Religious Instruction brings no Joy to Victorian public schools

Posted in ACCESS Minintries, Atheism, Australian Christian Lobby, Religion by

What really matters is seizing the God-given opportunity to reach kids in schools. Without Jesus, our students are lost… What a commandment: Make disciples… Let’s go for it!

Evonne Paddison, CEO of ACCESS Ministries

Scott Hedges of Fairness In Religions In School chats to Doug Pollard from Joy FM’s Rainbow Report.

In a comprehensive chat they cover the FIRIS campaign, Special Religious Instruction (SRI), legislation, indoctrination in public schools, religious discrimination and the upcoming VCAT challenge. This alleges that the Education Minister’s interpretation of legislation is a violation of the Equal Opportunity Act leading to compulsory segregation based on attendance to SRI.

Scott touches on a point close to one of my own issues with government funding of religious organisations. That faith based welfare is vastly different to faith based practices. The former poised to benefit all, the latter designed to expand a belief system.

In this case we can compare the altruistic work done by religious welfare organisations to the intentional, calculated conversion of primary school children, both at taxpayer expense.

FIRIS parent Scott Hedges interviewed on Joy FM

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Pertussis notification and vaccination status in context

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Chiropractic, Human Rights by

Across the globe it is known how important the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine is in preventing both infection and severity of infection with Bordetella pertussis.

Along with vaccines for diphtheria and tetanus, then polio (1950’s), measles, mumps, rubella (1960’s) the Australian pertussis vaccine has contributed to an astonishing 99% reduction in deaths from vaccine preventable disease. Just after the turn of the century pertussis, diphtheria and tetanus vaccines alone had saved over 70,000 lives whilst the population had almost tripled since their inception. Since then pertussis vaccination alone has saved around another 10,000 Australian lives.

From the World Health Organisation, to national or state health authorities across developed nations to your local doctor, the evidence is compelling. Although anyone can catch pertussis it is babies under 12 months who are most vulnerable to infection. The disease can cause disability and death in the unvaccinated. Whilst immunisation provides antibodies to fight pertussis, it does not provide “magical protection”. For that you need chiropractors or other practitioners of alternatives to medicine.

Immunisation against pertussis does mean:

  • A significantly reduced chance of being infected
  • A significantly reduced severity of infection if infected
  • Protection of unvaccinated individuals that one may come into contact with
  • Low levels of community infection with high levels of immunisation

Pertussis epidemics follow on from reduction in immunisation across the community, leading to a drop in herd immunity. The present epidemic Australia is experiencing began in Byron Bay, an area with very low immunisation rates, and then spread to other areas of low immunisation. From the backyard of Meryl Dorey’s anti-vaccination lobby group the seeds for this epidemic were sown a decade ago. Brynley Hull and Peter McIntyre wrote in January 2003 [page 12]:

Although immunisation coverage has greatly improved over the past five years in NSW, and many areas have reached coverage targets, there are areas in NSW where the level of registered conscientious objection to immunisation is great enough to affect immunisation coverage, as measured by the ACIR. One such area is northern NSW, and the Byron Bay SLA in particular, where the rate of conscientious objection is one of the highest in the country.

Despite the crystal clear science and undoubted success of immunisation, movements against all vaccines have grown. They have kept pace with internet driven conspiracy theories, imaginary diseases, imaginary cures and new age beliefs. The most successful currency used by those opposed to scientific success is ignorance and misinformation.

An excellent example regarding pertussis vaccination is that many people incorrectly believe all vaccines, with the exception of influenza, provide lifelong immunity. With pertussis, vaccine induced immunity wanes over time and as noted above whilst it reduces the chance of infection, it is not an impervious shield. Antivaccination lobbyists have taken advantage of this to infer that the pertussis vaccination schedule itself has failed. First, we have ignorance – the expectation that immunity is lifelong. Then follows misinformation.

For example as debunked here more than a few times, figures describing vaccination levels and notification of infection are frequently misused by the Australian Vaccination Network to falsely refute the efficacy of immunisation. Yet these clumsy attempts are piecemeal and misleading. Time and again infection notification and vaccination status is highlighted and infused with qualities that serve to misinform. Placing figures in context yields a very different picture which, given that they seek to deny international trends that have existed for decades, is not surprising.

The question, or challenge if you will, is about the veracity of the pertussis vaccination schedule. Thus we must take care to ensure we elucidate notifications related to full immunisation as per the schedule. Take the following table of children between 0 – 4 years old, diagnosed with pertussis:

Pertussis notification by vaccination status 0-4 years, Australia August 2011

We see that a total of 9,333 notifications have been tabulated. 5,296 or 56.7% are fully vaccinated.

986 are partially vaccinated. 800 are not vaccinated. 754 are ineligible for vaccination. This gives us a total of 2,540 or 27.2% who are not fully vaccinated.

1,497 or 16% are unknown.

Do these figures reflect infection in the community? No, they reflect the vaccine status of children diagnosed.

Firstly as the table informs us “fully vaccinated” does not necessarily conform with fully vaccinated under the National Immunisation Program. Ineligible cases between 6-8 weeks of age that had received one dose in 2009 are included in “fully vaccinated”. Both these facts artificially inflate the “fully vaccinated” category.

Next we must accept that this table underestimates the actual number of infections in the community. The National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System relies on a passive surveillance system which does not capture every case of pertussis in the community.

Which raises the question. Who is not making notification? Can we infer anything about the vaccination status of those not recorded in the above table? If so, does this help us understand the figures in the table better? As a matter of fact, yes.

Do these figures reflect the efficacy of pertussis vaccination? In other words, is this telling us that there are over twice as many infected children in our community who have been vaccinated (56.7%), than those who have not been fully vaccinated (27.2%) and thus reflect low vaccine efficacy? No.

Far more children are vaccinated against pertussis than those who are not. 95% vs 5% in fact. Even with greatly reduced chance of infection the sheer numbers of vaccinated children mean that “fully vaccinated” will dominate notifications. These figures also reflect the greater likelihood of parents who vaccinate to take their child to a GP and follow through with reporting, and also reflect the likelihood of conscientious objectors to avoid a GP and to not follow through with reporting.

For example a USA study published in Vaccine in December last year showed that parents who do not vaccinate their children are four times more likely to take their child to a chiropractor than a conventional doctor. In Australia we already know that chiropractors are vocal antivaccination proponents with strong links to antivaccination lobby groups such as the Australian Vaccination Network. Many chiropractors in Australia actively mislead consumers on the topic of vaccination making impossible claims, actively deriding vaccination.

But we can do much better than this and begin to build a profile of parents who refuse vaccination and later choose conscientious objection. Five days ago Australian Doctor reflected on the study:

A US survey found parents who refused childhood vaccinations were four times more likely to have sent their youngest, school-aged child to a chiropractor than parents of vaccinated children. Parents who conscientiously objected to school immunisation requirements were also more likely to have strong concerns about vaccines, to distrust local doctors and to have had one or more births in a non-hospital, alternative setting. […]

Are naturopathic and complementary healthcare providers reinforcing parental concerns and ‘anti-vaccine’ opinions or promoting exemptions, or are they providing healthcare without emphasizing vaccinations?

The pattern emerging is one of anti-conventional medicine, reinforced by alternatives to medicine masquerading as “complementary healthcare”.  For our purposes we must now accept that unvaccinated children may be up to four times less likely to visit a GP when ill with pertussis. This means they may be up to four times less likely to appear as a notification. Regardless of exactly how many unvaccinated children are missed, we can see with confidence that the total is skewed away from highlighting unvaccinated children.

Thus the 8.6% of unvaccinated children noted in the table above (n=800) is possibly a significant underestimation. As parents who do vaccinate are more likely to visit a GP and report diligently, the total is additionally skewed toward the fully vaccinated. What this actually means regarding community impact is best captured in this post written by a mother whose vaccinated child was infected by an unvaccinated child who had been sent to school.

Now comes the fascinating aspect. “Unknown”. What does this mean? Really? For whatever reason, somewhere along the line the child’s vaccination status is not recorded at all, is recorded and fails to make it to the final notification table or is lost to genuine confusion or poor record keeping.

However if parents are not registered on the ACIR as conscientious objectors or as completing their children’s vaccination schedules they are also listed as “unknown”. Thus the following from Brynley Hull and Peter McIntyre is compelling [bold mine]:

Additionally, the proportion of conscientious objectors on the [Australian Childhood Immunisation Register] ACIR is likely to be an underestimate of the proportion of parents who don’t immunise because they disagree with immunisation, particularly in more economically advantaged areas. There are some non-immunising parents who ‘object to registering’, and they will refuse to complete any government-provided form.

“Refuse to complete any government-provided form”. Such as those that question the immunisation status of one’s child? That also is where a significant number of “unknown” cases have their genesis.

In tandem with our emerging profile of anti-conventional medicine beliefs driving the decision to not vaccinate and combined with the observation that CO’s are likely to contribute to the “unknown” category by not registering on the ACIR, we are able to make a strong inference that unvaccinated out-rate vaccinated in this category.

Whilst it is impossible to make outright factual quantified claims and rewrite that table, we may conclude that placed in the context of community trends it gives a less than reliable indication of infected subjects within the community. What it does give us is a snap shot of the vaccine status of notifications. Placed in context those notifications appear to be skewed away from unvaccinated and toward vaccinated subjects.

The most significant reason is the overwhelming numbers of vaccinated children in the community. Although appearing as a notification they have a far less severe case of pertussis and are unlikely to suffer disability or death. Other reasons for this would appear to be the intentional avoidance or substitution of conventional medicine, diagnosis and reporting of vaccination status by those in denial of vaccine efficacy.

Of course, people will use these figures to attack the overwhelming evidence in support of vaccination. That’s just what eccentric parent Greg Beattie has tried. It’s simply gobsmacking to read his misleading claim that only 11% of pertussis infections aren’t vaccinated. Actually it’s only 8.6%.

But the point to be made is whilst only 5% of 0-4 year olds aren’t “fully vaccinated” they make up a disproportionate 27.2% of infection notifications. Unsurprisingly his novel mathematics have been dealt with unceremoniously by A Drunken Madman.

There is no debate here. Pertussis vaccination saves lives.

ACCESS Ministries: Back to religious discrimination in Victoria

Posted in ACCESS Minintries, Australian Christian Lobby, Chaplains in schools, Education by

FIRIS Billboard hits on religious discrimination in schools – Story here

Don’t be fooled by ACCESS ministries’ attempt to rewrite history and obfuscate their intention.

Victoria’s legislation provides for public school education about all religions. Yet this privilege has been usurped by a scheme to “save children” through conversion to Christianity.

In a multi-faith, multi-ethnic, secular community the choice of any religion or of no religion should be the right of every family. Not a struggle against a dominant force.

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In her own words… again: Evonne Paddison seeks to rewrite history

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Victorian skeptic & school teacher Adam Vanlangenberg discusses his lunchtime class

Posted in Big Placebo, Denialism, Health, Scam, Science by

The rise of pseudoscience has been significant since cheap, rapid access to information has been the norm.

Regrettably the extreme beliefs held by many have been massaged by those who benefit such that Choice and Point of view (no matter how wrong) is taking the place of Evidence and Peer review. The trendy phrase that bothers me most is “health freedom”.

It’s one thing for hanky panky nonsense to make promises from shop windows and festivals. Yet quite another when it begins to shape the quality of science education on offer in Australian Universities. This rise in what I consider outright scams driven by those who are motivated by ego, self serving ideals and profit has a long history. I accept that many have genuine beliefs in the “wellness” industry. But I am yet to be availed of any evidence that consumer service and health is taking precedence over a vindictive confrontational trend by the many Enemies of Reason.

Recently the group Friends of Science in Medicine formed to address this:

A group of concerned Australian health care researchers and providers has set up an organisation that aims to discourage universities from offering accreditation in unproven medical therapies. The group would also like such therapies to be removed from claimable benefits by health funds.
Currently 19 (out of 39) Australian universities offer courses in unproven and often bizarre treatments such as iridology, aromatherapy, homeopathy and chiropractic.

Keeping up to speed with the norm of attacking Australian Skeptics as the proxy demon for anything evidence based, Meryl Dorey of the Australian Vaccination Network fallaciously wrote on this development:

There is an organisation in Australia which hates every natural therapy. They hate the healthcare practitioners and they hate the healthcare consumers who ‘turn their backs’ on Western medicine in favour of a range of other modalities which put no money in their pockets and take away their prestige. Worst of all, they hate anyone who chooses not to use  vaccines! That is the ultimate heresy, as far as they are concerned.

But it’s OK – because they have a plan and they have the money and media backing, they think, to bring this plan to fruition.

This group, the Australian Skeptics, has been instrumental in setting up the organisation, Stop the AVN.

Quite a lot of hatred to go with the free speech they are usually accused of suppressing. This is of course as noted before, simply scurrilous deflection from presenting any evidence or explaining missing funds. Stupidly many believers have taken up the trend. Meryl is under instruction from the Alliance for Health Freedom Australia to maintain the “enemy behind the curtain” slur on all things skeptical but ultimately it is very telling that Godwin’s Law out paces evidence provision in this matter.

Being tricked into conflict and betrayed by connivance is really what’s happening to many innocent minds. The big regret in some aspects is that heated young minds are misled as to the notion of skepticism and the aim of skeptic movements. Recently Adam Vanlangenberg, a Victorian school teacher and skeptic spoke on TV about the popularity of his lunchtime skeptic class.

Adam manages to capture in a few minutes a great deal of the bipartisan respect, tolerance and quest for verifiable knowledge that real skepticism is known for.

Adam Vanlangenberg on The Circle

Meryl’s Marvellous Measles Mistake

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Health, Science by

Not long ago I suited up for satire and wrote about Package Insert Airlines. The fictitious airline that takes the view passengers must know of every adverse event to flying before making the “informed choice” to fly.

This was in response to Meryl Dorey’s proposal that the AVN will march on Canberra with demands. One of these is that all parents be given vaccine package insert information to discuss with a “health professional” before deciding to vaccinate their child.

Such a distortion of the reality of the risk-benefit of vaccination seeks to promote Meryl’s choice – not a parents choice. So it is with her recent publication of Definition of Adverse Events Following Immunisation on the AVN Facebook page.

It’s appendix 6 from the 9th edition of the Australian Immunisation Handbook. Yes, those same scheming government manipulators Dorey snorts at when facts get in her way. As antivaxxers dispute that immunity is gained from vaccines, Meryl swapped the word “immunisation” with “vaccination”. List of adverse events which can occur following vaccination. In her first comment GP’s were attacked over, “crying which is continuous and unaltered for longer than 3 hours”.

One member claimed this (3 hours of screaming) meant “almost everyone should be taking their screaming child back to the doctor after a vac!”. In the real world, this should have been gently dissuaded with a reminder that abnormal crying occurs in only 4% of cases. This information is actually on the same site as the adverse event list.

Instead Dorey replied:

And when you do, [redacted], most likely, the doctor will say it’s perfectly normal and won’t report it! -MD

It kind of makes bizarre sense. Meryl can’t report the actual incidence of 4%, as that would mean acknowledging that doctors, nurses and more do report adverse reactions. Far better to invent malicious intent and advise members of that, when we’re talking “informed choice”.

You can see where this is going. Context is meaningless. Actual incidence and significance of adverse events or package insert information works against all that the AVN stand for. As I wrote last time, “This particularly immoral intent of Meryl Dorey’s overall scheme to sabotage vaccination in Australia is born of connivance of such intellectual paucity as to demand it be placed in context”.

The intent is to jettison any accurate notion of risk-benefit. It aims to falsely convey that vaccines are worse than the diseases they prevent. To mislead parents and burden them with irrational fear. Dorey would have you believe that if vaccines aren’t 100% perfect then they must be 100% dangerous.

What did that HCCC warning about The Australian Vaccination Network say again? Ah, yes:

  • quotes selectively from research to suggest that vaccination may be dangerous

Let’s take yesterday’s attempt to claim that MMR or the measles vaccine can by itself cause Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis (SSPE). SSPE occurs following measles infection in which the virus infects neurons and lays dormant. Although erring on the side of exceptional caution, SSPE is listed in Australia as an adverse event following immunisation so confirmation bias will play a part.

The fact that it’s listed does not mean SSPE from MMR or another vaccine is probable or even possible. It means the decision to remove it from listing has not yet been made.

It’s fair to say that incorrect conclusions were previously drawn in some very rare cases – and understandably so. Measles vaccines involve an attenuated live virus. With incomplete investigation, or those limited in scope, errors are made. Ms. Dorey just hasn’t caught up with the facts yet. Science may move forward at a crawl but antivaxxers seem to insist some aspects be frozen in time forever.

On a Facebook page Vaccines Uncensored that has since closed, Dorey wrote:

The polio vaccine reference Dorey later produced from whale.to also included claims of polio definition fraud along with AIDS, GBS, Leukemia and cancer, being certainly due to all vaccines. Where polio vaccination has been instituted globally, “reported polio infections show a 700% increase as a result of compulsory vaccination polio” the trusty reference informs us.

Meryl then copy/pasted a section quoting “Informed Parent” issue 4, 2001 which itself was quoting a 1970’s article on a large New Zealand outbreak of SSPE from 1956 to 1966. It was suggesting live SV40 was involved. There was no confirmation but it was believed the SSPE was related to the Salk vaccine. No such case has been documented again.

Dorey then copy/pasted two more paragraphs from either whale.to or vaccineinjury.info, goading the other member with “You can apologise later”.

One was a paper written by Belgamwar RB et al. 1997. Measles, mumps, rubella vaccine induced subacute sclerosing panencephalitis. It “presumed” an Indian child developed SSPE 15 years after she received MMR at 9 months of age. The reasoning is that the live measles virus in MMR lay dormant. Although incredibly rare at zero – 0.7 cases per million, these events seemed feasible.

Another explanation may be denatured or failed vaccines that, having no efficacy, left the subject vulnerable to consequent measles infection. Or SSPE from a pre-vaccine infection could be involved. This girl apparently had no history of measles infection, but this does not account for the potential of asymptomatic measles infection or incomplete records. Today it is accepted that a natural measles infection is the cause in these cases.

Risk of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis from measles vaccination. Pediatr Infect Dis J. 1990 by Halsey was another similar piece pasted in by Dorey. It posed the existence of “vaccine associated SSPE”, but failed utterly to show causality. Focusing on SSPE in an era when vaccination is preventing wild measles does not eliminate prior infection with measles and resultant latency as the cause of SSPE. Halsey practically admits to this oversight in his text, ignoring dormancy and stating, “we should pay attention to SSPE after inoculation”.

Well before these largely discredited papers, Zilber et al. in 1983 had already posed:

Most of the SSPE cases reported measles at an age significantly younger than that of the general population. This pattern did not change after introduction of antimeasles vaccination. Incidence was significantly lower (p less than 10(-9) in the vaccinated population than in the unvaccinated population. Occurrence of SSPE in some children who were vaccinated against measles could be explained by incomplete vaccine efficacy, or by older age at vaccination, which allows the possibility of prior exposure to measles. There was no indication that measles vaccine can induce SSPE.

The physiopathology of SSPE is not well understood. Yet evidence (October 2010) suggests that factors at play favour humoral over cellular immune response allowing viral dormancy in infected neuronal tissue. Exactly what this atypical immune response helps to explain in cases of SSPE is bound to be further elucidated. It was certainly not known to the authors Dorey has cited. What is clear is that measles vaccination does not trigger SSPE in those already infected by wild measles virus – as suggested by Dorey in the screenshot above.

The WHO note on the topic:

Available epidemiological data, in line with virus genotyping data, do not suggest that measles vaccine virus can cause SSPE. Furthermore, epidemiological data do not suggest that the administration of measles vaccine can accelerate the course of SSPE or trigger SSPE in an individual who would have developed the disease at a later time without immunization. Neither can the vaccine lead to the development of SSPE where it would not otherwise have occurred in a person who has already a benign persistent wild measles infection at the time of vaccination.

For situations where cases of SSPE occur in vaccinated individuals who have no previous history of natural measles infection, the available evidence points to natural measles infection as the cause of SSPE, not vaccine.

For those who wish to err on the side of extreme caution, it pays to remember that the Australian Immunisation Handbook is regularly updated. We should keep in mind that proposed incidence has always been of extremely small numbers. Maintaining the claim SSPE can be due to measles vaccination must now include the academic argument of what significance the phrase, “the available evidence”, as advanced by the WHO should be given.

Zero – 0.7 unlikely cases per million vaccines vs a certain 8.5 per million measles cases, was the older accepted risk-benefit. Following a late 2005 Journal of Infectious Diseases paper the measles induced rate of SSPE has been estimated at 6.5 – 11 cases per 100,000 infections. An increase of 7 to 13 times. This “disease vs vaccine” notion is akin to MMR induced encephalitis. Except the always dodgy evidence blaming vaccination for SSPE is in need of reinstating.

On a final note, it is outrageous for Dorey to be feigning concern over SSPE. There is only one answer to tackle SSPE: the elimination of measles via vaccination. Even then it’s estimated that a lag of up to 20 years or more will follow in which latent SSPE from wild measles will continue to emerge.

For about 6 years the new accepted risk-benefit of SSPE has been zero cases from vaccination and up to 11 cases per 100,000 measles infections.

Ignore Meryl Dorey. Speak to your doctor.