Category Archives: Legal

Monika’s Entity: Losing Self Containment?

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Big Placebo, General, Health, Legal, Scam by

There’s a few various ways of defining “entity”.

Clearly it’s a “thing”. Dictionary.com include the notion of “self containment”. We might include distinct and being independent in existence. Other definitions note an entity is a part that has broken away from the whole. In business or in geography, such as a subcontinent.

But when it comes to describing “Monika’s Entity“, things get more challenging. Described as “a potion peddler” conducting “quackery of the first order” by Today Tonight, I’m sure we can do better. Clearly, Monika is also a Thing. In fact I’d reckon Monika is a Distinct Thing. Monika has also broken away from the “whole”, as it were, of humanity, existing quite independently from everyday traits and characteristics. However it appears Monika has jettisoned the notion of self containment from her Entity.

I rush to add dear reader, this does not make Monika a Distinctly Subhuman Thing bereft of self containment. Nay! I have only one response in defence of Gentle Monique:

Monika created Hugh Jackman’s physique and can cure cancer

As Monika’s Number One Fan, I confess to some concerns about her health. You see I’ve been banned from her Facebook page ever since I started asking questions about her breaching the Public and Environmental Health Act 1987 (S.A.). The S.A. Dept. of Health issued a Mesotherapy Alert after Monika charged $500 a shot to inject patients with saline solution and “other substances”. She was curing cancer by “killing the worms” responsible, amongst other things. A few developed “multiple symmetrical skin abscesses on their calves, buttocks, thighs, abdomen, shoulders, face and neck”.

Some developed mycobacterial infection. This required Monika to be using tap water and/or sewerage contaminants in her solution which she injected into people for whom she’d promised she could cure cancer. Page 42 of this Report into Bogus Practitioners includes:

In 2005, my husband, Ross, was diagnosed with cancer of the bile ducts. After surgery and various courses of chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments failed to halt the diseases, my husband sought the help of Monica Milka who did ‘alternative therapies’. Monika assured my husband that she could cure him and commenced treating him with all types of sprays, medicines and injections. The many injections she gave to his stomach were to ‘kill the worms’ that were causing the problem but in fact left him very sore. She also took photos of his eyes and then showed him those supposed images on a computer screen, pointing out the ‘areas of improvement’ and telling him how well he was doing. Ross paid Monica over $500 per week. Initially he paid by visa card so received a receipt for this payment but later on he began to pay cash and no longer received any receipts.

Sadly, in their haste S.A. Health ordered Gentle Monique not to administer any substances to any person. They then ordered her to not provide substances to another person, unless that substance is a commercial product. Are they insane?! Curing cancer with sewerage contaminants isn’t like hit and miss allopathy. Just to show them she had no regard for this regulatory hogwash, Monika began selling water and ethanol in 150 ml bottles for $150.

The misunderstanding Monika and I had, followed my foolishly pointing out she was still the subject of health restrictions and providing yet another scam for human ingestion actually breached the order to not provide any substance to any person. Anyway, today Monika plonked this post on her page.

I was shocked. Gentle Monique? Just two days ago, Monika invented, posted, then deleted this story:

The suspect nature of this “confession” was all too apparent. As a poster observed, even if this mysterious confessor had zero mortgage the return on $100,000 at even twice what we expect in today’s market is only $10,000 before tax. Thus the idea of “a very healthy income” becomes laughable.

Monika was caught red handed lying to her readers, inventing stories to besmirch the name of others she included in her tirade. Oh my.

This was of course, an example of being “visciously (sic) attacked & bullied & harrassed (sic)…”, for bringing the joy of sewerage injections and impure water and ethanol magic to humanity. Still, in the cloak and dagger world of unmasking BigPharma Trolls paid gazillions to bring down Gentle Monique, anything is possible. Even deleting the entire story and proffering this excuse:

As you can see, I have good reason to be concerned over Monika’s state of mind and health. As her Number One Fan, it is my job to worry. Nonetheless, Gentle Monique was on the ball. The best way to fight off accusations of making stuff up, is to… make more stuff up:

Monika is very grumpy with Today Tonight who plot and plan with all of us BigPharma Trolls. When she made up the story that she later deleted Monika included:

I do hope Monika’s lawyers, in whose hands everything lies, are advising her of how she conducts herself online. You know…. without prejudice… ♥

I suppose ultimately all we can conclude is that Monika Milka of Monika’s Entity is not a Distinctly Subhuman Thing because all the evidence points to her being a Distinctly Bogus Subhuman Thing who appears to have lost the knack of self containment.

So all is well with the Universe.

Over to Today Tonight:

Monika Milka: Quackery of the first order

Isaac’s Golden Moment

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, Big Placebo, Chiropractic, Health, Immunisation, Legal, Scam, Science, Skeptic by

Three weeks ago I attended a public lecture entitled Medicine and Homeopathy.

The latest from Melbourne University Health Initiative, the lineup included homeopath Isaac Golden and chiropractor Simon Floreani to present the argument for homeopathy. Public health physician and medical activist Dr. Ken Harvey and GP Dr. Stephen Basser, one of Australia’s most accomplished critics and analysts of alternatives to medicine, held the fort for medicine.

All but Stephen Basser feature in this video examining claims made by Isaac Golden about homeoprophylaxis. I was confident Golden would pull off a pleasant well meaning presence and equally confident Floreani would flounder and fall. As it turned out he never arrived, leaving Golden to retrace the tired old footsteps he’s been doing for years all by himself.

There’s a few things that I found novel. Golden was quick to label the Cuban homeopathic immunisation study (see video above) as “an intervention”, not a trial. This in one swipe silenced many a prepared question including my own over how the “immunised” demographic returned to levels of Leptospirosis infection similar to those found elsewhere in Cuba (non “immunised”). The “intervention”, which is quoted by homeopaths as hard evidence of efficacy is often criticised for poor methodology, lacking a control group and inexplicably failing to randomise subjects.

So by renaming it an “intervention” Golden could proclaim to have “evidence” and dismiss questions raised about its veracity being flawed due to poor trial practice. Throughout the “intervention” paper the rest of Cuba (RC) is presented where and how a control would normally be presented in a trial. Defenders of the caper point to RC as a quasi-control when it suits the need to convey comparative difference. Thus, Isaac has invented a nifty escape clause from defending poor methodology.

Another point (in fact an inexcusable failing) was Golden’s inability to address what is at once one of the least complex problems, but perhaps the most important. The entire Cuban scam is not Hahnemannian homeopathy. By no means am I the first to note this. It’s more of what I call Supercalifragilistichomeoprophylaxis.

During the evening Isaac Golden made much of remaining true to Samuel Hahnemann’s Law of Similars and Law of Infinitesimals. The Law of Similars is sometimes known as “like cures like” and states that a mother tincture should be made from a substance which produces symptoms similar to that produced by the disease.

Yet in the Cuban study they used four dead – completely inactive – strains of Leptospira bacteria to make the mother tincture. The paper refers to “highly-diluted strains of inactivated leptospiras”. However the paper title is, Large-scale application of highly-diluted bacteria for Leptospirosis epidemic control. Plainly that is misleading in itself.

So I pointed out to Isaac that in view of his insistence upon the law of similars, and noting that the Cuban mother tincture didn’t contain a substance that could produce any symptom like those experienced with leptospirosis (the bacteria were always dead), he had a problem. Confident, he responded that no, it’s not like a traditional vaccine.

Another audience member ran it by him again. Isaac was confused. Ken Harvey explained the problem also. Then I spelled out the obvious. Without the Law of Similars, there’s no Law of Infinitesimals. But he didn’t hear. Clearly stumped, his mind was cranking over. Eventually he produced the claim that the dead bacteria still had the “energy shape” or “energy signature” and were thus still viable. Quickly he turned and selected another questioner.

I was delighted. Isaac Golden had just told me an “energy shape” could produce similar symptoms to live bacteria. But even better, he’d made it up on the spot. After earlier signing his name to the Law of Similars, he then denied its necessity. I still wanted to press the point as this excuse couldn’t explain the “blood, puss, discharge, urine, flesh, causal organisms…”, and other organic goo used in highly dilute nosodes.

No Law of Infinitesimals either with no Similars. We never really made it to discuss that point. But I already had my answer in that he had no answer. For the record, the beaker for the most dilute agent was washed out 9,999 times. On the 10,000th refill it was called a homeopathic immunising agent. That’s not highly diluted – that’s washed away. The less potent (less dilute) was washed out 199 times.

It was Supercalifragilistichomeoprophylaxis if ever I’d seen it. Remember dear reader a nosode is a homeopathic dose. Golden had earlier used the term. Its definition – in this case – demands “causal organisms”. Energy shape just didn’t make it. The audience member who helped Isaac understand wrote, “Get out of jail free” on his notepad and slid it my way. I had to agree. We know homeopaths make it up as they go along, but it was really nice to be there to see that actually happen.

It was truly a Golden moment.

Other points deserve a mention. Already referring patients to conventional doctors, Isaac came across as keen to extend conventional connections and is striving to make something of a research base. He does not entertain the “us and them” combative mindset of the Monika Milka’s and anti-vaxxer types we know and love, and appeared genuinely keen to reciprocate with bilateral trials. One concern was his allusion to conspiracies, when it was pointed out that if efficacy was truly and constantly demonstrable that widespread use and marketing would already be apparent.

One couldn’t miss however that the totality of discourse and questioning was biased toward examining the claims made by Isaac. He did after all kick off by stressing he heals the “entire person”. This means mental, physical, personal, spiritual and probably “quantumal” for all I know. This was “natural medicine” to Isaac. Getting the human healing abilities to function on these levels.

We were promised lots of evidence but regrettably a few excuses related to third parties were raised. Aside from the Cuban standard, Isaac brought in the Swiss “study”. Written by pro-complementary medicine interests for governmental review and favouring popular demand it was a poor choice as the material is known to be highly selective in favour of homeopathy. Isaac appealed to popularity and use as equating to efficacy a number of times.

Dr. Stephen Basser’s deconstruction of why homeopathy is so widely used, sought after and applied by medical professionals was excellent. It highlighted the factors outside of efficacy that drive uptake and continued use of demonstrably non efficacious options. Patient request or demand, choice of placebo, doctors’ role in monitoring complex patients, marketing, what it’s actually used for and the context of these figures.

I’ve noted here before how chiropractors boast how many Aussies per day use chiropractic – after signing them into treatment contracts. Purchasing 100 doses of a homeopathic preparation doesn’t support it being entirely used. Nor do uptake figures represent clearly articulated failures – and dissatisfaction. What is regular? What is novel or first time? And so on. In short there is no association between popularity and efficacy. Or between demand and documented efficacy.

Ken harvey brought up the point I’d have guessed most would have asked at question time. Golden claims to have completed his PhD successfully in homeopathic immunisation. In Golden’s abstract we read:

The effectiveness of the program could not be established with statistical certainty given the limited sample size and the low probability of acquiring an infectious disease.

This didn’t stop Golden from then claiming:

However, a possible level of effectiveness of 90.3% was identified subject to specified limitations. Further research to confirm the effectiveness of the program is justified.

Despite defending the semantics on the night, it’s clear this air guitar of a PhD has only mused over a possibility.

One thing agreed on at the beginning was to not discuss the mechanisms of homeopathy. In other words, to avoid raising the fact it is physically impossible. This did allow the discussion to move forward. In essence, Golden was awarded a huge concession with respect to reality. Something of a microcosm of the larger homeopathic industry perhaps.

All up it was an interesting night given that no new evidence popped up to support homeopathy. Like many homeopaths Isaac really believes in it.

He just needs to conclude that ones belief is not truth.

Meryl Dorey’s Great “Compulsory Vaccination” Swindle

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

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

Meryl Dorey 30th April 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Inverell Forum March 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Total correct: Zero.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

They are after all, rather good at it.

Meryl Dorey’s Great “Vaccine Testing” Swindle

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

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

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

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

He also noted:

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

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

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

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

Neither was prosecuted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Division Three: Application of funds raised

20 Proceeds of Appeal

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

21 Investment

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

The Charitable Trusts Act 1993 notes:

In this Act:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The call for money blurb was:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe someone really wanted vaccines tested.

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

P is for Paranoid, Persecutory Delusion

Posted in Denialism, Health, Legal by

Definition – Paranoia:

Paranoia is an unfounded or exaggerated distrust of others, sometimes reaching delusional proportions. Paranoid individuals constantly suspect the motives of those around them, and believe that certain individuals, or people in general, are “out to get them.”
Persecutory Delusion:
A fixed, false, and inflexible belief that others are engaging in a plot or plan to harm an individual.
Fact Sheet – Defamation:

Defamation is a tort, or a civil wrong, which occurs when defamatory material relating to an individual is published.  Material will be defamatory if it could:

  • injure the reputation of the individual by exposing them to hatred, contempt or ridicule;
  • cause people to shun or avoid the individual; or
  • lower the individual’s estimation by right thinking members of society.

For a defamation action to be successful, three elements must be satisfied:

  1. the information was communicated by the defendant to a third person other than the plaintiff (publication);
  2. the material identifies the plaintiff (identification); and
  3. the information/material contains matter that is defamatory, regardless of whether the material was intentionally published or not (defamatory matter).

Some readers may remember the recent AVN post by president Meryl Wynn Dorey, entitled V is for Vendetta.

We shall ignore the theft of that copyright movie name to pursue more pertinent matters. The post was a rant against Mr. Ken McLeod who has devoted massive amounts of his time and effort to protect Australians from a sham organisation convinced it is above the law.

For twenty years Ms. Dorey has peddled misinformation designed to terrify an endless stream of new parents about vaccination. Over this time many of these same parents paid her via donation for the endlessly promised, but never delivered, cornucopia of “solutions”. The children grow, parents move on and for Meryl it was always simply rinse and repeat.

In 2009 Ken filed a complaint against the AVN with the NSW HCCC. The findings of their investigation were damning indeed. The complaints were not found to be “illegal”. The findings have not been quashed. It is what the HCCC did with the findings that was found to be technically outside of their jurisdiction. The AVN have not been “vindicated”. However Ms. Dorey did win an appeal against a Public Warning and an order to warn website visitors that the AVN is anti-vaccination.

The very same Supreme Court ruling ensures that the following remains true and accurate:

An investigation into The AVN by the Health Care Complaints Commission of NSW found that the AVN website:

1) Provides information that is solely anti-vaccination.
2) Contains information that is incorrect and misleading.
3) Quotes selectively from research to suggest that vaccination may be dangerous.

For some legal jargon and a look at what the OLGR position was regarding removal of the AVN’s Charitable Fundraising Authority, prior to it’s reinstatement check here.

Getting back to Dorey’s post we should note the following attacks on Mr. McLeod:

1- The Health Care Complaints Commission received a 90-page complaint by Ken McLeod – member of Stop the AVN and a man whose obsession with me seems to border on the psychotic. McLeod filed the original complaint, resulting in a 12-month ‘investigation’ by the HCCC and a public warning – both of which were later deemed to be illegal by the NSW Supreme Court. It appears that McLeod must spend hours every day trying to prove that I am a liar and that the AVN is responsible for global warming, the current financial crisis and the death of every child from infectious disease no matter where in the world it occurs (this is only slightly tongue in cheek).

Despite the HCCC’s rejection, it is obvious that McLeod will continue to try and get me charged with some sort of crime and will not stop trying to shut down the AVN until one of us is imprisoned or he is finally provided with the psychiatric support he seemingly needs.

2- The Department of Fair Trading which originally investigated the AVN back in 2009 due to another complaint from McLeod and others involved with the Australian Skeptics and Stop the AVN, has come back again due to yet another complaint, involving what appears to be dubious technicalities. […]

4- Earlier in the week, I received a call from a representative of the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s (TGA) Advertising Codes Council who informed me that they had received a complaint about us (gee, I wonder who would have made such a complaint? I just can’t imagine!) and I would be hearing from them in the next few days in regards to a matter I will have to respond to.

I won’t take up the entire page quoting Meryl Dorey. Follow the link above if you care to. Suffice it to say she blames Mr. McLeod and Government authorities for her own breaches of legislative requirements. That alone seems to require towering hubris.

Yet item 2 here has zero to do with Mr. McLeod, as does item 4 – referring to the TGA.

Regarding the Office of Fair Trading Ken did some digging and found the wonderfully generous complainant. Thanks to that person’s selflessness we can confirm that unless Mr. McLeod has moved to QLD he is innocent of the charges Your Honour.

  • Response/s from NSW OFT:

Clearly there are likely to be many people writing letters, filing complaints and quite simply expressing their keenness to see this sham gig brought to account. There’s no doubt no apology will be forthcoming from Ms. Dorey. A cursory glance at the customary vulgarity of her many transgressions should forewarn us of that.

I for one doubt that paranoid ramblings or a persecution complex will hide the truth for long.