Tag Archives: Judy Wilyman

Should Australia’s Federal Health Minister be for the health or the harming of children?

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, AVN, Health, Human Rights, Legal, Science, Vaxxed by

Sign The Petition to Australia’s Health Minister

No doubt this Australia day is a first in that a conspiracy theorist masquerading as a PhD candidate, has just harassed our Federal Health Minister over a delusion.

Australian Vaccination Network member Judy Wilyman has written an extraordinary piece of combined conspiracy ramble and delusion of grandeur to Tanya Plibersek, our Federal Health Minister. In it Wilyman claims to speak for “the community for whom this policy is designed”. That policy would be life saving vaccination schedules. That community would be Australia wide.

Last I checked Wilyman’s extreme conspiracy views are believed by a very small fraction of the 1.7% of Aussies who don’t vaccinate through conscientious objection. I’ve read her work and listened to her speak. Carefully crafted deception arguing that vaccines have had no effect ever, is interspersed with a very strange obsession. A type of appeal to antiquity meets appeal to authority. Eg; Russel Wallace who is considered second only to Charles Darwin in grasping the theory of evolution wasn’t keen on vaccination, borrowing liberally from the Yuk Factor to dismiss the idea.

Wilyman actually reads this stuff out at AVN gatherings. Confusing the drop in mortality that accompanied improved living standards, Wilyman mistakenly believes this is indicating a drop in vaccine preventable disease. Last November she wrote to Nicola Roxon, including:

To the Honourable Ms. Roxon, […]

There is no historical evidence that vaccines controlled any of the infectious diseases listed in government immunization policies – in any developed country. […]

There is no democracy in a country that doesn’t have a transparent government. The Australian government will be committing a crime against humanity by introducing policies that bribe the Australian public into vaccinating by offering $2000 in welfare benefits or by preventing individuals from working in clinical positions.

Both of these points are false. Aussies who choose not to vaccinate are suitable for, and advised on how to receive, all financial entitlements. The Workplace Health and Safety Act 1995 dictates protection of clientele and workers. Employers have a responsibility to ensure the safety of employees, visitors and clientele. Also, employees have a responsibility to comply with a reasonable request of an employer to not endanger themselves nor place at risk the workplace health and safety of another worker.

Contrary to Wilyman’s delusional diversion, this is in accordance with the latest and best scientific advice and research. What would Russel Wallace make of it? I don’t give a toss. It’s no more a “crime against humanity” than being hindered from working on dangerous unguarded machinery, or driving a forklift with no mirrors in reverse listening to a blaring iPod, building and working on scaffolding with no ladders, trap doors and railings or running barefoot through freshly discarded used syringes.

The rest of November’s caper was claiming no proper trials exist, it’s all a Big Pharma conspiracy, science is biased and wrong and the astonishing claim that no proper monitoring of immunisation “side effects” has been done in 50 years.

To think someone claiming to be doing a PhD in vaccine legislation has not seen the reams of government incidence tables and graphs of AEFI beggars belief. Good work to her supervisor, Dr. Brian Martin. It finished with:

The community would like you to address the issues above and ensure that you can provide conclusive evidence and transparency for your policy before introducing any coercive measures into vaccination policies.

Today, much the same has been produced and thrown at Tanya Plibersek. Except Wilyman has cranked it up accusing the minister of making decisions based on corruption. Meryl Dorey claims Plibersek has “been placed on notice – stop the corruption in medicine!”. Wilyman demands the minister herself reply (emphasis hers).

It includes more community buck passing:

The community has lost confidence in the ability of the Health Department to make decisions in the best interests of the public due to the lack of integrity in the science being used and the conflicts of interest in individuals on government advisory boards. There is overwhelming evidence for this and I will list this below. As a result of this corruption of the scientific process the community has lost confidence in the Government’s Childhood Immunisation Schedule as it is clearly driven by profit and not safety.

In 2010 in W.A., speaking for the AVN, Wilyman raised the claim that vaccination policy is corrupt because “the governed” must be consulted. “Well I don’t recall being consulted” she managed incredulously then, “Do you recall being consulted?”.

She serves it up to Tanya Plibersek also:

The government requires “the consent of the governed who have the right to full participation in the decision-making process” before it implements public health policy (NRC- National Research Council, 1996). Therefore, until the issues below are addressed and consumers have equal representation on decision-making boards, the community is rejecting vaccination policy that is linked to financial benefits for parents.

Well I don’t recall being consulted for my opinion as your community member Judge Judy. How about some of that precious “balance” we hear so much about?

Wilyman then lists seven Big Pharma conspiracy themes, two of which are “hidden ties”. One between Big Pharma and peer review editors. The other between university academics and government advisory boards. Her supervisor is conspiracy theorist and post modernist “whistleblower”, Dr. Brian Martin, himself shown the door from any and everything “advisory”. One wonders if the latter is water cooler sour grapes.

Her scientific concerns to Plibersek are that a.) no studies exist into “the chemicals in vaccines.. causing the steep increase in chronic illness in our children.” Also b.) “… no controlled clinical study comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated…”, has ever been done. Clearly no longer in Kansas Toto, she finishes with:

Until these issues are addressed the public is rejecting coercive or mandatory immunization policies that result in the discrimination of healthy individuals. I hope the Health Minister will reply to these community concerns personally.

I’m not sure which is more absurd. The patently fictitious accusations, or this notion of Judge Judy speaking for the community and advising what “the public is rejecting”. I know Judy may not be all that well – perhaps a few screams short of a tantrum in the old currency. But Margaret Court is hard evidence that living a delusion and causing community harm are not mutually exclusive.

Let’s hope Tanya Plibersek steps up monitoring of such individuals and groups along with how they exploit loopholes in legislation and academic privilege to bring harm to our most vulnerable community members.

To put this in better context AVN Facebook member, Wendy Elphinstone bragged in late November of intentionally infecting her daughter with varicella – chicken pox. This is abuse of a child, all to make a statement against artificial “health fascism” and suppression of rights. It is in effect the right to choose gone mad.

You quite rightly can’t smoke a cigarette in a confined space near anybody, much less your own children. Euthanasia is still illegal. So is pot. But you can risk your child’s life, make them sick, scared, miserable and harm them, because it’s the latest fad.

Varicella killed 0.41 per million before vaccination was instigated. MMR and DTap (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine) have no demonstrable history of fatality. This mother will not give her child MMR or DTap, but will expose her to a known risk of death via varicella. A risk of death that is about half of the risk of MMR induced brain injury that is often used as justification for denying vaccination.

Had Wendy Elphinstone’s unwelcome guest been passed on to an infant the risk of death is four times that of children aged 1 – 4. Strangely, Wendy never did explain how she controlled this.

Necrotizing Fascilitis is better known as “flesh-eating disease”. You can catch it from serious skin wounds, weakened immunity (such as associated with vaccine preventable diseases) yet also following varicella. Varicella pneumonia can occur and varicella encephalitis – although rare – can occur following infection. Any deterioration in patient health requires monitoring for neurological or super bacterial infection.

Then it lays dormant until again, it may emerge as shingles, encephalitis and potentially lead to stroke, disability or death.

Of course, Meryl Dorey went ballistic over a community member doing the right thing and acting in the interest of the child – the proxy of vaccine choice insanity. Dorey demoted varicella to almost harmlessness claiming purposeful exposure is something our “mothers and grandmothers” would have done. I mean, really Meryl? Don’t make me get out the Four Yorkshiremen again.

Just before Dorey came to Australia, she lived in a country where varicella killed 100 children per year, effected 4 million children and was behind $400 million in lost wages and medical costs annually. Half a million needed medical care and 10,000 were hospitalised. Frankly, I’d have expected more composure from “Australia’s leading vaccination expert”.

Meryl launched into accusations against the good citizen who cared enough to ensure this child’s welfare was not in serious danger. She claimed he’d accused her fallaciously of microchips and human culling. Which she er, wrote about here and then here, still later urging her members to keep it secret here.

Despite turning the issue into a “poor me” episode, in my mind it underscored just how dangerous Meryl Dorey and her AVN really are. Overtly wringing hands over unproven problems with “chemicals” and “toxins” in vaccines, buttressed by cries of no testing and poor record keeping, they now claim a right to casually infect their own children with a disease.

No doctors are involved, no monitoring follows. No possible spread to the unaware, immunocompromised or vulnerable is prevented or documented. Any notion of clinical (“allopathic”) support is derided.

But vaccination schedules are “a crime against humanity”.

Happy Australia Day.

Vaccination saved us from…what, exactly?

Posted in AVN, Health, Judy Wilyman, Meryl Dorey, Science by

So goes one heading over at the No Compulsory Vaccination blog, leading to a screed of disturbingly accusatory silliness borne of the confidence from one graph.

Dr Raymond Obomsawin is one of the few to knock up a bogus graph that cites decreasing incidence of measles infection rather than the boring old general mortality we’ve come to expect from antivaxxers. The obvious conclusion of course is that lethal viruses were being tamed by clean water, less wandering poo and yummy food.

Robert Webb succinctly explains where the problems lie here and also points to a further mincing of Obomsawin by David Gorski at Science Based Medicine. I quite like Gorski’s sub-heading. Intellectual dishonesty at it’s most naked.

What surprises me still however, is just how many angles these purveyors of fiction will try. As I touched on in some satire recently, Meryl Dorey’s hilarious poker face revelation on Radio 3CR whilst chatting (or rather, lying) to Helen Lobato pre Woodford was a beauty.

A lot of the credit that’s been given to vaccines for the decline in deaths and infectious diseases has nothing to do with vaccines. Because it all happened before the shots were introduced. Engineers did more to improve the health of Australians than doctors ever have.

Whilst antivaxxers have been a little more vocal of late, they seem to have really only dug their hole deeper. If not attacking those who ask questions of them, engaging in a bit of fraud or libel, it seems to be silliness as usual. Judy Wilyman is a splendid offender with this myth, claiming there is “no historical evidence” for the success of any vaccine schedule. Her trick is to use mortality rates. Usually Judy just plonks up infant fatality rates from 1900 onwards and uses the rapid decline up till 1950 to mount her case.

Let’s ignore what two World Wars did to the birth rate and consequently infant fatalities in English speaking nations over that period, and just focus on the absurdity of mortality alone. There’s no doubt improvements in sanitation, hygiene and quality of food improved our health vastly. But did it also impact on viral behaviour and immunity as is being suggested?

Bogey sites such as Child Health Safety with Vaccines Did Not Save Us – 2 centuries of official statistics excel in exploiting this myth of “mortality = disease”. As amusing as such nonsense may be, it shows the lengths some go to in protecting the vaccine-autism myth. That blog provides graph after graph of fatalities which are virtually irrelevant to disease incidence. It is only once vaccines enter the timeline do we see disease incidence almost vanish.

To me, a drop in mortality coinciding with a healthier population indicates improved rate of recovery from illness. It doesn’t say much about infection other than to hint at better general immunity that comes with better health. But better immunity is not specific immunity, and this is what antivaxxers are really claiming – even if they don’t realise it.

More so, this claim would also demand rising herd immunity before widespread vaccination programmes, on a trajectory that would have matched the herd immunity achieved by mass vaccination. Acceptance of the value of herd immunity refutes the claim infection control arose from better living. That’s one reason antivaxxers deny it. Strangely, there is silence about success of the Hib vaccine, which they should be able to explain.

Being the lovers of science they claim to be, Hib has falsified the claim of improved living standards, not vaccination, controlling certain diseases. In time, perhaps shortly, we may see this repeated with a hepatitis C vaccine and I predict the antivaxxers will have just as little to say by way of explanation of their “theory”.

Yet ultimately it is antivaxxers themselves who debunk this nonsensical myth. If improved living standards controlled or wiped out vaccine preventable diseases then how do we explain this present resurgence on the back of low immunisation rates? Surely living standards haven’t dropped, anymore than they improved over the 12 years from 1993 in which Hib vaccination demonstrated it’s efficacy. Added to this is the bizarre belief that children are meant to catch these diseases. Which by the way we’re told, are harmless, even “marvellous”, in the case of returning measles.

Simply put, if improved living standards can suppress these diseases we should see them eliminated, not returning. Nor does the rise of chiropractic, homeoprophylactic, herbal and other “immune boosting” hanky panky make real sense. All of this exposes the fact that it is herd immunity sustained by vaccination that largely protects those who refuse vaccination. That’s another reason to deny the value of herd immunity.

As the lie becomes harder to sustain new myths are fabricated. The pertussis vaccine has caused the outbreak. Vaccination causes the disease it is meant to prevent. “Vaccine shedding” places the unvaccinated at risk. Viruses are intentionally released into the community. Vaccination causes immune dysfunction leading to later infection. Vaccination doesn’t provide proper immunity.

It would seem it is approaching the End Game in more ways than one for this myth. It isn’t hard to answer Ms. Dorey’s question.

Vaccination saved us from the returning diseases children are not being vaccinated against.

Vaccination And Improved Living Standards

Vaccination conspiracies in blind hyper-drive

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, AVN, Denialism, Judy Wilyman, Legal, Meryl Dorey, Skeptic by

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
John F Kennedy Meryl W Dorey

Well, New Yorker Meryl W. Dorey has seized it recently and displayed it on her antivaccination Facebook page out of context. So she may have this brief credit. It’s a standard of conspiracy theorists as a visit to Google will confirm. It has of course nothing to do with government secrecy over the public as Dorey seems to have assumed. As with a huge number of Kennedy’s speeches he is alluding to his full term foe – communism – as the reference to free examination of “an open market” suggests.

Kennedy has easily become the US President to be most quoted out of context. Speeches sliced up and overlaid to conspiracy clips, heading up cooky websites or as here, just thrown out amongst fetid posts and paranoid misinformation without another word. No explanation is needed for the (as we’re so often told) “more highly educated” vaccine deniers. Vaccines to them are proof of government cover ups and the malignancy of faceless agents across the world. They squeeze it into the Orwellian nightmare of fluoride drugging, chemtrail poisoning and hidden cancer cures. If Roxon’s incentive to immunise has shown us one thing, it’s that their grab bag of conspiracies was at the ready.

One speech conspiracy quacks love to shred is one of my favourite Kennedy deliveries. Address 153 The President and the press [Audio here]. It’s brilliant stuff, and rightly so. Kennedy’s task that night was to celebrate freedom of the press in a democracy to an audience not short on critical representatives of the press. To respect their role in holding government to account. To place their independence above the duration and mechanics of government. To support and accept media scrutiny. To speak of shared responsibilities. Yet most importantly to impart the knowledge of the huge responsibility this freedom brought to the press during the Cold War.

He pointed out enemy agents had boasted of accessing information usually obtained through bribes or espionage (such as satellite technology) and, “that details of this nation’s covert preparations to counter the enemy’s covert operations have been available to every newspaper reader, friend and foe alike”.

He needed a change in publisher outlook. He points to newspaper patriotism and loyalty. Their understanding of sacrifices that civilians are willing to bear. But he would be failing his duty to not bring to attention the inherent quandary of a free press watched by an enemy and the need of patriotic, self sacrificing newspaper publishers to weigh present dangers.

Kennedy notes Francis Bacon spoke of three inventions that changed the world. The compass, gunpowder and the printing press. His final paragraph is:

And so it is to the printing press–to the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news–that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.

Now let’s visit the mind of the Meryl Doreys of this world. Who claim as she did once that we’re controlled by “a sinister cabal of interbreeding criminal families”. The Illuminati pop up when it suits her also. These secret societies are so powerful it is beyond comprehension. Human beings are controlled like cattle – sheeple. These faceless people control governments, information and wealth keeping us sickly, poor, ignorant, in need. They run the media. Decide what we watch on TV. They seek to cull the human population. Vaccines are a means to do everything from forcing us to comply to being sheeple to injecting microchips at birth that will scan and monitor humans. We are in effect Guinea Pigs.

Imagine you’ve been fed this and more. Shown so-called proof. Imagine you almost believe it. You watch a “documentary”. Scenes of wars and human misery slowly numb your critical faculties. A sprinkling of facts. Yes, BMW did profit from war. Dick Cheney did privately profit from supplying troops in Iraq. Newspaper identities have run campaigns to shape the outcome of elections. A mushroom cloud appears for no apparent reason. But you get the meaning. Evil. The world is evil.

Images of corporations, drug companies and the seats of government. Then the words below begin to play as a background soundtrack. Half way through an new scene appears. An open topped car we know well. A smiling man in his prime. A boulevard in Dallas. An exploding head. An assassination. The words are Kennedys from his address to the press and refer to communism. But you aren’t told this.

The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.

And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning…  Our way of life is under attack. The survival of our friends is in danger.

For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice… its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.

… I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.

… that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.

The meaning is unmistakable. Kennedy was onto The Illuminati and the faceless ones. The repugnant secret societies. This “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy”. With Kennedy relying on honesty and our help humans would realise their destiny and become “free and independent”. So, they killed him. You’ve never heard of this because as Kennedy said, the conspiracy “relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence… its preparations are concealed, not published. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised”.

Of course it’s an oldie but a goodie. A standard for New World Order conspiracies. It surfaces in one form or another time and again. In understanding the rank falsehoods and intractable devotion of anti-vaccine conspirators we can learn a lot from the above. The power of the free press can be gleaned from the fact Kennedy had to ask for acquiescence to considering a change in tactics as a matter of national security. To think people today argue that the media are agents in a malignant scheme of vaccination doing the bidding of governments and pharmaceutical companies is patent absurdity.

Yet we’ve had plenty of it this last week or so with the AVN getting airplay for their falsehoods and fears. Dorey has cried foul that the government and media are not leading with advice to conscientious objectors. She lied on air and online so hard about pertussis vaccination it’s hard to not imagine some infants being struck down as a direct result. Government coercion and government cover ups were her messages. Conspiracy! Her flying monkeys attacked and harassed any journalist who defended vaccination.

When the Fluvax debacle hit W.A. supporters of conventional medicine were horrified at the event then outraged at the contributing factors. Conversely a satisfied glow emerged from the antivaccination lobby. Yet the most vocal critics of drug company power and TGA apathy are medical professionals. Perhaps the most successful in Australia is also a regular at skeptic gatherings.

When Natasha Bita won a Walkley for her coverage of CSL’s poor manufacturing standards and shortfalls in the TGA Dorey posted on her Facebook page:

Natasha Bita wins the Walkley Award for her coverage of the Australian flu vaccine scandal! Times are changing!

Again the message is unmistakable. Journalists don’t normally report on vaccine or regulator problems. This is an aberration or signs of turning a corner. At the same time Dorey and fellow conspiracy theorist Judy Wilyman were accusing the media of being beholden to their drug company commissions and reporting biased messages on Roxon’s Immunisation Incentive. One Facebook member wonders how much “underground” work Bita did and “perhaps risking her safety at times”. She would have worked alone, “…where one person like this can feel insane and give up the fight for truth”.

Truth? Insanity? Glad he mentioned those points. At the time Virus in the system was written Meryl Dorey published an “Action Alert!” on Facebook, Yahoo! and Twitter. It contained the bald faced lie that supporters of vaccines were “mobilising” to attack Natasha Bita for simply reporting the facts. In Dorey’s twisted conspiracy world that would be routine. When journalists report facts supporting vaccination or about the effects of not vaccinating, Dorey attacks. Anger, vicious language, persecution and vitriol to put it mildly. The “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” she believes in is all powerful. There can be no discussion.

But vaccine supporters did nothing. Dorey, claiming to be oppressed, suppressed and maligned, had no mud to throw. Using reverse psychology she posted these false warnings, urging her fellow devotees to bombard Natasha with praise. Apparently vaccine supporters and skeptics did NOT want the media covering this from a freedom of choice point of view. Freedom of choice? I mean… I don’t even…

There are few better examples of a conspiracy theorist caught red handed exploiting their own members than this. Sure it doesn’t have sliced up Kennedy quotes as a voice-over but the concept is the same. Serve it to the paranoid mind and it will stick.

Meryl Dorey’s Fake Yahoo! Twitter and Facebook Action Alert!

Click, read, be amazed

There can be no doubt Natasha Bita produced some great journalism. She exposed inexcusable apathy on the part of the TGA which is only made worse by Dr. Rohan Hammett’s defensive position at a Senate estimates hearing. She highlighted wasted money, government obstruction and ran a front page story on a youth who developed polio-like symptoms from oral polio vaccine. CSL’s failure to supervise Good Manufacturing Practice and their thumb twiddling until FDA representatives arrived to ultimately threaten revocation or suspension of their licence was galling. TGA attempts to cast this as almost routine were laughable. Complications such as polio like symptoms from OPV are rare yet well known and rightly deserve compensation. It made for great reading because most Aussies do not follow vaccination intricacies and would find this almost incomprehensible.

Although she now occupies a shrine for antivaccination devotees Natasha Bita confirmed nothing of their beliefs nor conspiracies. She did not find sanitation, not vaccination, reduced disease. She did not uncover any link to hidden deaths, diseases, disabilities or the big one – autism. Her entire story grew from the widely known fact one child suffered permanent injury and a nine times higher febrile convulsion rate followed administration of Fluvax to under five year olds. Anaphylaxis? Not a single case. Pertussis vaccination doesn’t work and this has been demonstrated around the world, as Dorey told ABC? No.

Mercury – not ethyl mercury is in vaccines? No. Aluminium and formadehyde poisoning children? No. Human cells floating around? No. Aborted fetal cells? No. A trail of untested vaccines? No. Secret monolithic societies? Hidden cancer cures? Proof of immune suppression? Proof vaccines do not work? Proof they all make people sick? Proof they are the cause of all allergies and the so-called “sickest generation in history”? No. In short, you think of a vaccine conspiracy and Natasha did not find it.

There were four failures and one deficiency at CSL specific to one influenza vaccine uncovered by the arch nemesis of vaccine deniers, the FDA. Hence problems with what is broadly known as Good Manufacturing Practice. Natasha Bita actually “uncovered” nothing here – the letter is publically available on the FDA website. This was crucial to her story and her publication of it’s import was swift and to the point. I probably couldn’t agree more with the sentiments she raised on this issue. But to hear the antivaccination crowd you’d think Bita broke into CSL Mission Impossible style. That she downloaded crucial top secret files before abseiling out a window clad in black leathers to her waiting Ferrari. She just escaped the black helicopters touting blazing machine guns with her uncanny driving skill, quietly slipping into work without a hair out of place.

Even reporting on Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation members Professor Terry Nolan and Peter Richmond of the National Health and Research Council having honoraria and advisory board ties to CSL, took a phone call to the Health Department. That they were involved in drug company sponsored trials and worked as investigators on CSL’s child H1N1 trials may be because they are, to quote Bita, “eminent researchers”. All conflicts of interest are declared and taken into consideration.

Yet to the devotees this is Big Pharma proof. Who would they suggest? Viera Scheibner? Judy Wilyman? Peter Dingle? Fran Sheffield? Simon Floreani, Isaac Golden or Nimrod Weiner? Let’s face it. Like any life long discipline the top jobs attract the top people. There is going to be overlap and to suggest this always leads to malignant outcomes and the control of “sheeple” says more about the true believers than intricacies of research institutions and business boardrooms. As fate would have it, others are well aware of this. Regulation is the key. Which is why regulators, their income source and their powers are absolutely crucial in the current environment.

Which brings me to another Facebook member who links to Natasha Bita’s article AMA urges watch on vaccines, writing, “and she’s continuing to stand up to them”. Stand up to who? This is a statement from the president of the Australian Medical Association, Dr. Steve Hambleton. Isn’t he pretty much “them” in a nutshell? He’s easily one of “them” and is echoing the concerns of medical supporters in that public trust has been damaged by the Fluvax issue. He is acutely aware of the spread of misinformation into vacuums that could be better filled by facts or dynamics that are conspiracy resistant. Dorey’s paranoid member fits the quintessential conspiracy profile of spotting one or two words and reacting like a programmed machine.

The article includes what is in effect the Last Post for yet another vaccine myth. That GP’s are in on the conspiracy:

DOCTORS demanded more monitoring of vaccine side-effects yesterday after the federal government announced penalties for families who fail to immunise their children.

Australian Medical Association president Steve Hambleton said the government must introduce “active surveillance” to monitor side effects instead of relying on doctors and patients to report problems through “passive surveillance”.

For a vaccine, you are taking healthy people and trying to keep them healthy so surveillance of the side effects is doubly important,” Dr Hambleton said.

“We need to maintain confidence in the program. We can’t just say to people, ‘Don’t worry, it’s safe'” [….]

Dr Hambleton said doctors strongly supported immunisation to protect children against life-threatening illness.

But he called for taxpayer funding of Australia’s medicines regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which is entirely funded by user-pays charges on the pharmaceutical industry.

He said the TGA needed to work “better and quicker” to ensure prescribing advice to doctors always included the most up-to-date data on clinical trials and side effects.

“We have to make sure regulators do their job,” Dr Hambleton said. “We do rely on the TGA for good quality, independent advice.

“Everything the TGA does is in the public interest so it should be publicly funded to do the extra work and notify the public of any changes that do come up. If it can’t do what it needs to do, we need to ask why.” […]

Vaccination protects against “life-threatening illness” and we need to maintain public confidence. It’s a smart move. Roxon’s method will only do so much to arrest falling vaccination rates. It will also do plenty to give conspiracy theorists “sheeple” leverage. Giving the anti-vaccine mob less and less to seize upon and fill with conspiracy twaddle is essential.

For Dorey and her ilk there may never be any hope. People must escape these belief systems much as one escapes a cult. They can’t be forced to change and in the main need help. Consider the person who introduced the above story. “[Natasha Bita’s] continuing to stand up to them”. Yet the story is not novel journalism but a mere AMA report. It supports immunisation as effective, promotes the TGA as acting in the public interest and shows doctors wanting better and faster information so they can continue to immunise without concerns.

Yet all these idiots (and I mean that nicely) on Facebook, including Dorey do not respond or correct or even comment. It’s just a dumping ground for quackery related to Natasha Bita’s Walkley, and that means victory over vaccines. Standing up to the monolithic and ruthless conspiracy. If Dorey did her homework she’d know the piece also contains an aim of her hated foes “the skeptics”. That being independent funding of the TGA. And I’m happy to admit that will help expose the fraud and inefficacy attached to the alternatives to medicine that the antivaccination lobby so often profit from.

The quote from Kennedy used by Dorey, above, is actually prefaced by, “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values”. Strangely enough, most untruths and distorted claims used by vaccine deniers exist because they have accessed such facts, ideas, philosophies and values. The abuse of package inserts is perhaps the golden example of what conspiracy theorists do with facts about vaccines. They craft fiction and spread it far and wide.

The truth is vaccine deniers cannot be entrusted with facts. Now, in possession of Natasha Bita’s facts and information followed by Roxon’s incentive, they have hit hyper-drive. Saba Button has been exploited by those who would see a nation of sick children. They don’t see good journalism dealing with the dynamics of a public health debacle. They see “us and them”. Whatever problems ultimately lay at the feet of the Fluvax scenario, none will question the efficacy of vaccination as a public health measure.

None will challenge the horror of what vaccine preventable diseases can do. None will justify the rise of vaccine preventable disease and the deaths of babies from flu and pertussis. Nothing will ever emerge to support the claims of the antivaccination lobby and their alternatives to vaccines. Nothing they do will ever make Dorey’s lies on ABC or the misrepresentation of Natasha Bita’s work factual. Yet to win support, they don’t have to. All they need for their conspiracy to bloom is a seed of doubt.

Which reminds me again of Kennedy, speaking to the press in 1961:

But I do ask every publisher, every editor, and every newsman in the nation to reexamine his own standards, and to recognize the nature of our country’s peril. […]

But I am asking the members of the newspaper profession and the industry in this country to reexamine their own responsibilities, to consider the degree and the nature of the present danger, and to heed the duty of self-restraint which that danger imposes upon us all.

Given recent advantage taken of Bita’s work and ABC air time those words resonate rather strongly here today.

With friends like these… Meryl Dorey’s exploitation of Saba Button

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, AVN, Denialism, Health, Judy Wilyman, Legal, Meryl Dorey by

Over the past few months I’ve come to accept that there is one Australian absolutely delighted with the fact that (then) 12 month old Saba Button suffered organ and brain damage following febrile convulsions brought on by Fluvax.

Meryl Dorey of the AVN has enveloped herself in the tragedy of the Button family, declaring long and loud she is their unofficial antivaccination representative. She claims to have twice met with them and had been, “in contact by both telephone and email many times over the intervening period…”. Finally, after 18 years of fabrication, untraceable images, offensive claims and being a danger to public health the woman who likens vaccination to “rape with full penetration” has landed her fish.

She writes in a conspiracy piece on her blog:

I can also tell you that this reaction was entirely preventable because neither they nor any other parent who gave permission for their precious child to be vaccinated in this campaign was informed that their babies were being used as guinea pigs in a trial that was paid for by the drug companies involved. Neither were they aware that those payments going to people who ostensibly worked for the government (both state and federal) and who were considered to be – but actually were not – independent.

All of this is a complete fabrication. No trials are conducted surreptitiously. Ethics requirements aside exactly what data could those conducting Meryl’s pretend trial hope to collate? By who, how and when would subjects be monitored, what tests would be carried out and for how long? Indeed Dorey is suggesting this “trial” was simply a stab in the dark to see what happened. No such trial took place and thus was not paid for by drug companies. Worse, this is knowingly exploitative of the Button family and reduces their personal tragedy and grief to yet another of the thousands of tactics Meryl Dorey has used to mislead Australians.

Morally it is no different to her claim yesterday that infants who die in a co-sleeping arrangement are likely vaccine induced fatalities. Why? Because GP’s point out the danger of this arrangement, so it must be an abuse of “natural instinct” and thus a conspiracy is in order. Or her ACTION ALERT! announcement that supporters of vaccines were mobilising to harass the author of Virus in the system – an article that recounted Saba’s experience.

CSL does carry out yearly trials following strict protocols on an informed, compliant sample, the results of which are published in peer reviewed literature. This is mentioned below. Yet I’m not here to make excuses for CSL whose conduct surrounding Fluvax, their economic handling of certain legitimate trial results and adherence to Good Manufacturing Practice leaves a great deal to be desired. Nor am I by any stretch of the imagination a fan of Dr. Rohan Hammett, head of Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration. One cannot however make conclusions without evidence. Unless of course, one fabricates.

As an update, one commenter below has pointed out there was a trial to gauge the epidemiological impact of the present schedule, in response to infant fatalities from influenza the year before.  I’m perhaps duty bound to note that infant fatality from flu was mentioned by Judy Wilyman at the AVN’s first Perth trip on June 30th 2010 at the State Library, W.A. Judy informed the audience that the media report such fatalities as scare campaigns to “coerce us into vaccination”. This is because, “We’re being educated by the media who have pharmaceutical interests”. I should also point out that W.A. was the only state to use seasonal influenza and H1N1 together for children under five, which can be regarded as novel and thus raise concerns about earlier trials, particularly on sample size. Yet there were no guinea pigs, or state sanctioned, profit driven guesswork.

Regarding “those payments going to people who ostensibly worked for the government…”, that too is fallacious. TGA national manager Dr Rohan Hammett was before a Senate estimates committee on October 19th, being quizzed over the very nature of Fluvax, CSL, trial results, the febrile convulsions in W.A. and payments from drug companies.

Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, quizzes Dr. Hammett beginning with justified concerns that the TGA knew of high fevers in 2009. Yet more disturbing is that 2005 trial data yielded fever rates of 22.5%. The 2006 fever rates were 39.5%. Despite this, CSL advised the TGA in 2009 of the 2005 figure [pp.42-43]:

Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS: Are you demanding an explanation? You should be.
Dr Hammett: We are. We have written to CSL.
Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS: It emerged that the company knew two years ago about research suggesting a sharp rise in feeders linked to its seasonal flu vaccine but omitted this from information given to doctors. We have canvassed this in these estimates. My question is: when did you and when did the government first know about this? Is this the first you have heard of it? That is really what I would like to know.
Dr Hammett: No, it is not, Senator. In 2009 a study was published which related to clinical trials undertaken in 2005 and 2006. That study was published in peer-reviewed scientific literature. We were advised by CSL of its publication at about the same time as it was actually published. You will recall that that in the years before the Fluvax incident with febrile convulsions—and, indeed, for the last four decades—seasonal flu vaccine has been regarded as an incredibly safe vaccine. In 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 and 2005 there was no suggestion of safety problems with the flu vaccine.
In retrospect, knowing now what we know in 2010, that there was a problem with the 2010 vaccine, people are going back through clinical trials and saying, ‘With the aid of the ‘retrospector scope’, could we have picked anything?’ Indeed, in those earlier clinical trials there were rates of fever for the Fluvax vaccine that were higher than some other comparable vaccines. However, as noted in yesterday’s article, most of those fevers were mild or moderate and there was no sign of a febrile convulsion signal. Febrile convulsions were not occurring in those studies that were done.
As I have said, we have written to CSL and made inquiries as to whether there was any delay in notification of us of these issues and have sought to gain a greater understanding of what they knew when. We have not yet received a response, but we are awaiting that.
Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS: Can I ask you to take on notice how much money has been paid to CSL? It is an enormous amount of money that you pay them. You obviously must have a very close relationship with CSL—and I mean that simply because of the nature of the work that they do and how much they provide in terms of products to the Commonwealth. Surely, Dr Hammett, you must have been aware of what this company was doing and certainly known about its research in relation to these fevers.
Ms Halton: Let’s just back up a second. There are a couple of things. Dr Hammett is the regulator. He does not pay the CSL anything. He has a very clear role, which is as a regulator. He takes that role very responsibly and very seriously. There is a separate part of the government which purchases vaccine, including from CSL. So I think we need to make a distinction here about who is paying what for whom and what the nature of the relationship is, because I do think it is—
Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS: I am happy for that to happen, Ms Halton, but the point that I am getting to is, given the close relationship—whether it is on the side of the purchasing arm or on the side of the TGA—this is a serious issue. Two years ago, at a period much earlier than has been previously canvassed in these estimates, there was an issue about fever. My question is: when did the government first become aware of this?

Senator Nick Xenophon later cuts to the chase addressing Hammett [p.44]:

Because time is so limited, I will put some questions on notice for you. First, can you provide details of when the TGA first became aware of the peer-reviewed article? Second, at what point was action taken? Third, did the TGA embark on other inquiries as a result of that peer-reviewed article? Fourth, do you agree with Professor Peter Collignon’s view? It is:
The TGA should be ensuring companies do update their data—it should be compulsory that the TGA should be informed of any new information, and the TGA should ensure the product information is updated to reflect that.

What really stinks coming from CSL is that the 2010 product information did not include the already documented 2009 higher fever rates. It is true these fevers are usually mild to moderate and of short duration – a factor which influenced the TGA to take no action.

It is here – and only here – that Meryl Dorey is more than welcome to raise concerns and recount poor practice or lack of insight and follow up on the part of either CSL or the TGA. However perhaps the greatest damage done by CSL is to public confidence in the safety of influenza vaccination, particularly for at risk children.

So what of actual febrile convulsion? Dorey variously claims hundreds of hospitalisations or hundreds of cases. The ABC reported “hundreds of reactions” on April 18th, 2010 with 47 taken to hospital reported on April 23. The West Australian on the same day reports 23 admissions. This led to the suspension nationwide by Commonwealth chief health officer Professor Jim Bishop.

Fluvax was given to W.A. babies resulting in a seizure rate of 3.3 per 1000. On this point MJA Insight write:

This rate of febrile convulsions [noted in 2006 trial data] (1 per 272) is similar to the estimate for the 2010 season (3.3 per 1000) which led to the unprecedented decision by Australia’s chief medical officer to suspend the use of paediatric flu vaccines.

A TGA spokeswoman told MJA InSight that a single adverse reaction report within a clinical study was not usually regarded as an adequate signal of a major safety problem. Lead author of the clinical study, Professor Terry Nolan, also told MJA InSight that the small sample size of the study meant the rates of febrile convulsions were not comparable with those seen in the community in 2010.

“We did a clinical study. It was published in a peer-reviewed journal. The serious adverse events were notified to the sponsor [CSL]”, said Professor Nolan, who is also head of the school of population health at Melbourne University.

It is not Professor Nolan’s role to inform the TGA. Nor do other members of the ATAGI receive special bonuses or payments from drug companies to influence perception of vaccines. Nevertheless Dorey manufactured a letter from a supposed “whistleblower”. A sordid tale about another W.A. based ATAGI member being handsomely rewarded by evil drug companies led her to wind up her article with:

In fact, we are told that all of our medical advisors must be paid by the drug companies because it seems to be impossible to find qualified people who haven’t been tainted by drug company cash.

This is why the AVN says that we can’t trust our government when it comes to their assessment of the safety or effectiveness of drugs and vaccines. There is a holy trinity comprised of the government, the drug companies and the doctors. This triad is protected by self-regulation (via the TGA which is completely funded by pharmaceutical licensing fees) and a complicit media which is beholden to drug company advertising.

Sounds conspiratorial? Well I’m sorry, but these are the facts.

No Meryl, that is simply fantastic conspiracy twaddle wasting good space on your blog when the real facts are far more convincing and indeed far more concerning.

But Meryl wasn’t finished with that simple post-W.A. trip tantrum, presumably to let off steam after her enormous W.A. tour flop. Last Wednesday November 16th she posted:

We read fiction:

I personally know of one 70 year old woman and a 19 year old man who were hospitalised within hours of getting the shot and who died within 7 and 2 days of that (respectively) Those deaths were never reported as being related to the vaccine.

More accusations are made about the TGA “knowing” and the CDC not buying Fluvax for this reason. No sources are cited. Then most offensively:

I will check and see how donations can be made to Saba’s fund. I know there is one that was set up for her when she was first injured. Her parents could not possibly be taking care of her in this way if it weren’t for that fund. Here’s hoping that compensation will be swift and generous for this poor victim of vaccines.

So far there is no word and I imagine no feedback will be forthcoming. In all the press surrounding Saba Button Meryl Dorey and the AVN is totally absent. Dorey has never breathed a word of the lawyer acting for the Buttons. History shows exactly what will happen to any money she would have gleefully collected and pocketed before the OLGR revoked her charitable fund raising licence for exactly that reason. Members of Stop the AVN can be proud they have this time stopped her stealing money from another family in need.

Those familiar with Dorey know if this was a death from a vaccine preventable disease her accusations would be of earlier vaccines – especially HBV leading to the death, possible antibiotic induced fatality, a lack of breast feeding or a simple media fabrication designed to scare people into vaccinating. Without sighting the medical records Dorey might well deny any disease at all. “You didn’t die from [measles or whooping cough] thirty years ago and you’re not going to die from it today”, she announced on national TV. All that’s needed is homeopathy, fresh air and clean water. Avoid doctors and hospitals.

Let’s face it. Dorey cares little for children, vaccine injured or maimed by the diseases she has helped bring back to dangerous levels. On either side they are tools to help her to offend, mislead and to cultivate fear. Snaring an innocent family with a very rational view of the world in her web of deceit can only be a negative for them. There are ample facts that assist their case. Facts Dorey is largely ignorant of. I fail utterly to see how lies and conspiracy theories manufactured by a proven threat to public health can be welcome.

Saba Button is in need of constant care via conventional medicine. Dorey is an out and proud enemy of conventional medicine. Despite the catalyst for her injuries Saba will forever be an at risk patient and need vaccination and conventional prophylactic measures to protect her from future viral threats. She will be surrounded by doctors, specialists and hospital staff perhaps for most of her life. The very people and places Dorey insists keep people sick – for profit.

It’s time Meryl Dorey did at least one morally correct thing and just left the Button family alone.

Meryl Dorey’s Supercalifragilistichomeoprophylaxis 2011 W.A. tour

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, AVN, Denialism, Legal, Meryl Dorey, Skeptic by

Even though the sound of it
Is something quite atrocious
If you say it loud enough
You’ll always sound precocious
Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay
Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay

Meryl Dorey of the Australian Vaccination Network hasn’t been her usual fun loving self since returning from her W.A. 2011 Tour.

Things, it would appear, did not go to plan. It was supposed to have been all so simple. Meryl Poppins was going to float in with her carpet bag of all singing all dancing vaccine myths and in just 15 days tear up the stage in an extravaganza of adoration over a very special seven performance tour.

All of W.A. would turn out to hear one of Australia’s most loved fairy tales. Toils and struggles of the real world would be left behind for two weeks as fantasy and magic came to town. Scarred, battered and exhausted from the toxins in vaccines, this is just what this entire state of sickly people needed.

The favourites were eagerly anticipated.

Supercalifragilistichomeoprophylaxis, would have the kiddies tongue tied and flushed.

The delightful song and dance duo with Big Pharma Myth Conspira Conspira Conspira-see would have the adults on their feet. And everyone of course would sing along to Just A Spoonful of Oscillococcinum.

Step Back In Time with backing vocals from the very talented myths, Diseases Are Harmless and Vaccines Cause Disease were billed as “mind blowing”. For the totally unvaccinated, Meryl planned to team up with Diseases Provide Immunity and finish each show with the moving favourite that any parent can sing to kids, Stay Alive. She would be loved, adored by the media and interviewed at length on air.

But things seemed to go wrong almost immediately. Channel 10 withdrew sponsorship of The Conscious Living (or Lying) Expo after seeing Meryl Dorey’s name on the list. She summoned the Flying Monkeys. She published a piece on Dr. Peter Dingle who was there presenting his Great Cholesterol Myth. This conspiracy theory is a favourite of David Icke, so Meryl was certainly in good company. Dorey – self appointed defender of free speech – then spent two lengthy pieces on her blog whining about Liberal MP Barry Haase for having his say in defence of vaccines – below. Dorey twice more summoned the Flying Monkeys.

In a rushed round up, Meryl Dorey herself reported on the “smallish groups” to turn out to the Meryl Poppins shows. Despite billing herself as a “vaccine expert” Dorey was completely lost when it came to the rubella vaccine in Australia. In a piece that sounds half made up Dorey recounts testimonials from nameless people. At one of her shows Dorey spoke with a midwife who told her of a 22 week pregnant woman who was found to have low rubella antibodies “so her doctor just gave her a rubella vaccine on the spot”.

Here’s why you should never listen to Meryl Dorey and why her misplaced confidence and immediate conclusions are potentially dangerous.

First of all, rubells (sic) is only a risk for women in their first trimester of pregnancy (the first 12 weeks) so there was no need to panic about rubella levels for someone who was already 22 weeks pregnant.

According to The Australian Immunisation Handbook, regarding rubella:

The risk of damage declines to 10 to 20% by 16 weeks’ gestation. After this stage of pregnancy, fetal damage is rare but has been reported up to 20 weeks’ gestation.

Meryl Dorey:

Second, this vaccine has never been tested for safety during pregnancy and except in the case of an emergency, it should not be used at that time.

According to The Australian Immunisation Handbook, under Groups with special vaccination requirements:

The need for… rubella vaccination should be assessed as part of any pre-conception health check. Although the use of most vaccines during pregnancy is not usually recommended on precautionary grounds, there is no convincing evidence that pregnancy should be an absolute contraindication to the use of any vaccine, particularly inactivated vaccines.

Meryl Dorey:

Last, there IS no rubella vaccine in Australia – there hasn’t been for ten years or more since the monovalent rublla(sic) vaccine, Meruvax, was withdrawn and rubella is now only available as part of the combined MMR shot. This woman was vaccinated without being given any of this information and was told outright that she was getting a monovalent vaccine when in fact, she received a three-in-one shot!

Australian Immunisation Handbook, on rubella vaccination:

Rubella vaccine is available as either MMR vaccine or as a monovalent rubella vaccine. Monovalent rubella vaccine: Meruvax II – CSL Biotherapies/Merck & Co Inc (rubella virus vaccine).

I’ll wage good money you can keep returning to Meryl’s post to read, “This woman was vaccinated without being given any of this information and was told outright that she was getting a monovalent vaccine when in fact, she received a three-in-one shot!” for a long, long time. Wrong, wrong, wrong and making up stories. That’s our Meryl.

Then there’s an assumption another person was “misinformed”. Needing a tetanus shot the woman was offered the ADT Booster which has diptheria and tetanus toxoid, or dTap which is diptheria, tetanus and pertussis. You can read the Immunisation Handbook on tetanus here. The woman seems to remember being offered “tetanus and pertussis” which doesn’t exist. Even Dorey realises the potential for patient confusion, but we get:

Whether she misunderstood what she had been offered or the staff member had no idea what was in the vaccine, I’m not sure. But if she had been misinformed, it would not have been the first (or hundredth) time someone had told me a similar story.

Yes, yes indeed. Just like the rubella story above.

Hepatitis B vaccine is to be administered within 72 hours of birth, but Meryl heard from a nurse it is being given as early as 10 minutes. There is no issue here but Dorey seems to think it should be given “three days later”. To make this more absurd, information on the HBV vaccine being given within 72 hours of birth is available on the AVN website. Oh, Meryl!

She also spoke to someone representing someone else who Dorey claims has Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Apparently the person was vaccinated for H1N1 and “within days” was hospitalised. Dorey writes:

She tried to ask the staff if this could be related to the flu vaccine and they all insisted that there was no link…. This link has been known since 1976 when the flu vaccine was first brought into disrepute…. For staff today to be either so ignorant of this link or, even worse, to lie about it and cover it up, is unforgivable.

She finishes off by reminding readers that this is why the AVN exists. So, why you may ask. To publish without checking facts? To spread fear? To make up fallacies and draw impossible conclusions? To insinuate wrongdoing? So it would seem. To be sure however, there’s more to her ranting.

After the 2010 Fluvax debacle in which 3.3 per 1000 children suffered seizures, the appalling conduct of manufacturer CSL coupled with the TGA’s poor response to both, Dorey assumed she’d be welcomed with open arms. Only a year earlier she let Judy Wilyman loose to tell an audience that, “We’re being educated by the media who have pharmaceutical interests”. Time and again Wilyman claimed the media, as part of the Government, Pharma, Media triad, “run fear campaigns” such as “reporting the deaths of three babies from ‘flu”. In this way the community are “coerced into vaccinating”.

The Fluvax issue was why “hundreds of families” as Dorey claimed this year had children in hospital. Comparing all media reports it appears 23 were hospitalised, 47 taken to hospital and over 60 children effected. This is a serious matter deserving it’s own post to sort the concerns from the hysteria. Meryl made – and still makes – incorrect claims about the suspension in 2010 of paediatric flu vaccines by Australia’s chief medical officer.

She claims that parents were unaware their children were being used in a secret trial. As serious as the W.A. event was, this in no way gives Dorey an excuse to be libellous, falsely suggesting that:

[No] parent who gave permission for their precious child to be vaccinated in this campaign was informed that their babies were being used as guinea pigs in a trial that was paid for by the drug companies involved.

Being welcomed as some anti-vaccine Messiah with a magical carpet bag was not exactly how things flowed. Cathy O’Leary, medical editor for The West Australian reminded readers of how much trouble the AVN was in and brought up the “rape with full penetration” analogy to vaccination that Meryl strongly stood by at the time. The article included:

Australian Medical Association WA president Dave Mountain said the group was trying to whip up anti-vaccine hysteria again.

“They are zealots who pick and choose bits of information to make it look like they’re presenting real evidence,” he said. This led to parents refusing to get children and themselves vaccinated, which affected everyone, particularly the most vulnerable who benefited from herd immunity and, in that respect, they were a danger.

Liberal party member and Federal Member for Kalgoorlie, Barry Haase wrote a piece in The Kimberly Page on immunisation and the impact of the AVN. He noted:

Recent reports state the Australian Vaccination Network, an anti-vaccine lobby group; have been holding meetings in Western Australia. I find it illogical that sane parents would pay $15 to hear why they should not save the lives of their children.

For some, obscure to me, reason, this group has a snout on about saving lives. Vaccination has all but wiped out a number of childhood illnesses.

This radical group, based at Bangalow, near, of course, Byron Bay, was stripped of its charity status by the NSW Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing, after health authorities found its information to be biased.

This led to an opinion piece in The Kimberly Page from Ken McLeod, who has had his complaint against the AVN upheld resulting in a NSW HCCC order for the group to publish web site warnings. The HCCC have further published their own public health warning about the Australian Vaccination Network. Ken has also been instrumental in urging the OLGR to pursue the AVN over what became 23 legislative breaches.

As already noted here another W.A. article quoted Dorey as admitting to pro bono legal help in her appeals against the HCCC and OLGR. This raises more questions of what may have happened to pledges or donations secured for legal funds.

Then just recently Cathy O’Leary reported on the fact Consumer Protection is investigating the AVN’s grab for donations in W.A., in light of the OLGR NSW revocation of their charitable fundraising licence.

All in all the Supercalifragilistichomeoprophylaxis W.A. Tour 2011 was a big flop for Meryl Dorey.