Category Archives: Anti-Vaccination Lobby

Through the anti-vaccination looking glass: responding to Brian Martin Pt. 2

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Health, Scam by

Caught in the vaccination wars: Responding to Brian Martin Pt. 1 is a lengthy reflection of Dr. Brian Martin’s writings and input from Stop the AVN [SAVN] members on the same.

I’m very grateful to Dr. Martin for his time and pleasant tone in corresponding – an all to rare event in an advocacy role that sees one labelled a fascist, enemy of free speech, pharmacy shill and worse. As I pointed out I felt it was somewhat regretful that focus had fallen on my comments that Meryl Dorey and members of the AVN were indeed conspiracy theorists.

Nonetheless, we left off with Dr. Martin fairly suggesting impressive evidence was needed to prove this comment which had been prominent on the SAVN’s old Facebook page. I can’t prove the entire comment, nor have any idea where it came from. What I can and am going to do is present enough evidence to remove the word “mind”, leaving the rest of the comment intact;

They [AVN] believe that vaccines are part of a global conspiracy to implant mind control chips into every man, woman and child and that the ‘illuminati’ plan a mass cull of humans.

Yes anti-vaccination conspiracies do include vaccine induced mind control chips and culling, but as yet I have not found “mind control” itself in AVN writings. Of course, if one believes the many conspiracies below it’s arguable your mind is itself, controlled by extension.

Despite my view that this was time wasting and likely to cast all criticism of the AVN as sensational and irrelevant, I did provide Dr. Martin with many references to these actual conspiracies both on April 26th and in more depth on July 20th. Brian had revised part 2 of his piece and asked if I wished to comment for correction, on July 18th;

Hi Paul,

I’ve revised Part 2 of “Caught in the vaccination wars”: see http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/11savn/Mercury-comments.html

If you have any comments before I make it live, let me know.

Regards,

Brian

My July 20th email listed 7 proven conspiracy links that I asked Dr. Martin to refer to as possible reason for the above comment. He didn’t reply. On July 22nd I emailed Dr. Martin again. It’s reproduced in full below;

Brian,

Are you able to confirm as yet that you will be adding the many links to conspiracy theories demonstrated by Meryl Dorey and AVN members?

Most particular being Ms. Dorey’s admission that they do subscribe to these theories in response to a “chemtrail” conspiracy (seen at the time as a means to human culling), but stressing it does their argument no good at all to use them. Also that later an AVN member posted the same article Dorey herself had on her blog, which specifically refers to the Illuminati and global control.

I realise you seek to zero in on “mind control chips”, the “Illuminati” and the provision of the former by the latter in “vaccines”. My strident contention however, is that the AVN and Dorey have at many times demonstrated comfort with conspiracies. I would suggest if dismissing the description on SAVN’s Facebook page deserves so much attention then it should accompany a point by point listing of what conspiracies the AVN do subscribe to.

At the same time, an argument as to why this is not damaging to the integrity of any “whistleblowers” credibility would seem required. At the very least your final draft must fairly include the listed conspiracies – including:

– Publication of material on use of the H1N1 vaccine, the Illuminati and the proposed “global fascist dictatorship of total human control.” It must be noted that Ms. Dorey often uses the term “fascism” to describe science advocates and public health aims in conducting her “business”.

– The action alert that included four (and more) conspiracies, particularly that Baxter had possibly released the H1N1 virus and would also be the company to profit from consequent vaccination which is seemingly highlighted by their filing for a patent for this vaccine. That Baxter very likely have intentionally “released” a vaccine tainted with avian influenza. That this batch was referred to as “doses” even though it was a laboratory preparation destined for further testing. These issues were to be stressed to politicians in email correspondence. The wording of these facsimile emails strongly suggests intention on the part of Baxter. A fifth conspiracy that it is not “too much to expect” Baxter again released tainted vaccines – “excactly the same thing” – is proposed even though no reports of this exist. They also incorrectly claim H1N1 was unknown at the time of patent filing. This is not accurate as strains of H1 viruses have been studied for decades.

– Dorey has not once objected to AVN members posting conspiracy material related to the Illuminati. Rather she has urged obfuscation, and from this it is expected she would publically deny any such beliefs.

– A vocal AVN member entertains the notion that our planet is under the control of beings unlike us and suggests the search for a hepatitis C vaccine should remove any doubt about this.

– Any presentation of vaccines used with or for other reasons or purposes than what parents need to know to make a sound risk benefit decision that deviates from accurately presenting AEFI data is demonstrating that the AVN have a different agenda to what is publically presented.

– Meryl Dorey has never publically dismissed any of the conspiracy theories presented by the AVN and herself. Her only comment, as noted above, is to acknowledge they are damaging to the cause. This at the least must cause concern about AVN hidden agendas.

As I stressed before, I feel this is an unfortunate diversion. Nonetheless, the volume of conspiracy material far outweighs calling to examination the specifics of one statement.

Ms. Dorey is notably back peddling since the law and public scrutiny caught up with her, in the hope of presenting a more rational image.

All the best

Regards,

Paul Gallagher

Regrettably, Brian did not reply. That’s understandable and acceptable. He sought for me to address items related to his interpretation of a certain video. He didn’t ask me to prove Meryl Dorey and her pals are in fact, batshit crazy.

It seems he was intent, as is his right, on maintaining that SAVN had unfairly accused the AVN of adhering to the stated conspiracy theory above. He’d listed some assumptions he felt I’d made and appeared to doggedly want my explanation for them. Read them here in purple. I wasn’t thrilled about having a straw man built based on assumptions Dr. Martin believed I’d made nor asking me to jump through hoops by “explaining” how I’d made them.

I was arguing well, here’s a bunch of conspiracies and attempts to hide involvement that I feel outweigh your need for exact evidence. More so, I feel this is a black mark against the integrity of anyone who purports to speak for Australian families and maintains they are not anti-vaccine. So, what was my evidence? What had I sent to Dr. Martin?

Meryl Dorey and at least two of her members published material from what was the biggest show in conspiracy land at the time. I quote from their referred source “Flu is not the biggest danger – it’s the vaccine”, by David Icke. [Bold mine]:

What Bürgermeister describes in her FBI submission is a summary of what I have been trying to get across in my books and talks for nearly two decades. A cabal of interbreeding families is seeking to impose a global fascist dictatorship of total human control.

Their vehicle is a secret society network structured like a transnational corporation. The operational headquarters is in Europe, in places like Rome, London, Paris, Brussels and Berlin. I refer to this as ‘the Spider’ and it dictates to the global web.

There are subsidiary networks of secret societies in every country that answer to the ‘Spider’. Their job is to control their country’s politics, banking, business, military, media, medicine, and so on, and introduce in their sphere of influence the global agenda dictated by the ‘Spider’. Those on the inner levels of this structure are collectively known as the ‘Illuminati’.

That was July 21st, 2009. Four days later, Dorey published her own version of an Australian episode of “forced vaccination”, in Living Wisdom. Entitled Action Alert: compulsory H1N1 (swine flu) vaccination just around the corner, it is an assortment of five separate conspiracies involving Baxter Pharmaceuticals – and a plea to members to write to “politicians”. She provided two facsimile letters which I highly recommend you read. The article began;

It is happening just as we said it would. First, we said that a worldwide pandemic would be declared and that has happened. Because of the pandemic, we said that the government would use its emergency powers to enforce vaccination. That hasn’t happened here in Australia yet but in the US and the UK, all the talk is about getting EVERYONE vaccinated against swine flu and normal human flu this coming (Northern) winter….

… We need to take action now to let our elected representatives and the media know what we feel about any form of forced medication….

The facsimile letters essentially claim it is 50% likely that Baxter “intentionally” contaminated the vaccine. AVN members were asked to relay to politicians that only 2 conclusions could be drawn:

Baxter were incredibly careless with their procedures causing an accidental contamination which then, incredibly, was allowed to get out into millions of doses of vaccine before anyone noticed; or

The contamination was intentional and it was only a matter of luck and good due diligence on the part of the Czech officials that this was caught before anyone received the contaminated vaccine lots.

It’s not the David Icke conspiracy rant in total but does have all the elements. “Declared pandemic, we said this would happen… government’s emergency powers… enforce vaccination…intentional contamination”. The second point unambiguously suggests a deliberate attempt to infect humans with a potentially lethal virus – for profit.

Essentially this “action alert” contains 5 conspiracies. H1N1 is being used for mandatory vaccination. That H1N1 was purposely released by Baxter. That Baxter intended to harm and kill with a tainted vaccine. That Baxter filed for vaccine patent prior to H1N1 outbreak they may have intentionally caused by releasing the virus. A fifth conspiracy that it is not “too much to expect” Baxter again released tainted vaccines.

Is it too much to expect that the company which sent out contaminated flu vaccines in February could not have done exactly the same thing several months later in May?

Then on July 26th Dorey reproduced Ickes article.

The next day, July 27th, AVN member Sheri Nakken publishes on the AVN email group this article about an aerosol precursor spray released into the air via chemtrail. This precursor will be activated via the H1N1 vaccine – leading to a spread of the H1N1 virus. It references Jane Burgermeister the Austrian journalist who served a “bioterrorism” suit on world leaders, the CIA, Obama, WHO members and more. At this time there were claims of widespread death and genocide complete with conspiracy videos and videos of plastic coffin stockpiles circulating on the internet.

AVN member Janine Roberts responds at 10:35am writing “we do not need to raise very dubious genocide charges just to criticise vaccines”. Genocide? Okay, genocide. Dorey also responds the same day at 10:48am writing, “…. it does our argument no good at all to bring in conspiracy theories, which though we may subscribe to them are unprovable“.

Bingo! We subscribe to them, they’re unprovable thus does our argument no good to “bring in conspiracy theories”. And not just any conspiracy. A chemtrail dispensed aerosol that is inhaled by humans ready to be “activated” by the H1N1 vaccine and thus, according to an AVN member, lead to genocide. By 12:23pm another AVN member uploads a copy of Ickes article in full. Dorey makes no attempt to comment on this.

Over the 25th, 26th and 27th of July 2009 Dorey made no attempt to refute involvement in conspiracy theories. But still we cannot fully prove the above comment to be factual. We can however offer more from Meryl Dorey and senior AVN members. AVN online health educator, Sheri Nakken in Jan. 2010 claimed, “you should not be having anymore doubts” that beings unlike ourselves have taken control on this planet… for “eons”. Why dear reader? Well, there’s increased research into a hepatitis C vaccine, why else? Poor Sheri’s post is below, or in high resolution;

Still however, with regard to forced microchipping, we only have this original controversial image sent to Dr. Martin. Dr. Martin is concerned that the video Dorey regards as “excellent” does not mention the Illuminati nor a mass cull of humans. I’m… quite simply shocked that he cannot see this video for what it is. Plain, rank, paranoid conspiracy cut and edited to present misleading information. Help yourself – Mandatory vaccination and forced microchipping. Here’s a typically themed if rather forceful comment;

When they come for me they had better come prepared to fight. Sheer numbers will get me in the end but I will take some of them with me. Better to die a quick death standing on my feet than a slow, sickly and painful death kneeling before the elitist and socialist scum who rule our society today.

So with the greatest of respect to Dr. Martin, Doreys posting of that “excellent video” must be seen as well beyond offering “informed choice”. This arguably, alone debunks her claim of not being a conspiracy theorist, and by extension refutes Martin’s claim of Dorey being a well meaning dissenter. It helps us grasp why Martin Walker from Age of Autism wrote Health Fascism In Australia, blaming Dorey’s woes on international “sinister skeptics” linked to Big Pharma.

We still however, need more. We need Meryl Dorey caught red handed raving about conspiracies. Government conspiracies. Microchips delivered by vaccination into your unsuspecting children at birth so their every detail is monitored. Remember the Australia card controversy? The card we still don’t have? Well if we search the Wayback macine archive we find that on January 8th, 2001 – a decade ago – Meryl Dorey wrote, Australia’s Big Brother Card: Coming your way! It included claims of microchips injected at birth via vaccine that will track people and also be used to deduct money for purchases via direct scanning. There is a much higher resolution here.

Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20010406083421/avn.org.au/big.htm

So we can now review the comment highlighting in red what can be substantiated by the Australian Vaccination Network and Meryl Dorey in their own words.

They [AVN] believe that vaccines are part of a global conspiracy to implant mind control chips into every man, woman and child and that the ‘illuminati’ plan a mass cull of humans.

I realise hairs can be split that AVN beliefs are not Dorey’s beliefs and vice versa. Though I would stress for someone who spends hours devoted to censoring and deleting commentary she doesn’t agree with, Dorey has proven by inaction her comfort with this madness. Mind you if we included the Baxter rant in full we could expand on this sentence.

In conclusion it does seem a rather silly business. I conclude far more weighty issues need to be thrashed out, not least that the AVN is not a citizens group but a group of criminals who remain a malignant threat to Australian public health. Yet, Dr. Martin set me an unspoken challenge suggesting that “a survey of AVN members” would be a suitable approach. Anyone familiar with the AVN can see the folly in such an idea. Fortunately, as always the evidence speaks for itself.

Most damning is Meryl Dorey’s admission that they do subscribe to conspiracy theories but must obfuscate this to maintain a veneer of credibility.

Meryl Dorey has once again been found out and caught lying. Despite protesting that she has no interest in conspiracies and it’s a cruel plot to undermine her integrity, she is damned by her own words and actions.

It would seem I am indeed in Dr. Brian Martin’s debt.

Caught in the vaccination wars: responding to Dr. Brian Martin Pt.1

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Denialism, Health, Scam by

I happened to notice that a tweet from Meryl Dorey of The Australian Vaccination Network at around 9 am today, led to her Facebook post on Caught in the vaccination wars (Part 2);

Caught in the vaccination wars Part 2, by Dr. Brian Martin to which she refers, is here. It is the second follow up to Debating Vaccination, in which he argues in defence of AVN anti-vaccination lobbyists. Or rather, as the title suggests that vaccine efficacy and safety is a matter for honest debate. Roughly, arguments presented are that attacks on vaccination are usefully observed as “a scientific controversy”, genuine cause for “public debate… differing values”, that vaccine induced autism, autoimmune disorders, multiple sclerosis, diabetes and under-reported reactions are legitimate accusations from critics. Meryl Dorey is a legitimate “dissenter” acting for the public good. In addition criticism of Ms. Dorey and The AVN is an attack on rights and is conducted unfairly or unethically.

The concern for supporters of evidence based medicine is that Meryl Dorey’s documented risk to public health, breaches of charity fundraising laws, misappropriation of member donations, long standing copyright breaches, sending hate mail to grieving parents and the many falsehoods she has engaged in, seemed justified to Dr. Martin – or at least insignificant. Added to this is that Debating Vaccination supported Dorey’s diversionary tactic that she had supposedly done none of these things but faced an orchestrated campaign to silence her right to free speech. This was doubly frustrating given Dorey’s documented censorship by deletion, refusal to publish evidence based comment replies and banning of her own group members who dared question or expose her mistakes.

At the time a catchy video appeared that was dismissive of Martin’s pro-AVN stance and was no doubt buoyed by his many other works: The suppression of dissent in science, Polio vaccines and the origins of AIDS, The burden of proof and the origin of AIDS and similar works on the “debate” surrounding water flouridation. Dr. Martin also listed “derogatory comments” directed at him in part one of Caught in the vaccination wars. He was quite right to point this out but one suspects he is not familiar with Ms. Dorey or has a predetermined agenda to follow. I don’t mean to be alarmist but when you engage in activity that ultimately leads to infant and childhood morbidity and mortality, crushing heartbreak for families and the resurgence of vaccine preventable disease, people will become angry.

It was felt that, had he spent a fraction of the time reviewing the egregious behaviour of Dorey rather than highlighting an unhelpful Stop the AVN (SAVN) comment about Dorey’s subscription to and publication of David Icke, the Illuminati, deliberate public infection with H1N1 by Baxter and her decade long belief in microchipping by vaccines [Source], a more robust discussion would ensue. Public opinion of Dr. Martin wasn’t helped in that Dorey exploited his work as proof of malignant suppression of herself, abandoning any pretence of answering to her crimes.

Whilst Brian Martin still holds to these views, and has as we shall see been quite selective in the material he chose to publish, I do want to stress that his input is valued. He is of course demonstrably wrong, but unlike Ms. Dorey one can exchange views and differences of opinion with Dr. Martin. He will admit when and where his argument is imperfect and point out the flaws he sees in opposing arguments. More so, it is highly likely Martin is as much a victim of Dorey’s deception as are her members and those who seek to refute her. Which brings us to her latest misrepresentation of his work.

Typically in reviewing Dorey’s publications we find immediate falsehoods. Brian Martin isn’t identifying as a victim saying he was “attacked by members of SAVN”. Nor is it true that attempts “to get him fired” occurred. Dr. Martin contacted one SAVN member directly, prior to publishing Debating Vaccination. Another member had complained about the nature of Dr. Martin’s work. This person, whose contact details are not public, realised these details had been actually passed to Dr. Martin without permission. This one SAVN member complained arguing that this was inappropriate. Yet Dorey writes;

As a result of this article, Dr Martin came under attack by the same group of people. They actually contacted his boss at the University and tried to get him fired! Luckily, the University values free speech and the rights of citizens in democratic nations more than this group apparently does.

During a lengthy Skype conversation the SAVN member gave their side of the story about, and I quote – “veiled intimidation and harassment” – via the tone of emails he sent to the member who had complained. The SAVN member had taken offence at some rather unprofessional observations of Dr. Martins. I can’t comment on the professionalism or otherwise other than to say the quoted material wasn’t indicative of SAVN content. It has now been expunged from its initial resting place, suggesting that someone at the University or Martin himself respected the complaint.

Sadly, the complainants details were revealed to Dr. Martin. Yes, that’s correct. Martin responded to the complainant alluding that in his experience complaining to superiors was typical of suppression tactics. Further complaints were made to the university about what was deemed “harassment” from Martin, using the universities email domain and eventually the complainant was reassured Dr. Martin would not be contacting her again.

Dr. Martin concludes that it’s reasonable to infer he could have been fired. Which begs the question: why intimidate of even directly approach a member of the public who already feels you’re behaving unprofessionally. In this case, Dr. Martin has only himself to blame. In representing the University of Woolongong, he is rightly subject to scrutiny. Such scrutiny and justified complaints about defending Meryl Dorey’s enterprise are not suppression tactics. If it can be inferred that job loss from an account of ones conduct is realistic, then that conduct must be called into question.

Dorey omits of course, that Dr. Martin now accepts that her claim of SAVN members sending her pornography as intimidation is unsubstantiated. He writes that he previously should have written that this conduct was “separate from SAVN”. Secondly, in view of accusations from Dorey that the SAVN threaten her, and her telling refusal to provide evidence of this Dr. Martin was provided with extensive evidence and screenshots (one example) of AVN attacks on grieving parents, SAVN members and cyber-stalking via false identities. He wrote;

What I can say is that I oppose the use of personal abuse by supporters or critics of vaccination, and I have sympathy for all those who are subject to it. Not only is abuse in poor taste but I think in many cases it is counterproductive.

This is a significant blow to Meryl Dorey, perhaps explaining why she lied about the content of Dr. Martin’s article, and uses the fabrication to yet again argue that her opponents are out to suppress free speech “and the rights of citizens in democratic nations”. In a nutshell Dr. Martin is defending his own argument, not Dorey’s. This is the second article by Martin since Debating Vaccination and nary a syllable has been voiced in defence of Dorey. She seemingly wants to bask in his integrity and gain credibility by dent of libelling key members of SAVN, by extension of Martins work. She is clearly desperate.

On June 26th Brian Martin published Shouting down our freedom to choose, in the Illawarra Mercury. He defends his, albeit mistaken, belief that SAVN tries to suppress free speech critical of vaccination. He confuses the input on Facebook from thousands of Australian’s disgusted with Meryl Dorey with an imagined stated intention of SAVN. He wrongly claims “dozens of complaints” have been lodged. Essentially, Dr. Brian Martin is quite mistaken about the key activists of SAVN, and the wider involvement from citizens, skeptics, science advocates and health oriented media identities across Australia, much less the independent activity of government health agencies.

In defence of so many mistakes on the part of Brian Martin I would suggest that he completely fails to see the impact of social media. Struggling to comprehend global and national networking, online activism and an entire new language that has grown to describe it he has been easily misled by Dorey’s neoconservative “the enemy is upon us” protest. Perhaps the most significant flaw in this article from the Illawarra Mercury is that it paints the AVN as benign citizen campaigners.

The criminal activity, business name or copyright theft and exploitation of members is not mentioned. The lies and cleverly crafted false stories of “vaccine reactions” are not included. It omits Dorey’s never ending threat that mandatory vaccination “for your family” is imminent or that claims of toxic and foetus cell filled vaccines that cause cancer, autism, immune disorders, death… has damaged public confidence. Likening a judges decision to back a father’s right to vaccinate his daughter to “Rape with full penetration” is absent, as is demanding to see the laboratory confirmation of a deceased infants COD from pertussis.

He forgot taking a neonate from maternity to avoid hepatitis B vaccination, hiding from police and DOCS then leaving the parents to face jail sentences – only later prevented by DOCS. Her defence of child murderers and use of the term “Shaken Maybe Syndrome” (because vaccines really kill babies) went unnoticed. The bogus 1998 threat to sue Michael Wooldridge for his role with Immunise Australia, refusal to cooperate with the HCCC, breaches of charitable status uncovered by the NSW OLGR, the rise in vaccine preventable disease, permanent disabilities, brain damage and death and on and on and on… all missing. No, this was no group meeting to discuss a noisy freeway, dredging the bay or the importance of ducks crossing a new bicycle path.

Still, Dr. Martin has a right to voice his views. This article led to further involvement of myself and others due to his final paragraph;

I wrote a careful response to the comments by SAVN members, documenting their methods, and posted it on my website. This seems to have worked a charm: no SAVN member has challenged my account.

This wasn’t correct in the eyes of many. I wrote a comment;

Brian,

Here is my email of April 23rd clearly refuting your claim “I wrote a careful response to the comments by SAVN members, documenting their methods, and posted it on my website. This seems to have worked a charm: **no SAVN member has challenged my account.**”

Part 1:

Not only did I challenge your account – I provided evidence refuting it.

http://i.imgur.com/JAA30.png

Part 2:

Links to 3 articles: later removed temporarily by false DMCA claims by Ms. Dorey (I have her submissions).

http://i.imgur.com/HoCxc.png

And you claim Ms. Dorey is subject to attacks on free speech?!

I also wrote in another comment;

The UDHR Article 30 states no one article may be exploited to suppress any other article. Hence free speech in this case goes further than the right to speak in dissent. It challenges the international right to health, of which the UN has a Special Rapporteur.

We all have a right to freely voice our own opinion. I find my defence of free speech stops at the border of freely voicing our “own facts”.

In fairness to Dr. Martin he still doesn’t fully accept that anyone challenged his account. He has written that more accurate wording would be, “no SAVN member sent me abusive comments”. In fairness to SAVN that’s shifting the goal posts. Regarding myself he wrote;

Paul Gallagher posted this claim: “Not only did I challenge your account – I provided evidence refuting it.” He provided a link to http://i.imgur.com/JAA30.png

I failed to see how this link to an article about microchipping and cancer related to my account, much less refuted it. I emailed Paul asking him to explain.

You can compare that to my actual comment/s above. You may wonder what the second link points to. Regrettably, despite the fact I point to four items in the email Dr. Martin uses only the first image – selectively leaving out the second and larger part of my email. The evidence he omitted has been published on this site here as 1.) How the AVN misleads Aussies on pertussis vaccination and 2.) How Meryl Dorey plagiarised and edited a WHO graph on pertussis.

The third document I provided a link to clearly demonstrates how Meryl Dorey misled the HCCC over pertussis in The Netherlands and Denmark. So I still maintain that yes, I both did challenge, and provided evidence refuting his account published here in clear dissonance to his conclusion. The original email of April 26th – that led me to comment – is extensive and contains 14 hyperlink references, 8 of which are of Meryl Dorey’s own writings. How Dr. Martin could have missed this challenge is beyond me.

Nonetheless Dr. Martin did email me and quite delightfully asked if I wished to offer any corrections before he published Part 2. I pointed out that he had shifted goal posts again, now writing that he “had received no substantive corrections”. I also offered many thoughts to Dr. Martin hoping they would be acknowledged. The full email is embedded below. Now that he has published his article I can see he has selectively quoted the email text. As we see above, he writes “I emailed Paul asking him to explain”. Then;

He replied on 6 July saying “the screenshot I sent you plainly shows Meryl Dorey’s post”, and then quoted its text:

This is an excellent video about the dangers of mandatory vaccination and microchipping. I had never heard of the link between microchips and cancers before. This is something we all need to be aware of!

He continued by saying that the screenshot provided

a video offered by Dorey entitled ‘Mandatory Vaccination and Forced Microchipping’. More so, Dorey states she hasn’t heard of microchips and cancer before – not microchips and vaccination.
By now, it must be clear I have refuted … Ms. Dorey’s denial that she believes in a conspiracy.

The sections quoted by Dr. Martin as my explanation are highlighted in red;

I was a tad cranky. It was becomming clear that Brian was going to maximise my reference to Dorey’s conspiracy – a topic I consider extremely time wasting. This was most unfortunate as we can all see the screenshot of Meryl Dorey’s comfort with vaccines and microchipping is not the only point made. Nonetheless, Brian wanted proof positive, “for example a survey of AVN members”, about a certain comment that was prominent on the SAVN Facebook page. It is of course, entirely correct to challenge accusations of conspiracy leanings. Brian Martin is correct in that the comment below cannot be fully substantiated. I have no idea who the author is;

They [AVN] believe that vaccines are part of a global conspiracy to implant mind control chips into every man, woman and child and that the ‘illuminati’ plan a mass cull of humans.

I was of the mind that it was ambitious but could reasonably be inferred. Having ridden the 2009 H1N1 insanity from Jane Burgermeister’s enforced human cull via vaccine, to claims of mind control chips in vaccines, and knowing the AVN were  conspiracy devotees I felt he was being deliberately pedantic in order to avoid more pressing matters. One I had raised was that if Meryl Dorey publically denied being “anti-vaccination” where did this leave his role as a defender of her as a dissident? Nonetheless, my disdain for conspiracies was, as we shall see in the next post, about to be put to the test with more and more requests to provide evidence to justify that single comment.

As I mentioned above, the email I had initially sent Dr. Martin on April 26th precipitating my comment was far more extensive, and had already gone over this ground. It included links to much of Dorey’s legal transgressions and I provided Dr. Martin screenshots and links to AVN material supporting David Icke, the “human cull” but most importantly a post by Meryl Dorey arguing that whilst the AVN subscribe to conspiracy theories it was unwise to be seen publically to do so. I identified Dorey’s habit of denial and censorship.

I had requested that future writings of his include these observations as a possible reason for the comment he had made much of in Part One of Caught in the vaccination wars. I also asked for a brief deconstruction of Ms. Dorey’s conduct, that I had documented such that he could show it “as anything but unconscionable”.

Sadly, whilst it is his right to choose, Dr. Martin has not seen fit to offer either transparency.

In the next post I’ll introduce the evidence for Meryl Dorey and the AVN’s cornucopia of conspiracy theories which were sent to Dr. Martin with a further request he list them as “possible reasons” Dorey was linked to the only game in conspiracy city over 2009: The Human Cull via H1N1.

 

How Meryl Dorey plagiarised, cropped, edited then published a WHO graph on pertussis vaccination

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Denialism, Health, Scam by

Not that far back, we left Meryl Dorey and her dishonest inner circle $11,000 richer after scamming members to donate toward a non existent Generation Rescue advertisement on the non existent scam of “vaccine induced autism”. A favourite still of the Australian Vaccination Network.

This type of almost febrile exploitation and abuse of gullible parents was abruptly halted when Ken McLeod and others lodged two complaints with the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission. Presently Ms. Dorey is mid testimony in her Supreme Court case against the HCCC over their recommendation that she publish a warning on her web site.

We’ve also previously consulted Meryl Dorey’s reply to the HCCC specific to Mr. McLeod’s complaint, exposing demonstrable plagiarism and untruths about pertussis vaccination. Basically her line is that pertussis vaccination doesn’t work because increasing notifications (in all 18 age groups) have occurred with a rise in vaccination (in the youngest 2 of the 18 age groups).

This failure supposedly occurs across the globe where effective pertussis vaccination regimes exist, Dorey claims. On July 11th I published an article on another rambling attack on the pertussis vaccine in which Dorey claimed, “So not only is the pertussis shot not preventing vaccinated people from getting pertussis – it could also be responsible for the increased death rate.”

Returning to the HCCC reply we find one of my all time favourites. Meryl Dorey’s blatant editing of a WHO graph on pertussis vaccination, cutting out explanatory text favourable to the programme and popping in her own text to make it seem like the vaccine was leading to morbidity and mortality in babies under 12 months, “as indicated by the following graph”. The article in question is Global Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases – Chapter 2, Pertussis: by Arthur M Galazka and Susan E Robertson. Part of a lengthy 1995 submission on vaccine preventable disease by these authors to the European Journal of Epidemiology.

On page 7 of her reply to the HCCC Dorey submits;

The data spans 1951, 1975, 1991 and 1993. It looks compelling. The grey bars show pertussis cases before widespread use of pertussis vaccines, the black show cases after. In both Poland and The USA babies less than one year old show markedly greater infection than children from one year and above post vaccine introduction.

Yet, what do we know of vaccine induced immunity against pertussis? Newborns cannot begin vaccination until about 6 – 8 weeks of age and this varies across nations. It can take a full 12 months to complete the regime and to gain vaccine induced immunity. Indeed babies under 12 months are considered to be partially protected or not protected against pertussis. Children one year and up are considered fully protected.

In this light we can now see that the graph reflects the morbidity pattern changes we would expect after wide spread immunisation (black bars). A marked reduction in the age groups that are protected by vaccine and a comparatively higher infection rate in the under 12 month, unprotected age group. We also know that vaccine induced immunity begins to wane at about ten years. This is exactly what we see in the USA.

Fortunately, Meryl was kind enough to not crop out the names of authors the data was sourced from. Let’s seek out the original source, shall we? I say! What’s this on pages 34-35;

Now we can read the text that Dorey expunged prior to submission to the HCCC claiming, “In fact, many studies have indicated that rather than protecting young infants… routine mass vaccination can lead to an increase in pertussis”, in under 12 month old babies, “as indicated by the following graph”.

It actually reads;

The introduction of widespread immunization against pertussis has changed the pattern of the disease (Figure 2.1). Apart from a considerable reduction in the number of cases and abolishing the endemic pattern of the disease, there has been a clear change in the age distribution of pertussis morbidity.

Perhaps the sources of data confused Ms. Dorey. Perhaps she just completely missed any explanatory text. It’s not like a pertussis vaccine critic should read research on pertussis vaccination is it? Let’s check up on Gordon and Hood (1951), Adonaijlo (1975, 1993) and Farizo et al. (1991). Perhaps it’s all their fault. Ah, on the same page Galazka and Robertson continue in the very next paragraph.

The scope of these changes differs depending on the schedule of vaccine delivery and the coverage rates achieved. In Poland, for example, the most noticeable reduction of pertussis morbidity has been among children 1–4 years of age and the peak incidence has shifted to infants. Infants represented only 12 per cent of all pertussis cases in Poland 1973, compared with 49 per cent in 1993 (Adonajlo 1975, 1993).

In the United States of America during 1980–1989, children under one year of age accounted for nearly 50 per cent of all cases; the incidence rate among infants was nearly 10 times higher than that among children of 1–4 years of age, and more than one hundred times higher than that among adolescents or adults (Farizo et al. 1992).

On page 33 under Epidemiological Aspects – communicability we read [bold mine];

Pertussis is a highly communicable disease. It is likely that no one escapes pertussis in the absence of immunization. By the age of 16 years, almost 100 per cent of children have suffered an episode of pertussis but about 25 per cent of episodes are unrecognized (Thomas 1989). This has been demonstrated by data from epidemic investigations, studies of secondary spread within families, and serological surveys.

In pertussis epidemics, attack rates in unimmunized children are high, ranging between 11 per cent and 81 per cent depending on age (Table 2.1). The high degree of communicability has been repeatedly demonstrated by secondary attack rates of 70 to 100 per cent among susceptibles within families (Gordon & Hood 1951).

Try as you might, you will not find these authors attributing increased infection in under one year old babies to the vaccine itself. Their data on the graph is unambiguous. The jury is in. Meryl Dorey lied. On page 20 Galazka and Robertson write, under Impact of immunisation against pertussis [bold mine];

Immunization is the key to preventing pertussis. Whole cell pertussis vaccines, widely used in industrialized countries since the late 1950s and 1960s, and introduced in developing countries within the WHO Expanded Programme on Immunization in the 1970s and 1980s, are of proven efficacy.

Well, Meryl Dorey can angle this one any way she likes. The graph she sourced was literally surrounded with material reinforcing both the efficacy of pertussis vaccination and the dangers of not vaccinating. Pleading innocence is not an option. It is a clear and intentional breach of copyright, submission of fraudulent material to a government health body and rank plagiarism.

Business as usual one might argue.

Just for the record it might be worth noting the pertussis complications table Ms. Dorey also had access to in consulting this document. Pneumonia, seizures, encephalopathy. It beggars belief that she can refer to this disease as “just a bad cough”.

How Meryl Dorey stole $12,000 from AVN members and/or donors

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, AVN, Health, Human Rights, Legal, Media, Meryl Dorey, Scam, Social Media by

Back in the days just before community members were forced to take a stand against the Australian Vaccination Network for their harassment and abuse of grieving parents, things were different. Having run almost unchecked as a largely law breaking enterprise their confidence and gall in scamming the public was at an all time high.

Yet the basis of Dorey’s urgent threats (directed at parents) of compulsory vaccination for toddlers never existed. Parent’s have never been forced to vaccinate children. The many alerts such as “Action Alert – compulsory H1N1 (swine flu) vaccination just around the corner” were all scams to scare members into giving the AVN money. Dorey’s claimed funding destinations never existed. The most famous is the Bounty Bags rort. Assisted by sisters Jane and Nicola Beeby, the scam was to take donations to “fund” AVN material in Bounty Bags maternity packages. The problem was the Bounty Bags company despised the AVN and had nothing to do with them. AVN did the same with Copeland Publishing and their Child magazine – an example of which we’ll see below.

The AVN knew no bounds. They had logo polo shirts, T-Shirts boasting Love Them, Protect Them, Never Inject Them, media appearances, glossy magazines resembling competence, craftily tipping uncertain parents further into a maelstrom of doubt. “Tell them they have aborted foetal cells in them”, Dorey was want to advise her minions. Anti-freeze, immortal cells used in production lead to cancer, crushed up monkey kidney, heavy metals, mercury, mercury, mercury. Dorey zipped from community hall to community hall running the same unsubstantiated claims with photos easily dated from the 1970’s. Horrific injuries blamed on every type of vaccination. For unsuspecting Aussies they were dark days indeed. To this day, not one “vaccine injury” has been backed by evidence or accepted by ADRAC.

Until of course, selfless volunteers followed through with the laws they had flaunted for so long. Eventually The NSW Health Care Complaints Commission found that the Australian Vaccination Network website:

  • provides information that is solely anti-vaccination
  • contains information that is incorrect and misleading
  • quotes selectively from research to suggest that vaccination may be dangerous.

And because of this, in their public warning about the AVN, “the Commission recommended to the AVN that it should include a statement in a prominent position on its website to the following effect”:

  • The AVN’s purpose is to provide information against vaccination, in order to balance what it believes is the substantial amount of pro-vaccination information available elsewhere.
  • The information provided by the AVN should not be read as medical advice.
  • The decision about whether or not to vaccinate should be made in consultation with a health care provider.

The AVN never complied, refuting the HCCC observation of being anti-vaccination, claiming that they are for “informed choice”. Bizarre given that academic Brian Martin writes in defence of their “dissenting” anti-vaccination stance. He echoes Meryl Dorey’s complaint that they are an essential whistle blower suffering suppression of free speech.

Below we’ll get a touch of the charity fraud. But reading the group emails of how they mocked legitimate charities associated with medical care was chilling. “I tell them I’m a charity”, boasted Dorey. Ultimately this scam fell apart. The Office of Liquor Gaming and Racing stepped in conducting an “audit that revealed breaches of charitable fundraising legislation”. From the Lismore Northern Star;

These included fundraising without authority, unauthorised expenditure and failure to keep proper records of expenditure. The AVN offices were searched by the OLGR recently and staff were interviewed.

Dorey lied at the time to the public and the OLGR – as I reveal below. Despite these serious offences she claimed that the OLGR found their donation box was the wrong size and;

…the OLGR had found several errors with the network’s bookkeeping system and some minor problems with the way in which fundraising income was accounted for… errors which any small, volunteer-run organisation can and does make…

So let’s examine one very clear example. Documented no less in their own archives – in their own words. Signed off in the applicable financial statement, no less. Orchestrated by Meryl Dorey and the Beeby sisters and the AVN committee I’d like to bring to your attention the admission and publication by The Australian Vaccination Network that they successfully raised at least $11,910 which was to fund an advertisement.

I believe the manner and timing in which the money was raised, the prompt closing of the donation window and subsequent failure to reference the fate of the $11,910 is significant. The source for this is archived editions of Living Wisdom, running from March 2nd, 2009 to June 25th, 2009. These archives may be found here.

I might stress at the outset that material in AVN archives of Living Wisdom is in dissonance to Meryl Dorey’s assertion to the OLGR that the AVN did not have access to auditors between July 2nd 2007 and June 2nd 2009, when it was without authorisation to fund raise. The February 2009 edition, under the heading The AVN needs your help, includes;

The AVN has now reached a crisis point and it’s up to you to decide whether or not we are able to continue to provide these services.
Our auditors have told us that they they have serious concerns about our financial status and our ability to continue as a viable entity…. Our debts are just over $50,000 – more than half of that co-signed for by Meryl Dorey personally…..

On October 16th, 2010 Mel McMillan wrote an article in The Lismore Northern Star entitled AVN seeking legal advice. It includes;

It is understood that between July 2, 2007 and June 2, last year (2009), the AVN was without authorisation to fundraise.
Ms Dorey admits this was true but claimed the OLGR was aware of the AVN’s fundraising status. ‘During this time we were unable to find an auditor,’ Ms Dorey said.
‘It took the AVN 12 months to find an auditor and then another year before the audit was conducted because the AVN was put at the bottom of the new auditor’s work pile’, Ms Dorey claims.

I believe this disparity suggesting a delay until mid 2010 in finding auditors, is quite pertinent. Either Ms. Dorey misled members, readers and donors or misled the OLGR. Which brings the next matter – the successful collection of $12,000 into stark consideration. The appeal began in the very next Living Wisdom publication on March 2nd 2009, 11 days after the published claim that AVN auditors had “serious concerns about [the AVN] as a viable entity”.

Regarding the advertisement, the March 2nd, 2009 edition sought donations from members totalling $53,000 by Monday March 9th, 2009. It suggested readership numbers meant a donation of $20 would suffice. The AVN had been in touch with Generation Rescue in the USA (they claimed citing no correspondence) and were “given permission” to run their USA focused advertisement in Australia. Donors could email judy@avn.org.au for internet banking or donate directly into:
Australian Vaccination Network Gift Fund Westpac BSB 032591 Account – 196282

Further ambiguity as to financial record management appears in the same issue under Your support is amazing! It is claimed that the call for $50,000 11 days earlier had allowed the AVN to “continue… for now”. It includes;

The AVN committee is in the process of working with our accountants in order to develop systems which will make our operations more sustainable. In the meantime, if there are any business mentors out there who would like to help us with advice, that would be very much appreciated.

A suspicious typing error led to Generation Rescue being referred to as Operation Rescue, and was corrected later the same day. Yet they’d just been in frequent contact with Generation Rescue, negotiating a deal…. hadn’t they? Four days later on March 6th, 2009 under Update on Fundraising for Autism Ad, the AVN’s Living Wisdom claims a total raised of $5,000.

By March 31st, 2009 the AVN Living Wisdom claims under What’s been happening? – Item 1 – that $7,000 of $53,000 has been raised. At this point the authors claim to have been seeking to; “Fund a full page ad in The Australian newspaper”. However, rather than a one off ad, they now seek;

“a full page ad in every edition of Copeland Publishing’s CHILD magazine…. This will cost $26,000 in total”.

Copeland Publishing do not accept or agree with AVN material. An advertisement claiming vaccines cause autism is factually absurd, deeply offensive, runs against the ethics and standing of Copeland and CHILD magazine, and would have lost them support and paying customers. The closest the AVN have come was a discussion online to have members flood GP offices and “sneak” anti-vaccination material into existing copies of CHILD magazine.

This attack was phase two in a 2010 revenge attack on Copeland for refusing to publish AVN propaganda, earlier reported in an “Action Alert” by Dorey herself, calling for letters to bombard Copeland Publishing. Later praised here. And still later praised as a “fantastic job”.

The next mention of the fund raising drive is in Living Wisdom, June 14th, 2009 [incorrectly headed “July 2009”] under Two weeks left – please don’t let this effort go to waste! They write (again with no citation of Generation Rescue);

We need to raise $23,000 in total and if we get 2/3 of the money, the American organisation, Generation Rescue, will give us the other 1/3. So far, we have raised $7,000 and we need to raise another $8,000 before Generation Rescue will give us the rest. I feel that we have given it a really good go, but it’s time to say there needs to be a time limit.

We cannot get the media to cover this issue from our side at all. They still insist that there is no evidence that children are becomming autistic as a result of vaccination. We know this is not the case. The US vaccine court knows this is not the case. But the average Australian mum and dad still has no idea. It is vital that we get this information out there. It will blow the roof off of the claims by our government, our medical community and others who want to continue the cover-up of this issue.

Please, if you have not already donated towards this cause (please click here [Ed: no longer functioning] to read more about this effort and to see a copy of the ad), do so today. If you can, forward this letter (using the link below) to your friends, family, workmates or anyone else who has an interest in child health.

Today, is Monday, June 15th. We will give it until Monday, June 29th to raise the rest of these funds. Your help and support are very much appreciated.

Oh, one other VERY IMPORTANT thing. When you make your donation via our website, please use this link [archive] so we will know to direct your donation towards this fundraising appeal? It is for a $20 donation. If you want to donate more, just change the quantity (in other words, if you want to donate $100, just change the quantity to 5 and that will be 5 X $20 or $100 in total).

A fund raising closure date of June 29th is now set.
The bank deposit account details change to;
Westpac Account Account name – Australian Vaccination Network, Incorporated BSB – 032 591 Account Number – 188223

At this point the total sought is $15,000 – $7,000 raised plus $8,000 needed. On June 25th – 11 days later – an additional $4,000 is reported, bringing the total raised to $11,000. They write in Living Wisdom;

We are entering the home stretch folks. On June 14th in our last e- newsletter, I put out an appeal for the final $8,000 needed to get our ad regarding the connection between autism and vaccination into all of the Copland Publishing magazines (Sydney’s Child, Melbourne’s Child, etc.). We have raised about 1/2 of that $8,000 but, like the saying goes (sort of!), you can’t be a little bit pregnant or a little bit dead. $4,000 won’t get the ad in these publications – we need another $4,000 and we only have 3 days to get it.

Based on the last receipt of $4,000 in 11 days, or indeed the initial $5,000 in four days, if the fund raising was extended for a short time past the final 3 days, the $15,000 sought may have been achieved. The outcome of this fundraising attempt or the promised advertisement is not noted again. According to the OLGR it reached $11,910.

No mention is made of monies raised over the final three days in which donations would have continued coming in – perhaps the $4,000 sought. Nor indeed was there any mention of whether the AVN itself could contribute with the help of accountants the AVN claimed were making “our operations more sustainable”.

Donations appear to have been made, or at least called for, into two separate Westpac accounts. The AVN Gift Fund and The AVN Incorporated. No mention of trust account deposits is presented to members. Monies raised in this manner are legally bound to be placed in trust accounts and members notified.

The $11,000 is not mentioned again in subsequent Living Wisdom editions. The only reference to money (two weeks later) are calls to buy tickets to seminars, sign up for membership or subscribe to Living Wisdom. The at least $11,000 is by their own admission, in AVN hands. Money raised immediately after a separate appeal for $50,000 to keep the organisation afloat. After financial auditing found “serious concerns about [the AVN] as a viable entity”. The latter being acknowledged again on March 2nd, 2009.

Of course I informed the OLGR of how this “minor problem with how fundraising was accounted for”, by Dorey and most likely the Beeby’s. Both Meryl Dorey’s and Jane Beeby’s signature’s are on the annual financial statement covering this period. Again, in their own words they damn themselves. The question must be asked: Was there ever a real appeal to fund an advertisement? Or was it a ploy targetting readers touched by autism? The average Australian mum and dad still has no idea. It was a government and media cover up.

The evidence is overwhelming. The money appears as good as stolen. Dorey denies accountability to the OLGR, claiming their motivation to act is derived from the HCCC whose motivation was derived from “forces” intent on suppressing their civil rights. To point out these scams is according to Dorey and the likes of Dr. Brian Martin, suppressing their right to free speech.

I’m afraid I beg to differ.

On October 18th, 2010 the NSW Office of Liquor Gaming and Racing wrote to Mr. Ken McLeod in response to his many complaints about AVN breaches of the charitable fund raising act 1991. It included, along with 17 confirmed breaches of the Act:

During the course of the inquiry evidence of possible breaches of the Charitable Trusts Act 1993 was detected in relation to the following specific purpose appeals conducted by AVN: [….]

2. Advertising Appeal – initially this was an appeal for the specific purpose of raising funds for an advertisement in the Australian commencing in March 2009 and concluding July 2009. The specific purpose was changed during the course of the appeal to fund advertisements in Child magazine. This appeal raised $11,910. None of the funds were applied to the specific purposes. It is noted that AVN did spend some $15,000 during the period December 2009 to July 2010 on various forms of advertising.

Two days later the Minister for Liquor, Gaming and Racing revoked the fundraising authority held by the AVN.

The Australian Vaccination Network: Meryl Dorey’s continued pertussis misinformation

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Denialism, Health, Scam by

Last time we left The Australian Vaccination Network, or rather President Meryl Dorey, we’d had a close look at her use of unrelated data sets and the tendency to use two figures twenty years apart, to argue pertussis vaccination is not efficacious.

Four days later, an AVN member repeated the very same claim on the very same forum. Also, back on the day I posted Meryl had written an extraordinary attack on official health figures based upon the newspaper article, More testing finds more coughing. Dorey’s completely unreferenced and innuendo filled post is entitled 100 times increase in Whooping Cough – is it REALLY just more testing? 

The article quoted is quite sensible and accurate. Dorey’s feverish and misleading extrapolation can only be examined if one reads her entire diatribe then copies and pastes the news article link at the bottom into a browser. What sets her off is focusing on the first paragraph, whilst ignoring the second. The article opens with the observation that better testing has more to do with the outbreak in NSW than with drops in immunisation. Then continues in the second paragraph with [bold mine] “there was no doubt whooping cough increased in areas with low vaccination rates”, according to Professor Booy who is a professor of child health at Westmead Children’s Hospital.

Dorey uses the same leap in notifications from 1991 to today, ignoring the peaks and troughs of infection, smirking that the outbreak, “isn’t real – it’s just more testing”. Then a simple falsehood. “So the fact that we have gone from 300 cases in 1991 to more than 35,000 cases today is just a figment of our imagination…”. From 332 cases in 1991 we had 34,794 last year and as of “today” have 18,299. Source here. Then it’s classic Reductio Ad Persecutorum, the classic logical fallacy named after Meryl Dorey herself.

And the vilification of families who have chosen not to vaccinate by the media, the medical community and the government that has occurred over the last 2 years because of this non-existent epidemic…

There’s been no vilification. Facts are facts. The Reductio Ad Persecutorum we see is entirely down to denial of vaccine efficacy and germ theory. Dorey ignores here the effect on herd immunity in areas with low vaccination rates, and has now redefined the epidemic as “non-existent”. Astonishing. The Hon Nicola Roxon, Federal Minister for Health and Ageing released Protecting Bubs: Whooping Cough Epidemic on February 21st this year, including;

As the current whooping cough epidemic continues, Health and Ageing Minister Nicola Roxon has reminded parents to protect their children with vaccinations, which can begin six weeks after birth.

“All parents should take advantage of the free vaccines provided by the Australian Government to protect young children from whooping cough,” Ms Roxon said. “Babies can be protected with vaccinations at six to eight weeks after birth, then at four months, and then when they reach six months old.

“Vaccines worth about $86 million will be provided in 2010-2011––free of charge for infants, children and adolescents.

[…..]

“Babies are not fully protected until their third dose of the vaccine, so it is important for those around new babies to be free of infection.

Remember, Dorey’s continued demonstrably false argument is that high vaccination rates and increasing pertussis cases prove the pertussis vaccine is not efficacious. This, she argues, is supported by a corresponding rise in diagnoses and notifications. In her article she is clearly selecting the reality of more widespread testing and using it out of context. Her context is that reported effective wider testing is a ploy by the government to dodge the higher notifications of pertussis (and thus vaccine inefficacy). In reality, more widespread testing explains the rise in notifications over the past four years.

Nonetheless she states without any supporting references;

But be that as it may, the fact is that the government has declared an epidemic by their own figures and now, faced with the inconvenient fact (which we have been stating for years) that vaccination rates are at an all-time high, they are now trying to say that there was no epidemic in the first place -it’s only smoke and mirrors. Don’t count on our statistics -they’re only rubbery figures, after all.

Oh, and we haven’t actually seen an increase in pertussis deaths either because Professor Booy says that they were much higher ten years ago. In fact, there were NO deaths at all from pertussis for well over a decade prior to the deaths that occurred in 2009 – one of which was in a child too young to be vaccinated and the other 2 in older, partially-vaccinated infants. So again, don’t trust the government’s statistics because they seem to be either inaccurate or simply made up on the spot!

“Inconvenient fact… smoke and mirrors… rubbery figures… no deaths ‘for well over a decade prior to … 2009’… statistics made up on the spot”. Statistics Dorey uses to make her entire “failed vaccine” argument, I might add. That’s quite a tantrum to throw over one small news article that refers only to vaccination rates in NSW, whilst Dorey is using national figures. Professor Peter McIntyre in a Rapid Roundup article for the Australian science media centre written in September 2010, addresses both death rates and the most important factor in recent diagnostic increases: Local GP access to PCR testing;

“The problem with whooping cough is that it is hard to get a laboratory diagnosis that is definite and doctors may not order the relevant tests so it does tend to be under-recognised. Having said that, the availability of the PCR test (since about 2000 in hospitals but especially over the past two years at the GP level) has greatly increased the number of cases and hospitalisations being recognised.

There have been big national epidemics in 1996/7, in 2000/1 and most recently in 2008/9. In South Australia, where this death occurred, the epidemic was later than in many other parts of Australia and is still current.

Bearing this in mind, it is important to note that despite a very large increase in reported cases in the 2008/9 epidemic compared with 1996/7, there were a total of nine infant deaths in 1996/7 but there have been, with the most recent death in SA, a total of four deaths recognised in 2008-2010.

Meryl Dorey also makes some alarming and demonstrably false claims about the documented mutation in two strains of pertussis. Firstly she claims it’s the “elephant in the room” that the medical community almost never refers to. This nonsense is followed by arguing that the cause is overuse of pertussis vaccination, “much like overuse of antibiotics” led to decreased antibiotic effectiveness. Vaccination levels required for herd immunity and “overuse” of antibiotics are quite different issues however.

Dorey argues incorrectly that nobody seems to know if the vaccine is ineffective or less effective. So, she then makes up her own mind claiming without evidence that the mutated strain is more virulent and dangerous, thus leading to more deaths here and around the world. Then we get this stunner;

So not only is the pertussis shot not preventing vaccinated people from getting pertussis – it could also be responsible for the increased death rate.

So what is happening? There are several strains of circulating bordetella pertussis bacteria. In early 2010 researchers from the University of NSW school of biotechnology and biomolecular sciences discovered mutations in the two most common strains – MT27 and MT70. The whole cell pertussis vaccine contained hundreds of antigens providing widespread protection. It also correlated to more cases of irritability and fever. The acellular vaccine introduced in 2000 is highly tolerable with several variations. Each variation contains between three to five purified pertussis antigens.

This certainly makes it easier for any potential mutation to defeat vaccine induced immunity. Yet in the absence of conclusive data we can only be sure that some strains will have greater effect. Co-author of the study Associate Professor Ruiting Lan says the acellular vaccine might have contributed to the mutation. What we can say is that the pertussis vaccine may not be fully effective.

Professor Lyn Gilbert is a clinical microbiologist at the University of Sydney. She was involved in the study and notes that whilst bordetella pertussis may mutate to bypass herd immunity, bacteria can and do evolve spontaneously. Dr Nick Wood, from the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance has also noted that antibiotic use may have played a role in this bordetella pertussis mutation. Do note this is not the overuse of antibiotics leading to antibiotic resistance and super strains Meryl Dorey was alluding to. The World Today covered this back on February 11th, 2010 including both Professor Lyn Gilbert and Associate Professor Lan;

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A comprehensive US article in The Journal of The American Medical Association, Research Aims to Boost Pertussis Control quotes Fritz Mooi, PhD, senior scientist at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands. He suggests lowered efficacy and faster waning of immunity associated with the acellular vaccine isn’t a sufficient explanation, for the present outbreaks. He and his colleagues, “posit that this is occurring in response to selection pressure from the vaccine”. What’s quite bizarre is that Meryl Dorey posted this article on her Facebook page. It includes;

James Cherry, MD, a pediatrician at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, in Los Angeles, and one of the world’s leading experts on whooping cough, maintains that the increase in cases reflects greater awareness and improved recognition of the disease among clinicians as well as availability of better laboratory tests and greater access to them.

The one thing I don’t want to do here is to use Ms. Dorey’s misplaced confidence in blaming a pertussis mutation on “overuse” of vaccination, to convey a conclusive argument that B. pertussis strains MT27 and MT70 have not adapted to the acellular vaccine via mutation. This may well turn out to be the case, but it does not justify attacks on vaccination regimes or the vaccine. There have been mutations before through adaption of B. pertussis to the vaccine.

This was the case for The Netherlands outbreak in 1996. Ironically, Dorey has been referring to this outbreak for years as proof of general pertussis vaccine inefficacy. She has been most cautious to not admit or refer to the mutation in The Netherlands as this ran contrary to her claim that pertussis vaccination – both whole cell and acellular – was ineffective. Frankly it now beggars belief she has jumped on the band wagon only to use the situation in Australia to spread fear, rail at health departments, misinform and mislead further.

As I pointed out above, whilst Professor Booy is referring to sufficient levels of vaccination in NSW, Dorey has inexplicably launched an attack on Australia’s national figures. Less than a month before, a Herald Sun article reported AMA Victorian president Dr Harry Hemley as saying “immunisation in the community is tending to wane”.

Ultimately this is another hysterical and difficult to follow anti-vaccination rant from Meryl Dorey. She definitely wants to eat her cake and keep it also. In attempting this she meanders throughout the entire bakery emerging into the spotlight covered in flour and jam, with no more evidence than the odd crumb picked up accidentally along the way.

This Today Show clip on the pertussis epidemic offers good advice and disturbing figures.