Dan's Journal of Skepticism

Australian Doctor reports on the latest dirty tricks being employed by anti-vaxxers to make doctors sign ‘Conscientious Objection’ forms.

Anti-vax parents are intensifying their efforts to have conscientious objector forms approved by circulating a document on how to “bully” doctors for their signatures.
Circulating by email and obtained by Australian Doctor, the two-page sheet of “tips” suggests parents warn doctors they will report them to regulators if they show “disrespect” for their anti-vax views.
The document also urges parents to refuse to pay for the consultation if a doctor does not sign. –Australian Doctor

The reason that anti-vaxxers are so keen to get these forms signed is due to a government payment called Maternity Immunisation Allowance which is a payment intended for parents who have “Fully Immunised” their children. Except there is a loophole whereby so called “Conscientious Objectors” can still claim the payment even if they can’t be bothered to get their children vaccinated.

The Conscientious Objector Form is all about money. Anti-vaxxers simply want payment for something they haven’t done and are willing to abuse anyone that gets in the way of their undeserved payment. So it comes as no surprise that The Australian Vaccination Network has begun circulating the document to it’s supporters.

Download the original document here.

So Meryl Dorey (As identified by the initials MD) defines abuse as any doctor who disagrees with her on medicine. Despite the fact that she holds no medical training or qualifications herself.

But it gets better. The Australian Vaccination Network also had this to say about medical professionals

Doctors want to be given absolute rights to do and say whatever they wish simply because they are doctors. They want to be respected as a result of their 8 years of pharmaceutically-provided education, yet they do not want to accept responsibility for the fact that people are leaving them in droves for more effective, safer and gentler natural therapies which have been around for hundreds or thousands of years longer than drug-based medicine. People are not stupid – they know what words and what does not and they are tired of being killed and maimed in the name of pharmaceutical profits.

Please read the comments below from the page of the Australian Doctor Weekly regarding why doctors should not sign conscientious objection forms and why parents should lose all of their rights. These are the people our politicians are listening to. These are the true terrorists in our society. Freedom of choice is NOT free. It must be fought for and it must be defended. If we are not prepared to do what is necessary to protect our children, then truly we HAVE lost our way as citizens of a democratic nation. –Australian Vaccination Network

Yes the AVN really is upset that the government listens to people with medical qualifications and expertise. Rather than a bunch of crackpot lunatics.

Well it didn’t take long for the nations leading anti-vaccination organisation to run into more trouble with the authorities. Now the Australian Vaccination Network is being investigated for consumer fraud as a result of their dodgy financial reports.

Jane Hansen, The Sunday Telegraph

I wrote the following letter to the AVN in January to ask about the questionable finances regarding the Magazine Subscriptions.

I never received any response from the AVN, but I do happen to know that past president Meryl Dorey was very unhappy about this letter. I expect she’ll be even less happy now that Fair Trading is asking the same questions.

A detailed look at the AVN’s magazine scam can be found at Diluted Thinking.

While Ken McLeod’s document: Meryl Dorey’s Trouble with Finance is an excellent introduction to the shifty financial reporting of the AVN.

I expect to see a lot more bad news for the AVN just around the corner. Stay Tuned….

One of the tactics that’s employed by the Australian Vaccination Network is to impersonate their opponents. It’s childish certainly, but we have come to expect such pathetic tactics from this organisation.  Misrepresentation and deception are the tools of choice for pathological liars so it came as no surprise that Meryl Dorey, who was president of the AVN at that time set up a website to impersonate Australian Skeptics Inc.

It is a poor impersonation and the intended deception is clear for all to see. The fake website in question is: AustralianSceptics.com and the whois record shows that it belongs to the AVN, plus it’s common knowledge that they own this site.

So back in May 2012 I wrote to the New South Wales Department of Fair Trading to notify them that the AVN was in violation of the ASSOCIATIONS INCORPORATION ACT 2009 (NSW) by refusing to identify that this website belonged to them.

I am writing to inform you that The Australian Vaccination Network Inc has recently established a new website at http://australiansceptics.com with the title “The REAL Australian Sceptics”, this is a deliberate attempt to mislead and deceive the public by purposefully using a confusingly similar name to Australian Skeptics Inc.

Despite the requirement under Section 41 of the ASSOCIATIONS INCORPORATION ACT 2009 (NSW) which states “An association must not issue any letter, statement, invoice, notice, publication, order for goods or services or receipt in connection with its activities unless the association’s name appears in legible characters on the document.”. The Australian Vaccination Network Inc has not included their name anywhere on the publication at  http://australiansceptics.com. This publication is being promoted on their official Facebook and Twitter accounts, and the domain name australiansceptics.com is registered to “Australian Vaccination Network” there is no doubt that this publication belongs to them.

Best Regards,

~Dan Buzzard

PO Box 72

Northbridge 6865

While I did receive a response from Fair Trading to say they would write to the AVN I never had the opportunity to see the correspondence that took place between the AVN and Fair Trading; until now.

The group Stop the Australian Vaccination Network was able to obtain copies of the correspondence between the Department of Fair Trading and the Australian Vaccination Network and sure enough on page 84 is a copy of the letter that Fair Trading sent to Meryl Dorey regarding my complaint the 11^th May 2012.

Then on page 89 I found the blatant lie that Meryl Dorey told to fair trading in order to avoid complying with the law.

Simply linking to another website is not the same as hosting it. If it were then it would mean the entire internet consists of a single website.  I am disappointed that Fair Trading chose to ignore the law breaking activities of the AVN and accept such an obvious lie. I will be following up on my original complaint as a result.

The correspondence released by fair trading is available here: AVN Trouble with Fair Trading (14 MB)

It’s a big file to go through and I expect I’ll beable to dig up a lot more dirt from it over the coming weeks.