associated with vaccine preventable diseases) yet also following varicella. Varicella pneumonia can occur and varicella encephalitis – although rare – can occur following infection. Any deterioration in patient health requires monitoring for neurological or super bacterial infection.

Then it lays dormant until again, it may emerge as shingles, encephalitis and potentially lead to stroke, disability or death.

Of course, Meryl Dorey went ballistic over a community member doing the right thing and acting in the interest of the child – the proxy of vaccine choice insanity. Dorey demoted varicella to almost harmlessness claiming purposeful exposure is something our “mothers and grandmothers” would have done. I mean, really Meryl? Don’t make me get out the Four Yorkshiremen again.

Just before Dorey came to Australia, she lived in a country where varicella killed 100 children per year, effected 4 million children and was behind $400 million in lost wages and medical costs annually. Half a million needed medical care and 10,000 were hospitalised. Frankly, I’d have expected more composure from “Australia’s leading vaccination expert”.

Meryl launched into accusations against the good citizen who cared enough to ensure this child’s welfare was not in serious danger. She claimed he’d accused her fallaciously of microchips and human culling. Which she er, wrote about here and then here, still later urging her members to keep it secret here.

Despite turning the issue into a “poor me” episode, in my mind it underscored just how dangerous Meryl Dorey and her AVN really are. Overtly wringing hands over unproven problems with “chemicals” and “toxins” in vaccines, buttressed by cries of no testing and poor record keeping, they now claim a right to casually infect their own children with a disease.

No doctors are involved, no monitoring follows. No possible spread to the unaware, immunocompromised or vulnerable is prevented or documented. Any notion of clinical (“allopathic”) support is derided.

But vaccination schedules are “a crime against humanity”.

Happy Australia Day.

Vaccine Package Inserts: Not all you should be reading

Posted in AVN, Health, Legal, Meryl Dorey, Science by

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…

——————————————–

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.

——————————————

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