Meryl Dorey of The Australian Vaccination Network says opposition to her operation is an attack on free speech. That claim however, is a simple ruse to divert attention from the reality of dangerous and illegal conduct.
HCCC Find AVN Risk Australian Health
She’s doing it again.
That’s all I could think when I saw the below lie published about noon by Meryl Dorey, on the Australian Vaccination Network‘s Facebook page.
I do mean “lie” – not misunderstanding or difference in conclusion. Dorey’s had this pointed out to her countless times – as recently as last week. This was also dismissed in 2009 by the ABC, following a complaint as a breach of their editorial guidelines for fairness and accuracy in reporting. More so, she presents this sleight of hand with obfuscation of conflicting data sets published by the same government bodies and insists on cherry picking. To make the entire sorry matter patently ridiculous, a high school student would receive a dressing down if this “mistake” was honestly made. That’s because not only is Meryl Dorey hiding the truth about pertussis infection and the undoubted success of pertussis vaccine efficacy, she is using entirely unrelated data sets.
The pertussis notification data tells us zero about the vaccine status of the notified cases. By far the bulk are adults whose vaccine induced immunity has waned. Of the 18 standard recorded age categories, 16 are after the age at which immunity begins to wane. Nor does it inform us as to the location of initial infection. As a legally notifiable disease all cases diagnosed who are from an address within our borders must be reported.
This includes returning tourists, immigrants, refugees, Australian based shipping and flight crews, travel weary business men and women, and so on. Dorey’s attempted causal link is akin to saying people who hold a drivers licence are more likely to be involved at sometime in their lives in a road accident. The more licences issued in the last 20 years, the more accidents we see. Therefore the entire licensing process is either ineffective, causal or both.
Nonetheless it would be remiss of me not to address this trick for the benefit of those with confirmation bias. The burden is on Meryl Dorey to show a robust statistical association between the data she presents. She fails to do so, because it can’t be done. To be absolutely fair, let’s use Ms. Dorey’s selected data. In fact, let’s use the very data, tables and argument she submitted on September 9th, 2009 to the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission in response to a complaint about the AVN. Dorey writes on page 6;
Since the AVN was established, Australia has experienced an increase of over 23% in our rate of vaccination against whooping cough with a concurrent increase in the incidence of this disease of almost 40 times. Please refer to the Australian government graphs below:
Keep in mind, table 2 is above table 1. The 23% increase in pertussis vaccination “since the AVN was established” can be gleaned from these two tables [95.1% (Table 1) – 71.6% (Table 2 – 2001)].
In order to show that pertussis vaccination isnʼt effective, Ms. Dorey must compare vaccination status to diagnoses. Partially, fully or in need of a booster? And use a controlled single sample.
What we begin with is two separate cohorts, the lower table (1) being 2 year olds born in the first quarter of 2006, who received the trivalent Diptheria, tetanus, pertussis vaccine being fully assessed on June 30, 2008. The upper table (2) is of 0 – 6 year olds vaccinated with a monovalent (pertussis only) vaccine between 1989 and 2001.
Knowing full well that pertussis vaccination begins to wane at about age 10 years Dorey then chooses notification only (not age related) data between 1991 and 2009 – below, to secure her “40 fold increase”.
Straight off the Epic Fail factor leaps out. We cannot simply draw a line from childhood vaccination to notification in all age groups, and as I noted above from diverse backgrounds and travel habits. More so, had it been the year before, notification was less than a 17 fold increase from 1991. The two years preceding that show a 35 and 34 fold increase respectively.
In 1998 there was a 14.5 times increase from 1991. A year before was a 27.5 fold increase, whilst 1996 gives us an 11.6 fold increase – only 42% of 1997 notifications.
Clearly using even this non age related data set fails to show the claimed relation between steadily increasing vaccination and infection rates. It appears to show a regular rise and fall in infection.
Evidence of decreasing vaccination uptake and rising infection was causing significant concern in the eyes of Australian health authorities. This was clearly defined in the complaint to The HCCC. So Meryl Dorey offers another fallacy;
[Contrary to assertions] the current increase in the incidence of pertussis has nothing to do with any purported decline in the rate of vaccination. Instead, we are seeing an outbreak of pertussis despite a substantial increase in vaccination against it – an experience which is being duplicated in every country for which mass vaccination against this illness exists.
“… an experience which is being duplicated in every country for which mass vaccination against this illness exists”. Remember that. Dorey lists two references to supposedly support this. I’ll soon be getting on to how she plagiarised a WHO document graph cropping out explanatory text to replace with her own, and severely misrepresented the Netherlands pertussis outbreak. Both publications strenuously support pertussis vaccination and yes, these were the documents referenced in support of that bald faced lie.
A claim of direct causation to the vaccination regimes requires ignorance about herd immunity, pertussis strains, acellular vs live cell vaccines, periodic outbreaks or epidemics, and vaccinated vs non-vaccinated infection rates during outbreaks. Outbreaks do occur effecting unvaccinated and vaccinated children under 10 – 15 notably, whilst adults with no immunity don’t usually exhibit the classic symptoms. Certainly they are not at the risk of injury and death that infants and babies are.
But let’s look more closely at what Ms. Dorey has intentionally avoided. Age groups and the rise and fall of infection rates over the years.
From Communicable Diseases Intelligence, Vol. 32 No. 2, Figure 49 shows the rise and fall of pertussis in the ten years to 2006. Figure 50 just below it, shows notifications for 2006 by age and sex.
Zero to four years is higher than the next two age categories as it reflects the fact infants are not fully immunised until about 12 months.
We can clearly see this is a typical non outbreak year in which most cases are found in middle aged women. It’s a striking reminder that a pertussis booster is absolutely vital to protect newborn babies from infection as they are passed around family and friends or cared for by grandparents. This goes doubly for women.
Meryl Dorey was in damage control mode, trying to refute that the outbreak – now epidemic – that began in 2007 – 2008 was related to declining uptake of vaccination and that certain pockets where vaccination was low presented a lethal threat to young children. This is why her trick linking notification and vaccination rates was, and still is, doing the rounds. In June 2009, three months before our self appointed guru submitted her HCCC reply, it was reported in the Journal of Pediatrics that children who didn’t receive the pertussis vaccine were 23 times more likely to catch pertussis. In 2010 the same journal reported fears over the vaccine were unfounded. What are we to make of Australia’s so-called “vaccination expert” using “sciencey” terms to convey the opposite of research published in prestigious journals that’s pertinent to exactly the topic she claims authority on?
Notification rate for pertussis by age & sex for 2008
Dorey would have done better to stick to the facts, than to defend anti-vaccination pseudoscience and hide the high levels of infection in children.
Whilst there is strong data showing higher rates of infection in areas of low vaccination, overall Australian data showed a nation wide outbreak that we now know that has culminated in disability and death in most states.
This is the tragic irony to this ongoing and oft’ debunked abuse of her readers and members intelligence. Check that 2006 graph above again and compare to the 2008 data reflecting an outbreak on the left, from Communicable Diseases Intelligence, Vol. 34 No. 3.
Horrifically, in two years there’d been over a 6 fold increase for females and almost a 5 fold increase for males 0-4 years old. Roughly a 10 fold increase in 4-9 year olds and over a 6 fold increase for 10-15 year old children. Through all this Meryl Dorey failed to advise parents on how to protect their own and others children. Incredibly she had access to this crucial data through the very National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System she used to create her original sleight of hand above. Here is the 2009 table of pertussis notifications by age and sex.
She continued to urge against pertussis vaccination, plying her members with bizarre pseudoscience and fear mongering, going as far as claiming vaccines are filled with poisons and cause cancer. This was a key element in her roving seminars as seen here in slides one, two, three and four. Denying pertussis infection was anything to be concerned about, her advice was and is to proactively catch it to build “natural immunity” and that it can “be treated homeopathically”.
Dorey refuses to admit she and the AVN (which is in fact one and the same) are anti-vaccination. Although it beggars belief that she would support what she has called “instruments of death”. The mantra is that “they” are for informed choice and provide information parents would not otherwise access, to assist in making a choice on vaccination. Why would parents not otherwise have access to it? Well for one, as we’ve seen here it is manufactured and fallacious. To refute Dorey’s claims with proper evidence however, is to be “suppressing free speech”.
Ironically, I can’t post this on Dorey’s Facebook page because I’ve been banned and had all my other posts deleted. I see this happen regularly to anyone who doesn’t march in goosestep anti-medicine fervor. Free speech was it? We’re all entitled to our own opinions but the assumed right to manufacture ones own “facts” to the large scale detriment of community health is beyond the boundary of free speech.
Be extremely wary of online sources that use grandiose titles reflecting a “national” vaccination service, an “information network”, “total” family health or particularly offering “the truth” or what you won’t be told elsewhere.
Please seek reputable advice on vaccination. Speak to your doctor or a conventional medical professional.
Update: July 8th. In a standard example of how misinformation is spread to misinformed members of the public, an AVN member at about 11am July 8th, posted the below item. It provides a link directly to the same page Meryl Dorey provided on July 4th. What makes this entire charade more absurd is that the URL leads to the NNDSS index – not the Pertussis notification table it is taken from. Our vaccine expert and Co. have so little experience with this data that simple navigation through the site is defeating them. Another high school failure.
How much more evidence are we going to need to see before we say that we registered this dangerous vaccination before we had any idea of the many autoimmune conditions it would cause? It’s time to withdraw Gardasil and Cervarix from the market. Meryl Dorey, President Australian Vaccination Network, wrote on June 20th [or 21st Australian time].
The only problem with the above statement is that the evidence Dorey cites does not implicate HPV vaccination as causal to any reactions. We’ll get to that.
It was predictable. Any straw that blew past suggesting adverse reactions, no matter how tenuous, to vaccination against papillomavirus would be seized by Meryl Wynn Dorey. Particularly given this June 18th Lancet study abstract – two or three days earlier – entitled Early effect of the HPV vaccination programme on cervical abnormalities in Victoria, Australia: an ecological study. And just to knock out the “all vaccine research is funded by Big Pharma” untruths; the funding for this study? None.
We do know that vaccine and screening registers aren’t linked. So we’re unable to conclusively comment just yet on the numbers of vaccinated girls presenting without pre-cancerous cells. HPV vaccine is the only variable however, and database linkage would allow more explicit results. We can read above that data collected twice before and twice since the programme began, show a marked negative deviation away from the linear progression of HPV infection induced adenocarcinoma’s and cytological abnormalities.
It is further encouraging in that no change was noted in age groups already sexually active. On June 17 SMH published Cervical cancer vaccine working: study
AUSTRALIA’S cervical cancer vaccination program appears to be paying off, reducing the number of pre-cancerous cells found in young women, a new study has found.
Melbourne researchers have reported in The Lancet that the number of high-grade cervical abnormalities found in Victorian girls under 17 has halved since the program began in 2007, taking the incidence from about one in 100 to one in 200.
It also reported the beginning of a declining trend of abnormalities in women aged 18 to 20, but said there had been no drop off in older age groups.
The researchers said this was probably because older women had already been infected with the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) through sexual activity. The cervical cancer vaccine protects females against several strains of the Human Papillomavirus because it is known to cause cervical cancer.
On July 6th, SMH published, Huge Success for Gardasil;
Rates of new genital wart infection in Australia have plummeted, research shows, in an early positive sign of the success of mass Gardasil vaccinations.
A study taking in patient data from sexual health clinics across the country has shown up to a 60 per cent drop off in new genital wart cases since 2007, when the anti-cancer vaccine was rolled out.
Gardasil works by preventing the transmission of four strains of the Human papillomavirus (HPV), two of which cause cervical cancer and two which cause genital warts.
Experts say while its effect on cervical cancer rates would take longer to materialise, the vaccine’s ability to prevent a less serious though embarrassing problem was now clear.
[….]
“While we knew from clinical trials that the vaccine was highly effective, Australia is the first country in the world to document a major benefit for the population as a whole.”
Free Gardasil vaccinations were offered to Australian girls and young women, aged 12 to 26 years, and about 80 per cent of those eligible are thought to have taken up the offer.
Researchers pooled data from eight sexual health clinics Australia-wide, covering 110,000 new patients and the period from 2004 to 2009.
So let’s quickly examine how the Australian (anti) Vaccination Network weaves it’s lethal message. Dorey’s Twitter account announces, “Autoimmune hepatitis type 2 following anti-papillomavirus vaccination in a (sic) 11 year old girl << more evidence of vax issues”. I followed the link to Dorey’s own website and Tweeted a reply I copied directly from there. “we do not provide evidence for a causal link… may be related… to vaccine… in a genetically predisposed individual”.
Remember, Australia’s self-titled vaccine expert has claimed at the top of her post that, “It’s time to withdraw Gardasil and Cervarix from the market.” I’m not dismissing the seriousness of the potential relationship here “in an 11 year old girl”. But in context imagine how many lives would be lost and disturbed if Dorey’s claim was implicated. Genital warts would increase by 60% and pre-cancerous lesions would double. Here’s the giveaway paragraph. Bold mine, showing five phrases that refute conclusive causality:
Although we do not provide evidence for a causal link, we suggest that the occurrence of the autoim- mune (sic) hepatitis may be related to the stimulation of immune system by adjuvated-vaccine, that could have triggered the disease in a genetically predisposed individual.
Here’s Meryl Dorey‘s entire post.
The actual abstract is here. More so Ms. Dorey asks, “How much more evidence are we going to need…”.
Well with all respect, a damn sight more evidence than a single case of HV2 that could have been triggered due to genetic predisposition in one child. A case that’s suggested as maybe being related to HPV vaccination, alongside a clear qualification of the absence for a causal link.
Indeed Dorey’s abuse of the word “evidence” and the quite ridiculous call to abandon the programme is neatly opposed by the caution employed by The Lancet article authors. The Guardian reports in part:
Australian study of injection to protect against HPV virus reveals drop in high-grade abnormalities among under-18s
…. That finding, say the authors, “reinforces the appropriateness of the targeting of prophylactic HPV vaccines to pre-adolescent girls”.
The findings were greeted with international interest.
“The not-so-cautious optimist in us wants to hail this early finding as true evidence of vaccine effect,” write Dr Mona Saraiya and Dr Susan Hariri of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, US, in a linked commentary for the journal.
But they said they wanted to know more about the vaccine status of the individuals (each woman is supposed to have three shots) and wanted more work to establish whether the reductions in potential cancers were really a result of vaccination or some other cause.
Michael Quinn, professor of gynaecology and gynaecologic oncology at the University of Melbourne, said: “The study is the first anywhere in the world to show falling rates of high-grade change in very young women.
“Although this is likely to be due to the effects of the vaccination programme, further analysis of information linking women’s smear history to their vaccination history will be needed to prove that the fall is entirely due to vaccination rather than other factors.”
Public health experts say that women should not assume they are not vulnerable to the disease after vaccination and should still go for regular screening checks.
In conclusion it appears once again Meryl Dorey is using her hatred for evidence based medicine and vaccines in particular to scare monger an innocent public.
So, I’m innocently waiting for some towels to wash and glance at Twitter to read this retweet by Miranda Devine.
I follow our thuggish, far right wing religious conservative, progressive policy hating, character assassinating, climate change cheering, evidence denialist Miranda because she’s, well… shat in the face of some rather esteemed colleagues. And is not beneath using grieving parents to fill her anti-drug barrow with emotional outrage in lieu of evidence. A unique and unpopular topic I realise, but not immune to the benefits of evidence based critical thinking.
Anyway, @wakeup2thelies certainly bellowed his message on Twitter – three times in an hour.
Over to Wake Up To The Lies I go, to be slapped in the face with logical fallacies. Under the heading Death Threat-Gate or The AFP Must Investigate Anna-Maria Arabia claims is a report about Anna-Maria’s interview on ABC News discussing recent death threats. She is CEO of FASTS – the Federation of Australian Science and Technological Societies. And like most Aussies and the vast majority of scientists, accepts the evidence on climate change. Which sadly makes her a target for the petty minded rednecks who have no idea that if this evidence was to the contrary, scientists would shout it from the rooftops.
Wake Up To The Lies is a conspiracy theorists site written by an immature 30 year old master of obfuscation and delusion calling himself Adam. Having risen to the dizzying scientific heights with credentials as a part-time shop assistant he’s taken to ranting about politics on the internet. Helping turn the information super-highway into a roller coaster ride through the Twilight zone, Adam recounts the tale basically as an argument from ignorance, personal incredulity and begging the question. Proving he really is a part-time shop assistant he writes two sentences. The second being:
The AFP MUST now Investigate this claim. Anna-Maria Arabia, also claims she deleted the email this is no problem because the AFP can easily recover deleted files and find the ISP from the sender. It is a crime in Australia to send a death threat see ( here ). The AFP must investigate it to find the person responsible or to verify her claim.
Yes, I know. He means “IP address” not “ISP from the sender”. The kids a part time shop assistant so cut him some slack. I sure as hell didn’t. Now when I see caps lock in action, I take the same gravely serious approach as one does with anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists. I laughed. I could only imagine the urgent AFP memo demanding a halt to all ongoing investigations because Agent Shop Assistant had used caps lock. I checked his credentials as a skeptard listed under the tab “Who Am I?”.
I left a rather unhelpful comment suggesting that if conspiracy sites like his didn’t carry on, then the loons out there wouldn’t be prompted to send boring death threats. It wasn’t published. Transparency failure one. So I headed over to the “here” in Agent Adams’ post, which was Australian Climate Madness and the post “Death Threats To ANU Scientists”. It too was using Adams’ false continuum that these threats can’t be real because they are a crime. And if they are crimes, why then false analogy informs us we’d all know the very truth. My head hurt. Still, I left this comment which was immediately published.
Paul says:
It it not an “investigation worthy” crime.
A minimum of three sequential emails from the same person is required to justify a waste of resources. Intentions to kill are not traditionally preceded by announcements and digital bread crumbs.
Even then threats may correspond with other crimes such as using a carriage service to harass, intimidate or offend. I’ve had personal experience with this scenario.
No action was pursued – despite grave assurances – and I was never contacted again by authorities.
I’m afraid you’re sincerely mistaken or intentionally biased.
I trust you will rescind the offending post.
So back to the part-time shop assistant’s site to see if he would be so gracious. Submitting actually hides the comment. Hence the screenshot.
I’m awaiting to see if my comment makes the grade. I doubt it since in the tradition of conspiracy theorists, liars, evidence deniers and part-time shop assistants cum science gurus cum ADF consultants, I appear to have been forgotten. No comment equates to transparency fail two and undoubted censorship to convey false impression. That’s simply lying. Or as Adam would say in true Dorey style – “Free Speech” [what is it with lying skeptarded social miscreants and “free speech”?]. A visit back yields a “no true Scotsman” logical fallacy (yeah, count ’em). You know the type. Atheism is a religion. Skeptics aren’t skeptics because they don’t believe woo woo that requires one be skeptical of reality. Real science is what gives us homeopathy and vaccine denial because science is a process of constant questioning (in this case questioning facts they don’t like), or here the cringe worthy ad hominem attacks of “scientician and “climatician”.
We’ve already passed seven logical fallacies so I shall desist from the temptation. But this nonsense of expecting scientists do their “civic duty” so “dangerous criminals” are kept “off the streets” is utter bollocks. It’s even bordering on delusion to suggest unconfirmed threats weaken the evidence for climate change. For those of us in controversial areas and public health these trifles are known as “security issues”.
May I ask you all to pull out your violins and strike a mournful tune as I confirm that amidst frequent threats and insults I did enjoy four delightfully colourful threats of rape, torture, murder running to pages from a returned soldier who disliked my linking to Keep God out of our democracy by Carmen Lawrence, which challenged using Christian values in foreign policy. I posted a single hyperlink to the story. No comment – nothing.
The poor chap below assumed my email domain was my workplace and included promises of “meeting” me there for torture. Then must have checked the office hours of this same place to chronologically refine his plans to…
“… stomp your terrorist loving, anti australian, little faggot hole. Ill put some serious pain up you …. whatever you think you are. IF you ever were in the forces someone would have shot you. Kovco style. LOL… I will fuck you up. Even better where R u and I will come and make you my bitch so. keep going if you want to….
…. You need a reality check son! It is your lack of patriotism that truly saddens me…..
…In fact you are really dumber than dog shit cos I know a lot about you already and more than enough! you silly little boy. I dont assume. I know…
…Remember Jesus loves you, but Australia hates your attitude. Dont need a God? yep uh ha, ok whatever.”
Losing In The Lucky Country 