Category Archives: Anti-Vaccination Lobby

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.

American Airlines “blackmailed” by “pharmaceutically funded” organisations say AVN

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

In a predictable reaction to American Airlines’ sound decision to pull her misinformation on vaccination, Meryl Dorey has launched her own petition.

The unsigned petition takes the reader on a journey of unfounded accusation and a synopsis of the original interview. It again makes the same striking distortions of truth managing to claim Ms. Dorey cites “peer-reviewed research”, when in fact she cites Wakefield’s officially retracted and fraudulent paper.

“Pharmaceutically funded organisations” have “blackmailed” American Airlines it claims. More so, removal of the potentially lethal scheme is “un-American” and “a direct contravention to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution”.

Wow!

Indeed the petition is actually worse than the interview, arguing that not only is the disproved link between vaccines and autism “verified” in the medical literature, but that vaccination:

… has contributed to a rate of autism in the United States that has increased from 1:10,000 20 years ago to 1:88 today

All that needs be stressed on this is that no peer reviewed literature supports this nonsense. Respected autism organisations across the globe agree the change in diagnostic frequency is just that – a change in diagnostic frequency. This is due to changing criteria and other factors increasing the likelihood of diagnosis. Which is vastly different to an increase in the incidence of autism as it was defined two decades ago.

Those scammed this way are playing Russian Roulette with measles according to a mother who didn’t vaccinate her son due to Wakefield’s fraud. The New Zealand Herald reported today on one person’s “informed decision”:

The theory [MMR linked to autism] was eventually retracted in 2010 and Wakefield was struck off the medical register, but not before triggering a worldwide health scare around the MMR vaccine.

Said Mrs Edwards-Lasenby: “It was one of those things where I had made the informed decision at the time not to do the MMR vaccine, with the information I had available to me. But where I went wrong was not going back to revisit that information and the advice available as time went on.”

She urged parents to reconsider immunisation, particularly if advice changes, to avoid playing “Russian roulette” with children’s lives.

It will take her son 12 months to fully recover from measles. He lost 7kg after not eating for 2 weeks, was on oxygen in isolation “fighting for his life” in hospital and even when well enough to return to school:

“Then he just caught anything,” Mrs Edwards-Lasenby said. “Any little scratch he had became an infection and he was constantly on antibiotics.”

Meryl Dorey is leading parents and innocent children toward this very suffering and potentially worse. Her proposed interview includes an entirely manufactured claim suggesting that measles vaccination is ineffective. If you’re wondering what our health regulators and authorities are doing you’re not alone.

The misguided line about new pertussis genomes was dealt with two posts ago, exposing Ms. Dorey’s intentional untruth about vaccine efficacy and infant fatality. Listen to your doctor – not Meryl Dorey.

Yet, the “trial myths” used by antivaxxers deserves noting. Whilst its thunderous hypocrisy for those who promote homeopathy, chiropractic treatment of disease and cancer “cures” to bemoan a lack of “the gold standard” in scientific testing (RCT), we also find more misinformation.

Firstly it is quite untrue that vaccines are not tested against a true placebo. Safety trials involve comparison to saline. Yet antivaxxers ignore this and attack efficacy trials as not being “placebo controlled”. These trials compare vaccine components minus the agent/s responsible for the immune response (in one sample), to the full vaccine (in another sample). Such trials are absolutely crucial to delineate a true immune response from other possible responses. This complaint is void and invalid.

Next is the rather amusing insistence of the need to test the overall health of the fully unvaccinated against the fully vaccinated. Exactly how we separate the former sample from protection, and thus good health, afforded by herd immunity and still preserve the integrity of this study has never quite been explained.

More so, how do we correct for fatalities from vaccine preventable disease in the unvaccinated who are no longer alive? If the notion is to begin studies at birth I am sure no ethics committee would pass such an absurdity. This is clear if we consider restrictions on Isaac Golden’s so-called “PhD in homeopathic immunisation”. He writes in the abstract:

The effectiveness of the program could not be established with statistical certainty given the limited sample size and the low probability of acquiring an infectious disease… Further research to confirm the effectiveness of the program is justified.

Of course the subtle suggestion is that vaccinated individuals will be of inferior health due to complications from the frogs and snails and puppy dog tails that wicked vaccines contain. I would suggest that as we’re witnessing the re-emergence of diseases and the fatality they cause as a consequence of lower immunisation levels that the long term and large scale outcome of this hypothetical trial is blindingly obvious.

Next is the complaint that pharmaceutical companies conduct trials and licence vaccines “with no independent oversight on the part of government regulators”. This is also entirely false. Good Manufacturing Practice is moderated by governments and the WHO. In relation to vaccines the WHO state [bold mine]:

WHO defines Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) as “that part of quality assurance which ensures that products are consistently produced and controlled to the quality standards appropriate to their intended use and as required by the marketing authorization”.  GMP covers all aspects of the manufacturing process:  defined manufacturing process; validated critical manufacturing steps; suitable premises, storage, transport; qualified and trained production and quality control personnel; adequate laboratory facilities; approved written procedures and instructions; records to show all steps of defined procedures taken; full traceability of a product through batch processing records and distribution records; and systems for recall and investigation of complaints.
The guiding principle of GMP is that quality is built into a product, and not just tested into a finished product.  Therefore, the assurance is that the product not only meets the final specifications, but that it has been made by the same procedures under the same conditions each and every time it is made.  There are many ways this is controlled – controlling the quality of the facility and its systems, controlling the quality of the starting materials, controlling the quality of production at all stages, controlling the quality of the testing of the product, controlling the identity of materials by adequate labelling and segregation, controlling the quality of materials and product by adequate storage, etc.  All of these controls must follow prescribed, formal, approved procedures, written as protocols, SOPs, or Master Formulae, describing all the tasks carried out in an entire  manufacturing and control process.

The TGA (pages 10, 19, 20, 21, 22) and FDA have similar standards. Many Aussies will remember the visit and warning CSL received from the FDA following the Fluvax scare in W.A [2]. The TGA overview is here. In Australia we have The Pharmaceutical Overview Inspection Scheme.

The petition raises a claim that must be expanded on:

The opponents of this interview cite a public warning issued by the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) against the AVN. What they have failed to inform you of is the fact that in February, 2012, the NSW Supreme Court found that the HCCC had acted illegally in issuing that warning and the warning has since been removed and costs were awarded against the HCCC in favour of the AVN.

Wrong. That was down to me and as I’ve pointed out already I cited the NSW HCCC findings, which Justice Christine Adamson ruled were still valid by not accepting the AVN submission that certiorari (quashing the HCCC findings), was warranted.

Thus whilst the warning and recommendation were outside of jurisdiction due to the HCCC failure to satisfactorily demonstrate Section 7(1)(b) of the HCC Act 1993 (“a health service which affects the clinical management or care of an individual client”), the investigation findings were not expunged in any manner whatsoever. The petition should thus rightly be amended.

Check the petition out further if you want, but I would suggest that both the interview and the petition have been fairly and honestly outed as scurrilous and dishonest attempts to force demonstrably false fringe beliefs onto a wider unsuspecting audience. Of course, the AVN maintain it’s a conspiracy and Dorey has been unfairly censored. American Airlines have capitulated to “druggies” according to one signatory.

Ultimately I do hope for someone who has had such a good run on the smell of an oily scam, Dorey has the decency to accept the outcome as fair and just.

  • In a bit of a round up there’s ample to read from sites, bloggers and skeptics from the last few days:
  1. Vaccine Awareness and Information Service
  2. I Speak of Dreams
  3. I Speak of Dreams (2)
  4. Peter Bowditch
  5. Australian Skeptics
  6. Bad Astronomy
  7. Bad Astronomy (2)
  8. io9
  9. Australian Doctor
  10. Anti-vaccination group hits snag

American Airlines grounds Australian Vaccination Network

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

American Airlines have announced they will not air or print anti-vaccination material from Meryl Dorey of The Australian Vaccination Network.

This followed a fantastic response to an online petition and no doubt the submission of a number of letters to American Airlines, key partners and other influential individuals and organisations. Thanks to a simply awesome online community. Phil Plait blogged and tweeted bringing hundreds of thousands on board.

Fully aware of the potentially lethal consequences to flow from such egregious material thousands literally took the view: There’s no way this is gunna fly. Twitter ran hot with promotion of the petition at change.org, and tweets to @AmericanAir asking for cancellation.

@AmericanAir tweeted their decision at 07:15 AEST then confirmed the same for printed material about 25 minutes later. Busy preparing emails for the AusAID Development Office and Scholarship Department I was alerted via phone by the ever-vigilant @fourgirlsmum.

Since the American Airlines confirmation-by-twitter, there has been other confirmation in writing to interested parties ensuring that:

 … the interview in question has not yet been submitted to American Airlines, and we will not be running it if, and when, it is.

American Airlines has done the right thing in the interests of passenger safety, disability rights and public health. For that they deserve a huge thanks and congratulations.

Of course they can follow up this episode with a review of approval processes and communication with producers and editors of in-flight material. Only a couple of days ago we were informed accessing the material was “optional”. Whilst I accept the announcement by American Airlines that Dorey’s diatribe will be dropped, it should never have made it to production initially.

Only through rigorous vetting of applicants and their proposed material for in-flight access can we be sure that dangerous schemes like this do not in future make it in under the radar – no pun intended.

Once again the scale of error and audacity inherent in Ms. Dorey’s rather extremist and outright dishonest performance can’t be overstated. In my previous post I point out a number of very obviously deceptive tactics made only worse by Ms. Dorey’s inability to understand – or perhaps accept – the science of vaccination.

The attempt to malign measles vaccination by impersonating an authority on vaccines and immunity was alarming. As Phil Plait noted in his reason for signing the petition:

In May 2011, an infant with measles was brought on board American Airlines flight 3965, and a hundred passengers had to be tracked down and many quarantined.

Incredibly Dorey had misled that the pertussis vaccine “isn’t working”, was causing a more deadly disease and that the same applied to measles vaccination. Apart from the official sounding peacock label used by the AVN, Ms. Dorey presented herself as a first person authority, suggesting involvement with extremely complex scientific research.

We know vulnerable children and infants are dying as a result of these diseases. That this could be perpetuated by misplaced trust in a calculating charlatan is intolerable.

Thus I do hope American Airlines will very take very seriously the matter of how the producer of their Executive Report, and further the editor of their American Way magazine both made such a mistake.

There was a similar situation with Delta Air Lines wherein hand washing, exercise and vitamins were presented by US anti-vaccination lobby NVIC as superior to influenza vaccination.

This resulted in the sort of review process American Airlines must now consider. ABC news reported last November:

In a response to the AAP, Delta conceded that the video does not point to vaccines as the primary source for flu prevention.

“Therefore, we have changed our internal review processes and procedures to help ensure that submitted content is vetted differently going forward,” Delta’s general manager of occupational health, Barbara Martin, wrote in response.

In view of ongoing financial losses American Airlines would be making a very sound business decision in providing passengers with the same confidence Delta Air Lines does.

For now, American Airlines is to be praised for taking a stand against a malignant force in public health. If you have a chance, tweet your thanks to @AmericanAir.

To all those involved and interested I extend my sincere, heartfelt thanks.

Surely You Can’t Be Serious: American Airlines to air AVN propaganda

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Health by

Update: American Airlines has agreed to not run any AVN material

No Government has the right to say, “You have to put your child’s health at risk because we have made this procedure compulsory”

Meryl Dorey on non-compulsory vaccination for American Airlines in-flight Executive Report

In what seems like the outline of a black comedy with the tagline, At 35,000 feet nobody can tell you’re lying it has emerged that American Airlines will air in-flight material featuring radical anti-vaccination lobbyist, Meryl Dorey.

  • Audio here:

MP3 download here.

Transcript here.

This nonsense will air on 58,000 flights between July and August this year and also run in the American Way in-flight magazine. You can play a role in stopping it. Read on or scan to the second last paragraph.

Edit: As of April 22nd the Petition Ask American Airlines to Cancel anti-vaccination message was launched. Access also from the right hand column here.

It may well be a symptom of the desperation to hit American Airlines as bankruptcy looms over it’s parent company, AMR Corp. Striking losses have been a quarterly feature for over a year now and AMR only hours ago reported 1,200 cargo and baggage jobs will be cut to help offset a $1.7 billion loss already this year.

Meryl, who would have all believe she is a “health educator”, kicks off her three and a half minutes of monumental misinformation by claiming vaccination creates antibodies and as such this means one has been exposed to a disease but is not immune. What does she say about those who encounter a wild virus with absolutely no antibodies you ask? Nothing. In short she invokes Meryl’s Equation, which is well known to AVN watchers: < 100% = 0%.

Much like a body surfer, Dorey has been on a free ride following careless media reports on the emergence of new pertussis isolates (“mutated strains”) that are not present in current acellular vaccine preparations. She goes on to claim that “what we’ve found” (I kid you not) is that the acellular vaccine is “bringing a new form of whooping cough to the fore” which is not covered by the vaccine. The serious question here is has whooping cough evolved around the current vaccine?

Subtitling that very question with Reflections on the current scientific evidence is Tom Sidwell. Unlike Meryl, Tom is not married to a macadamia farmer but has a Bachelor of Science, with majors in Immunology and Microbiology, and minors in molecular biology and biochemistry. Last year he received first class honours in Immunology and presently is in the first year of a PhD delving into the development of naturally occurring Regulatory T cells.

Tom writes in his summary:

This review analyses these claims. Careful examination of the current literature indicates that while the bacterium’s genome does appear to have changed in response to pressure from the vaccine, none of these changes appear to give it any significant advantage over the immunity the vaccine induces. Thus, reports that the current vaccine is ineffective are misleading and inaccurate.

The pertussis vaccine provides vital protection and Meryl Dorey knows darn well that whilst only 5% of Australian children between 0-4 years are not fully vaccinated, they make up almost 30% of notifications. Yet again, much like a body surfer, Meryl rides the peak of the wave right to the shallows and is dumped mercilessly onto the hard sand of reality. Rather than admit task difficulty exceeds skill level Dorey manufactures demonstrable fallacies.

“For the first time in decades, we’re seeing babies die”, Dorey lies blaming the vaccine for the “much more deadly disease”, immediately after misrepresenting the totality of reasons behind high notification rates.

Meryl Dorey then continues with breathtaking deceit.

The vaccine is not working and we’re seeing similar situations with measles and mumps and we may see this with more diseases into the future.

Measles? Mumps? Similar situations? How did we get from bacterial infection to viral infection? Is this woman seriously trying to link measles virus outbreaks due to low immunisation rates, to the very recent discovery of altered genomes in Bordetella pertussis bacteria isolates? Or the known cases of vaccine conscientious objectors, infected with viral mumps who then passed it to close contacts who had been partially and fully vaccinated for MMR? Apparently she is.

One can only stress that vaccine induced immunity is not impervious to prolonged assault. In the cases I’m familiar with the vaccinated subjects who contracted mumps were mostly those who had one MMR shot, less so in those who had two and least so in those who had completed the course of three. Of course, it’s axiomatic that had the conscientious objectors (religious communities), been vaccinated there would be no mumps outbreak to speak of. Countless individuals in close contact showed no infection thanks to MMR vaccination.

The other nonsense is close to outrageous for a “health educator”. This is fear mongering at it’s best. Yes, Australia has epidemic levels of pertussis infection moving across the nation. Notifications are higher than ever. Yet diagnostic techniques are more sensitive than ever. The wide spread use of PCR has multiplied confirmed diagnoses many times over as it can detect pertussis infection of much milder levels and for weeks longer than earlier laboratory tests. The skill of clinicians and heightened awareness has led to earlier and more frequent recommendation for testing.

More to the point, rather than suddenly seeing infant fatalities coinciding with rising diagnosis we see fatalities are less than during the 1997 (pre acellular vaccine) epidemic. Hospitalisations are approximately the same. In respect of the claim “For the first time in decades, we’re seeing babies die“, one notes in Australia 16 children under 12 months died from pertussis between 1993 and 2008. In 2001 and 2002 alone, five infants under two months old died from pertussis. American Airlines passengers will be lied to. Period.

With such alarming misinformation it isn’t surprising Dorey continues to argue Andrew Wakefield’s research is valid and that “the only common denominator” to explain what she erroneously assumes is an increase in autism as it was defined a generation ago, is vaccination. Not only is this fallacious but ignores the 217 day hearing into Wakefield’s fraudulent paper.

In Science Betrayed the BBC note that the General Medical Council found:

Andrew Wakefield’s continued lack of insight into his misconduct is so grave that nothing less than erasure from the medical register would do

In an unprecedented move Wakefield’s paper was retracted from The Lancet. It now lingers on the fringes of conspiracy theory from whence come increasingly absurd claims Wakefield has been “vindicated”.

Wakefield was found guilty of four counts of dishonesty, around a dozen counts of causing children to undergo invasive and unnecessary procedures, buying blood from children at a birthday party and ordering tests he was not qualified to order. It has since emerged his scheme was an elaborate plan to make money from immunodiagnostics focusing on the very syndrome he manufactured.

However, according to Dorey, vaccine induced autism is common in the medical literature and Wakefield’s paper is “the study that everybody talks about”. Well, despite it’s retraction it also clearly states “we did not prove an association between measles mumps and rubella and the syndrome described [autistic enterocolitis]”. Perhaps Meryl should talk about that.

Rather she offers:

A lot of people are saying that this journal article has been discredited, but what they’re ignoring is the fact that since this original paper was published there have been many other papers verifying this finding

Again this is utterly false as a quick search will prove. The opposite has been demonstrated over and over. Children not exposed to thimerosal have identical rates of autism to those that were. Children not given MMR following a complete ban on this vaccine as a result of Wakefield’s fraud, showed increased rates of autism. US courts have ruled vaccines are not related to autism. Dorey tried her best last December and came up with nothing but a see-through scam.

Edit (Added 21/04): Reasons for increased diagnoses include:

  • The actual frequency of autism may have increased, meaning more children have it
  • There is increased case reporting, leading to greater findings, better use of funding and heightened awareness
  • Changes in the DSM-III-R and DSM-IV diagnostic criteria may account for more cases
  • Parents are more conscious of autism, more likely to seek expert help and more cases are being diagnosed as a result
  • Earlier diagnoses have essentially added a new younger demographic to the the existing demographic of children – ie; it spans more years
  • When we examine rising autism figures we find a corresponding drop in other types of mental disability and retardation, meaning they are now within the autism spectrum
  • There is an increase in misdiagnoses of autism which may partly explain the misconception of “autism cures”
  • Application of childhood criteria to novel adult samples yields a diagnostic frequency equal to children (supporting a change in criteria, not incidence)

Indeed, every duck, dodge and weave that anti-vaccination lobbyists have tried has been patiently accommodated and found to not support any link between vaccination and autism. In addition American Airlines get the AVN patented claim of “mandatory vaccination”, which is another fallacy but emotive enough to suspend critical thought and the need for evidence.

In short American Airlines are giving voice to a most malignant force in public health and by doing so run the risk of contributing to ongoing disease outbreak, family tragedy and parental angst. Perhaps “The Australian Vaccination Network” looked safe on paper – an understandable error.

I ask you to join me in making your concerns known to American Airlines by emailing Customer Relations and perhaps contacting the Board of Directors. At the very least Thomas W. Horton Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of AMR Corporation/American Airlines, Inc., should be made aware that his company is promoting potentially lethal information to the detriment of Australian, American and European citizens.

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