Monthly Archives: November 2012

Baseless accusations against Ken McLeod.

For some time now Ken McLeod has been the target of numerous attacks from the anti-vaccination movement. Most notably the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN). These attacks started in 2010 when Ken submitted a complaint to the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC). The HCCC responded:

The Commission has determined that the health education service provided by the Australian Vaccination Network on its website provides misleading and inaccurate information on the subject of vaccination. In view of this, the Commission has made the following recommendation to the Australian Vaccination Network, pursuant to section 42(1)(b) of the Health Care Complaints Act, 1993 (the Act):

Recommendation:

The Australian Vaccination Network should include an appropriate statement in a prominent position on its website which states:

The AVN’s purpose is to provide information against vaccination, in order to balance what it believes is the substantial amount of pro-vaccination information available elsewhere.

The information provided by the AVN should not be read as medical advice.

The decision about whether or not to vaccinate should be made in consultation with a health care provider.

–Health Care Complaints Commission

Of course the president of the AVN (Yes, her.) decided it would be wise to simply ignore the HCCC and pretend it never happened. This resulted in the HCCC issuing the now familiar public warning against the AVN as can be seen here. An ordinary person having been busted by health regulators would probably stop and realise that they have gone too far.

However the Australian Vaccination Network is an organisation that takes offence to accountability and so it has to be someone else’s fault but theirs. So while a reasonable person might accept responsibility for their actions the AVN and its president have decided that Ken McLeod is to blame for all their misfortunes.

The AVN has been making outrageously false accusations against Ken for nearly three years. So he recently sent a few emails out explaining the allegations being made against him and asking that they be substantiated:

Dear AVN supporter.

My apologies for contacting you directly, but I have been banned from commenting on the AVN Facebook page and on the Yahoo forum, so I have no other way of bringing this matter to your attention.

On several occasions Ms Dorey has published statements on the AVN Facebook page and on other webpages claiming that she has asked me to stop contacting her, that she has written to my ISP, and that I continue to contact her in a most aggressive and intrusive manner. She accuses me of threatening, stalking and harassing her and her family. All of her allegations are untrue and baseless.

According to my records:

– Ms Dorey has never asked me to stop contacting her. Her last correspondence to me was when I was compiling my first complaint to the HCCC in July 2009, and in that she said she would not respond to any more of my emails.

– I sent her emails in 2011 asking about her Walls St stockbroker experience and on 4 November 2012 querying her statements on tetanus.

– I sent her two formal letters in 2010, one registered mail, asking her asking her to substantiate or withdraw. She never responded so I got my solicitor to write to her.

– I sent the drafts of “Meryl Dorey’s Trouble With The Truth – Parts 1-3” to Ms Dorey for comment and correction, but she never responded.

– My ISPs have never contacted me about any complaints.

Asking Ms Dorey to substantiate her claims can not itself be regarded as “threatening”, “harassment”, or “aggression.” My correspondence with her has always been formal and polite, and she is welcome to place it all on the web so that people can assess her claims. It seems odd to me that the President and Public Officer of a Health Service Provider should insist that she not be sent correspondence asking her to substantiate her claims when they appear to be wrong. I regard it as a simple courtesy that I provide her with the draft of documents in which she is criticised before publication so that she may request that I correct any errors or omissions. She has never asked me to correct any drafts.

On several occasions I have publicly invited Ms Dorey to substantiate her statements about my alleged behavior, and she has failed to do so. On several occasions, those invitations were posted by others on the AVN Facebook page, but were removed by the AVN Facebook admins. The obvious conclusion is that she cannot provide any substantiation, and that she lied.

I invite you to ask her to substantiate her allegations. After all, you are the one she is lying to.

regards

Ken McLeod

As you can see Ken’s email is politely asking people to question the accusations being made towards him. However the president of the AVN has taken offence to this and is now accusing Ken of harassment for simply requesting that people ask her to substantiate her claims.

Several days ago, an unknown number of Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) members and supporters received an unsolicited and unwanted email from Mr Ken McLeod of the hate group, Stop the AVN (SAVN). Mr McLeod has had a long association with the Australian ‘Skeptics’ (parent hate-group to SAVN) and has waged an almost 4-year long campaign against both the AVN and myself.

Back in 2010, I asked Mr McLeod to stop emailing me (something he continues to do on a regular basis) and even wrote to his internet service provider (ISP) to ask them to please make him stop this illegal behaviour. It is my belief that his constant, nearly daily mentions of myself in a derogatory manner, his lies told about me (which were never corrected, even after he was shown to be incorrect) and his unwanted email contacts constitute serious harassment and stalking. Now, he has taken his activities up a notch and started the same sorts of activities with others. 

If you have received one of these messages from Mr McLeod and are upset about being contacted by someone who you do not know and who does not have permission to contact you (non-commercial SPAM), then please consider writing to his ISP – perhaps they will respond if several people write whereas they did not respond to me.

–Meryl Dorey, AVN

Nothing in Kens email can possibly be regarded as either harassment, or stalking. Just read it for yourself and ask why anyone would possibly be upset by this. I think we know the answer.

Equally controversial is asking anything about magazine subscriptions. On Friday I noticed the following posted on the AVNs Facebook wall.

It was gone an hour later.

Burzynski clinic told to stop promoting unproven drug.

The Burzynski Clinic in Texas which sells false hope to the sick and desperate has recently been told by the FDA to stop misleading the public. Dr Burzynski’s Antineoplastons “treatment” is being marketed by his clinic despite not having the approval to do so within the United States.

Promotion of an investigational new drug is prohibited underFDA regulations at 21 CFR 312.7(a), which states, “A sponsor or investigator, or any person acting on behalf of a sponsor or investigator, shall not represent in a promotional context that an investigational new drug is safe or effective for the purposes for which it is under investigation or otherwise promote the drug. This provision is not intended to restrict the full exchange of scientific information concerning the drug, including dissemination of scientific findings in scientific or lay media. Rather, its intent isto restrict promotional claims of safety or effectiveness of the drug for a use for which it is under investigation and to preclude commercialization of the drug before it is approved for commercial distribution.”

…..

OPDP requests that you immediately cease the dissemination of violative promotional materials for Antineoplastons such as those described above. Please submit a written response to this letter on or before November 1, 2012, stating whether you intend to comply with this request, and explaining your plan for discontinuing use of such violative materials.

–Office of Prescription Drug Promotion, United States Food and Drug Administration.

Despite all the marketing promotions on the Burzynski Clinic website Antineoplastons have never been proven to be efficacious. The FDA is allowing the Burzynski Clinic to experiment with the drug to produce evidence that it works. So far no conclusive evidence has been found to support Antineoplastons but that won’t stop a crook like Burzynski from charging people for his “treatment”.

New Zealand anti-vaxxers lose charity license.

Some good news out of New Zealand arrived today. The Immunisation Awareness Society, an anti-vaccination group has just lost its charity status.

The Charities Registration Board (the Board) has determined that the Immunisation Awareness Society Incorporated (the Society) is not qualified for registration as a charitable entity and that it is in the public interest that it be removed from the Charities Register. While the stated purposes of the Society are to advance education, the Board considers that its main purpose is to promote a point of view. The courts have held that promotion of a point of view lies outside the legal definition of a charitable purpose to advance education. –Charities Registration Board, New Zealand

I completely agree with this decision. There is a difference between education and opinion, the main one being that in order to educate the public you must first speak the truth. Lying to the public about made up dangers (i.e the debunked Vaccines Autism claim) isn’t education and certainly isn’t a charitable purpose. It good to see that New Zealand health authorities are looking out for the public interest.

I wish our own authorities in Australia, especially New South Wales would take a more hard line stance against questionable organisations that act against public health. I have a good feeling that recent developments in the Australian state of New South Wales will soon see health authorities coming down hard on certain organisations with regard to activities that endanger the public, or breach regulations.