Category Archives: Scam

Australian Vaccination Network: Selling what’s available for free

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

If you’ve ever wandered about the Australian Vaccination Network‘s online shop you’ll notice quite a lot of themes.

Anti-vaccination, natural health, the evils of medicine, the bounty of mother earth, cancer cures, vitamin miracle stories, courageous people, tortured children, the horror of government malignancy and a general cornucopia of articles, DVD’s and books usually with one central theme. Conspiracies.

Yet before you go “shopping” and grab a few of those oh-so-cheap “downloadable articles”, or “25% discounted Special Offers!!” DVD’s and books, please be aware you’re buying what is almost certainly available for free, or at most substantially less. As Reasonable Hank pointed out some days back with delightful screen-shotted pwnage on his blog, Dorey scams even those who ask a question, or seek advice. You see, the error filled yet freely available article at whale.to, Tetanus Toxoid Vaccination by Chris Gaublomme is being sold by Meryl Dorey. It gets worse in that she consciously directed a Facebook commenter to her shop rather than to the free site which contains exactly the same information.

I was shocked! Could it be that family friendly and child loving Meryl Dorey might seek to profit from parents’ curiosity? The motherly Dorey who only wants the best for children and their parents? Apparently. With a little digging I found exactly the same information on the International Medical Council on Vaccination‘s certifiably loony site. You may remember them from hosting Meryl’s “Death threats, health fascism and suppression of vaccine truth in Australia” webinar. The question had to be asked then. How much else was she ripping off? Random selection of a few items proved most telling.

The article The MMR vaccine is not holy water – copyrighted to Sherri Tenpenny – is available free on many other sites. HPV Vaccine Mysteries selling on the AVN site, is available in PDF format – one may even say as a “downloadable article” – for free right here. For double the price of HPV Vaccine Mysteries you can download “reprints” from an already published AVN magazine of Debating Vaccination; the mind boggling pseudoscience from failed physicist and PhD enabler of Judy Wilyman, Dr. Brian Martin. Or for free you can download the entire article with identical cover, colours and cockypop right here.

In fact, where might Meryl Dorey be sourcing her “downloadable articles” from? Do you really need to clutter your computer with articles that are available online – sometimes on several websites? More so, do you want to be giving banking details to an organisation with a documented history of financial deception as confirmed by NSW Office of Liquor Gaming and Racing? Who acted to revoke their fundraising licence?

This deceptive conduct has already manifested in 23 (known) breaches of The Charitable Fundraising Act 1991. Breaches carried out boldly and that do not include the hanky panky of selling freely available material. To be sure some articles are $2:50 or even $1:50. All the better to splurge. Yet other items are “discounted” to $25:00 when they exist elsewhere for far less, or in the case of most books almost half AVN’s price.

But of course this is nothing new. In September last year Kate Bensen wrote in the SMH Copyright breaches land antivaccination group in trouble:

An anti-vaccination group is under fire for allegedly breaching copyright laws by selling newspaper and medical journal articles online without permission from the authors.

The Australian Vaccination Network, which was the subject of a public warning issued by the Health Care Complaints Commission last month, withdrew 11 information packs from its website yesterday after complaints from authors. The packs, which were selling for up to $128, included home-made books filled with articles photocopied from journals around the world, information on drugs taken from MIMS, the medical guide used by doctors and nurses, and copies of brochures inserted in medication boxes by pharmaceutical companies. [….]

The president of the network, Meryl Dorey, said she was unaware she had breached copyright but accepted there had been problems with her licence.

”We’ve made mistakes but they’ve been honest mistakes. They’ve been out of ignorance rather than fraudulence,” she said.

One author stressed that apart from never hearing of the AVN, her material was out of date. Also, under copyright law penalties can reflect if material is used in a way that makes readers think less of the author. In regard to the former, selling outdated material is just scamming members again. As for the latter there’s ample scope for that.

Keeping the deception theme alive, in a recent article (November 2nd) in The West Australian Meryl Dorey:

… denied claims the group was involved with religious organisations that have an anti-drugs stance.

Which is rather fortuitous given our present little jaunt about her online shop dear reader. One of the “25% discounted” DVD’s is Scientology’s Citizen Commission on Human Rights, Making a killing: the untold story of psychotropic drugging. You can pad Meryl’s pocket with $25:00 to have and to hold your very own copy… if it arrives. Or watch it free here as a Google Video. Dorey is also selling in her “downloadable articles” scam, the CCHR’s Labelling and drugging kids for profit, which is identical to material on the Scientology/CCHR’s USA sites that’s also available with videos. Dorey has a long history of promoting the CCHR and other material and books she sells are religiously themed and anti-conventional medicine.

So a.) Meryl Dorey is indeed involved with “religious organisations that have an anti-drugs stance”, b.) is profiting from selling their otherwise freely available material and c.) continues to promote these views. Wow. Caught with lies and fraudulence again. Why am I not surprised?

Speaking of books, The Virus and the Vaccine is $35:00 AU at the AVN shop or under $13:00 US on Amazon. Choosing Not to Immunise Our Children is $40:00 AU at the AVN or $25:00 US at Inkview.com. Fear Of The Invisible by Janine Roberts is a whopping $42:00 AU at the AVN. On the promotional site it’s $20:00 US. At Amazon it’s $18:61 US. Drug Muggers: Which medications are robbing your body of essential nutrients… is $35:00 AU at the AVN or $14:20 US at Amazon. Child Health Guide – $33:00 AU vs $16:86 AU at the Aussie online store, Fishpond. The Age of Autism… by Olmsted and Blaxill. $35:00 AU vs $18:65 US at Amazon. The Vaccine Guide – 10 years old – is $44:00 AU vs $13.01 US at Amazon.

On and on it goes. With absolutely no guarantee your product is in stock (there is no notice) nor if it will arrive as per the great Living Wisdom swindle. Which, amazingly also contained free articles within that subscribers had already paid for. Even Peter Dingle’s, David Icke admiration winning The Great Cholesterol Deception is $5 dearer than at Aussie online retailer Fishpond who guarantee rapid delivery. Of course the rubbish on offer ranges from nature-obsessive to offensive (Hep B vaccine – good for new born prostitutes and drug addicts but who else?) to completely fictitious such as homeoprophylaxis or “vaccine guides” written by homeopaths, to New World Order themes.

The best way to uncover the pay-for “downloadable articles” scam is to bring up the offending item page. Highlight only the title and search for that. So why pay for Judy Wilyman’s A new strain of swine influenza… when the same is available here for nicks? Or Dr. Eisenstein’s vitamin D recommendations for the same disease, when it also available at the Center for healthy living?

Who else would publish that gross Greg Damato title Hep B vaccine – good for new born prostitutes and drug addicts… that Meryl is selling her members? Only our old friend Mike Adams – who happens to have it for free. Speaking of Mike I wonder if our Health Danger knows that his MacGyver inspired article How to build a pharmaceutical factory in your back yard and grow your medicine for free is being sold by Meryl word for word. Ecstatic Birth – by Sarah J Buckley is for sale as an article at AVN, or available as exactly the same PDF for free from her own site or even on Mothering.com.

Cancer – How scientific are Orthodox cancer Treatments? – by Walter Last, for sale at AVN or free at whale.to. Perhaps the most face palm-worthy is No Limits by Dianne Trussell. Not only is it for sale but it’s also on the AVN site for free. Many other pieces are seen to be recycled articles from Living Wisdom or Informed Voice written both by Meryl Dorey and other authors. T-Shirts are 40% dearer than similar items from elsewhere.

Back copies of cobwebbed Informed Voice are for sale for goodness sake! Piles of antivaccination brochures, “information packs” and CD’s of old seminars that lie scattered about a moldy old shipping container near a certain ramshackle house. A bit like Steptoe and Son meets The Twilight Zone. My you’d need to be up on your tetanus shots if you’re buying from that shambles.

All up that’s only about 20 items out of many, many more. Material that is freely available or markedly cheaper elsewhere. One is left wondering about the legality of copyright or such price markups with articles and books respectively. Certainly a great deal of material is quite old and even more certainly the bulk is simply pseudoscience dressed up as advice.

The price of some other items, such as Baby Gift packs is simply astonishing. Selling Homeopathic Home Prescriber manuals without warning is exactly why the HCCC sought to protect the public. I for one would be concerned about proper delivery.

It goes without saying. The AVN Shop is a dishonest rip off. A shonkster. A scam. A fugazi. A sting.

Hold onto your money.

[PS: Ample use of “nofollow” was used in linking to such sites of ill repute]

SensaSlim Shonky Shows Up TGA

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, Big Placebo, Health, Legal, Scam by

By now you most probably know that SensaSlim won the Choice Shonky for “making snake oil look good”. Or rather, “SensaSlim (and friends)”.

Delightfully the TGA receive an honorary Shonky for their mind blowing apathy and inbred inability to delist the rubbish. Choice report:

The TGA, who deserve an honorary Shonky for their role in this, have had ample reason and opportunity to delist the product, ensuring it can no longer be sold in Australia, but have declined to do so. Even after the TGA’s advertising Complaints Resolution Panel recommended its delisting due to non-compliance with regulations, they have sat tight and done nothing.

Of course the TGA who can, according to the TGA simply do no wrong, rejected this award in the same hilarious manner they reject any responsibility for regular TGA failures. Reported in The Australian, “Unproven slimming spray wins a shonky”:

The TGA revoked Sensaslim’s approval to make such claims, but it has not delisted the product for sale, as suggested by its panel, earning it an “honorary Shonky”. A spokesperson says the Shonky is unwarranted: “The TGA continues to take regulatory action against SensaSlim Solutions to remove it from the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods.”

The spray continues to be sold by several Australian internet pharmacies. This prompted [Ken] Harvey to write to the Pharmacy Board of Australia this week, alerting it to possible “breaches by pharmacists” of legislation prohibiting them from misleading advertising.

Which is exactly why the spray should have already been delisted. People are still being ripped off. More on the failing effectiveness if not relevance of the TGA can be read here at Australian Skeptics.

Just recently on October 27th the Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Ageing, Catherine King, hinted at regulatory change. Speaking at the Complementary Healthcare Council of Australia’s (CHC) National Conference King agreed that the Auditor General’s report into the TGA this year highlighted concerns. Pharmacy Daily report:

These issues, including poor compliance rates, resulted in recommendations for improving the process of regulation for complementary medicines and the handling of advertising complaints. Specific recommendations listed in the report, including: the timely completion by TGA of key guidance material for complementary medicines; improving the integrity of the self-assessment process for listing complementary therapies whilst limiting the use of inappropriate claims and indications, have been accepted by the TGA and are now in the planning stages for implementation.

King also said planning is now occurring for further report recommendations including making information available to the public on each listed complementary medication; improving the quality of the regulatory framework through the use of risk profiles; and the development of documented procedures for handling advertising complaints including timelines for completing investigations.

An informal working group had also identified that the current system doesn’t “sufficiently encourage compliance”. Indeed. It cannot be understated how appalling the TGA behaved in setting in train some of it’s regulatory powers, such as seeking original and stated evidence from sponsors of ARTG products, only upon discovering the Auditor General was to investigate. Put simply, the TGA can at any time ask for the evidence of any ARTG listed “alternative to medicine” product and act accordingly. Put rather more simply, they don’t.

Despite having several months to discern whether SensaSlim (and a plethora of other scam products) meet requirements Pharmacy News reported last week on the TGA dodging any criticism surrounding Sensaslim. Not happy about it’s honorary Shonky for apathy in the face of urgency, it was noted that:

… a TGA spokesperson insisted it was reviewing whether the product met the requirements for listing on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG). “It is nonsense to say that the TGA has taken no action in relation to SensaSlim,” the spokesperson said. “The TGA continues to take regulatory action against SensaSlim Solutions to remove it from the ARTG.

As for the SensaSlim Scam itself, well the European and American markets – always the primary target – are now copping it. The same flashy websites once active in Australia, with exactly the same claims are misleading consumers on those continents. The UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency cannot act to have the misleading advertising removed unless:

  • The site is hosted in the UK
  • The profits are banked in the UK
  • The product is distributed from the UK
  • And is a medicinal product

Profits from sales of SensaSlim go via PayPal into the bank account of Peter Foster’s QLD girlfriend Liana Emberg. Liana is understandably keeping quiet. Emberg was one of seven SensaSlim scam scally wags who had their bank accounts frozen by the ACCC.

Somehow I doubt poor Liana is losing out.

Check out all 2011 Shonky Awards here (SensaSlim 2:40)

Dr Death – Hellfried Sartori’s Cancer cure scam

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, Health, Legal, Scam by

Australia’s 60 Minutes program recently screened an episode on Dr. Hellfried Sartori’s lethal “alternative” cancer “treatment and cure”.

In the time honoured tradition of cancer cure scams, Sartori claims to be able to cure 98% of cancers – including “highly advanced metastatic cancer” – and has done so for “ten thousand” patients who are spreading the word “in the underground”, he says.

“The Underground?”, you may ask. His “miracle cure” you see, would “put pharmaceutical companies out of business” and was “unauthorised”, relayed family members who were scammed by “cutting edge” mimicry. It was a poisonous cocktail.

Featured in this program are members of families who lost loved ones in appalling circumstances in Perth. This led to a Coronial Inquest in November 2010. The inquest heard of 25 Aussies, 24 (including a six year old Sydney girl) of whom are dead. The other person hasn’t been found.

Sartori (sometimes bobbing up as Abdul-Haqq Sartori) has been jailed twice in the US. Although convicted over various frauds, including an AIDS cure scam whilst practising medicine without a licence in Thailand, he is unrepentant. In Perth, according to Fairfax:

Celia Kemp suggested to Mr Sartori that he could only see success and not failure, that his clinical skills were deficient, that he had lied and exaggerated about his treatment as part of luring sick people into paying him for dubious treatments, and that his success rate for curing cancer was zero.

Mr Sartori replied that 50 per cent of the cure for cancer was positive thinking by the patient. He conceded he had exaggerated about the efficacy of his treatments, insisted he could cure cancer and admitted lying to Australian authorities. ”If any treatment has proved benefits, it is this treatment,” he told the court. ”And I have not violated my Hippocratic oath.”

He has a long history of “vitamin” and “ozone” cancer cures, charging up to $40,000 in Australia. He is deregistered in a number of U.S. states. The 60 Minutes program includes a short interview with Dr. Alexandra Boyd. His Australian caper occurred whilst he was in custody in Thailand. Rather than a clinic, a house owned by Dr. Boyd was used. Unregistered nurses administered Sartoris useless, and lethal cocktail. During the inquest in 2010 Dr. Boyd went missing, until found to have voluntarily admitted herself to a psychiatric clinic. According to The Australian:

She was forced to testify before Western Australia’s Coroner’s Court via telephone link from a mental health clinic in Fremantle after being deemed fit to give evidence by her psychiatrist. [….] The five patients received a mixture of minerals, industrial solvents and paint stripper while being treated in Dr Boyd’s home in 2005. They later died, some after vomiting green fluid and suffering chronic diarrhoea.

So how is such rubbish sold? How are people convinced to use such dangerous compounds? Sartori’s web site still pushes his “alternative cancer treatment” scam. Other alternative cancer care sites promote Sartori, Liquid Cesium Chloride and Dimethyl Sulfoxide. DSMO (“the magic bullet for cancer”) is used in other dubious treatments including arthritis creams. Whilst it has genuine medicinal uses due to it’s ability to penetrate skin and cell membranes without damage, it is favoured by alternative “health” scams.

Abusing the work of others on conditions which favour cancer growth, Sartori’s suspect “research” of exactly the same concept – that cancer cells survive longer in acidic or anaerobic environments – is quoted. Thus, Cesium Chloride, “one of the most alkaline elements” will kill off the cancer cell by raising pH and boosting O2. Intravenous DSMO aids in getting the CsCl into the cell.

His ozone theory is bizarre. Citing a number of populations that live at high altitude and experience longevity, Sartori reasons this is due to greater concentrations of ozone. The higher one goes the more UV action on oxygen, hence greater ozone concentration. Since “time immemorial” lowland women could not fall pregnant in the highlands, unless acclimatised. Assuming this is due to ozone, Sartori further postulates if a fetus will not grow then surely cancer will not grow. “… as ozone temporarily stops the growth of the embryo, it too stops the growth of a quantity of quick growing cancer.”

B17 or laetrile is another component. The Hunzas of Northern Pakistan are one of the high altitude communities with longevity quoted by Sartori. Laetrile is found in the seeds of apricots – a favoured Hunza food. Apricots have been palmed off as a path to longevity for decades due to this association, but vitamin scams take it one further and push the laetrile angle. Along with zinc, selenium and ascorbic acid Sartori adds B17 to his IV cancer cure.

And Viola! There you have your $40,000 lethal intravenous mix.

Meryl Dorey’s trouble with the truth: Part 3 – Lies and Fraud

Posted in Denialism, Scam by

You were shocked, astounded and aged beyond your years with Part One. Fearing collapse, you sent your family away and took leave to stay home and read Part Two.

And now, the frequent rumours. The disturbance in the Force. The smell of Supreme Court cases in the morning. It could only mean…

Meryl Dorey’s trouble with the truth: Part 3 – Lies and Fraud

© Full attribution, Mr. Ken Mcleod

Download Full PDF


Floreani, Golden and the myth of homeopathic immunisation

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Chiropractic, Denialism, Health, Scam, Science by

For a mob that officially professes “no position” on vaccination the Chiroprctors’ Association of Australia disseminate ample false, misleading and quite dangerous antivaccination hanky panky.

Take CAA NSW branch vice president, Nimrod Weiner. The Weiner from Newtown Community Chiropractic whose Nimroddery was pegged as a “rant on vaccines” by The Australian. Although he feverishly ran for cover after outraging real doctors, not-a-real-doctor Weiner’s “rant” bibliography can be found here. A hodge podge of dusty conspiracy twaddle and outright lies, much from the Australian Vaccination Network it alone refutes Weiner’s claim:

I’m good at knowing how to read a research aritcle, and knowing whether it’s viable or not. I’m also good at collecting a lot of research. This vaccine topic I update every single week. So what we’re looking at is new as of yesterday morning.

He didn’t write that, but announced this to attendees of his seminar Vaccinations: An informed choice, in what can quite justifiably be called a lie. There’s more on the entire debacle along with a Radio National segment here. At times we’ve met other crackpots from the CAA. Jason Parkes and Rob Hutchings, both of whom approach their profession like a religious fundamentalist approaches taking up arms. Warren Sipser who believes vaccines cause harm yet chiropractic “repairs DNA”. Genevieve Keating is another pleasant sounding predator who specialises in convincing parents chiropractic builds super human kids. They lean toward the weird beliefs of founder Daniel David Palmer and his views on “God given energy flows”.

Sipser was the subject of an article in The Australian headed The Chiro Kids which brought home just how ludicrous (and scurrilous) the new brand of Mystical Chiropractors really are. Thanks to Dr. Rachael Dunlop we can read the CAA’s Media Release warning CAA members of that article. It’s disturbing stuff given these quacks are subsidised by our government (Medicare foots the bill for five sessions per year) and health insurers. Written by CAA national president Simon Floreani, it is a straight out attempt at damage control, obfuscation and dodging questions.

Floreani himself has run antivaccination clinics and is a member of the Australian Vaccination Network. He describes Dorey’s little fraudulent scheme as a valuable resource for patients. Simon is married to Jennifer Floreani, famous for writing an article supposedly describing (Update – as noted below the bogus article has been removed but can be found here pp. 348-349) her newborn’s battle with pertussis, picked up from an older sibling. Given the outcome and treatment the article is almost certainly fraudulent, but if perchance the diagnosis is correct then at best it is reckless neglect and at worst simple child abuse.
She writes (bold hers):

This experience did indeed test our resolve and we were forced to draw on our support network of healthcare providers. We performed chiropractic checks on our baby daily and utilised a whooping cough homeopathic. I dosed myself with an array of vitamins to boost his immunity via breast milk and kept him hydrated with constant breastfeeding.

Whooping cough is often slow to develop and may respond well to conservative management, including chiropractic, osteopathy, homeopathy, herbs, acupuncture or acupressure. Within two days, the severity of our baby’s symptoms cleared and within a two week period, each of our boys had a complete resolution of their symptoms.

Fortunately for the Floreani’s this little tale is just that – a tale and a comical one too. Every type of “conservative management” is absolutely non efficacious. Babies with pertussis gag, choke and may have profound difficulty breathing making this nonsense of super fortified breast milk as a realistic option seem laughable. More so, there’s no evidence an increase of maternal vitamin intake when breastfeeding will do anything but produce expensive maternal urine. Even more farcical is the notion of “boosting immunity” with vitamins. Either way, if their baby did have pertussis there’d be no magic recovery after two days but admission to intensive care many days later as the insanity of their hokery pokery gradually sank in. Yet, that’s not really the point.

The dangerous, deluded and unconscionable message pushed on parents here is that using your breasts, vitamins and witch doctor spells, you can clear up a potentially fatal disease within two days. It’s outrageous and a bald faced lie that I cannot even begin to comprehend the motivation for. What’s infuriating is that chiropractors exploit the confirmation bias in parents and the Floreani’s are prime examples.

Parents who believe these nonsense manipulations cure everything report that yes treatment keeps children healthy. They also report inaccurately that lapses in treatment lead to poor health. Knowing this, chiropractors are famous for setting treatment frequencies, with some even insisting on treatment contracts. That the locus lies with parental bias has been shown splendidly in trials on colic.

As we know, chiropractors claim they can “successfully treat” colic or – in their lingo – Irritable Baby Syndrome. Trials show that if parents believed their baby received chiropractic care, whether they did or did not, they reported improvement. If they believed that no chiropractic care was applied – even when it was – they reported a worsening of colic. You can catch up with Simon Floreani admitting no proper trials exist here on Lateline back in July 2009.

He’s caught out claiming injuries from neck manipulation are one in 5.85 million cases when in fact they are gauged at 1.3-5 per 100,000 manipulations, by insurer Kaiser Permanente, who refuse to cover the practice. In short Floreani is claiming instance of vertebral injury is 60 – 300 times less than it is.

On August 21st this year, a video entitled “Homeopathy evidence and research” filmed by Simon Floreani and featuring homeopath and fraud Isaac Golden, appeared on YouTube. The video below looks initially at the rise of the Mystical Chiropractors and then picks through Golden’s claims of Cuban “homeopathic immunisation” and his own so-called PhD on “homeopathic immunisation”.

When used to defend against a complaint to the TGA about homeoprophylaxis, Golden’s PhD actually helped uphold the CRP decision of misleading claims by fellow crook, Fran Sheffield. This is because even Golden admits in his thesis text that his sample was flawed in size and there was no chance of contracting infection. In short he showed nothing.

Enjoy…