AV is for Anti-Vax

The anti-vaccination loony Meryl Dorey is once more moaning about skeptics and those who would see her and her flying monkeys held accountable for the dangerous misinformation they spread. It seems that the constant barrage of complaints is getting to Meryl. Perhaps if she didn’t act to a total disregard for government regulations she might have nothing to worry about in the first place.

In her latest blog post Dorey moans about the HCCC-Report 

1- The Health Care Complaints Commission received a 90-page complaint by Ken McLeod – member of Stop the AVN and a man whose obsession with me seems to border on the psychotic. McLeod filed the original complaint, resulting in a 12-month ‘investigation’ by the HCCC and a public warning – both of which were later deemed to be illegal by the NSW Supreme Court. -Meryl Dorey, 28 April 2012 nocompulsoryvaccination.com

On the contrary neither the Investigation, nor finding by the Health Care Complaints Commission where ‘illegal’ although the courts did find the HCCC acted outside its jurisdiction on a technicality and therefore shouldn’t have investigated the AVN in the first place. Although the Health Care Complaints Commission had to officially retract the public warning it had issued, the content of the warning itself was never found to be incorrect.

Now It looks like Meryl Dorey and the AVN are being asked to disclose their financial income to the Department of Fair Trading. Conveniently Meryl doesn’t keep track of her finances, and therefore has an excuse at the ready for not complying with government requests.

I have informed the Dept of Fair trading that I cannot break down our income from sales of products to members and non-members because we are not required to keep track of this and therefore, we have not done so. This doesn’t seem to be satisfactory to them and they are continuing to ask me to provide them with this information or they may have to consider their ‘options’ in regards to our registration. -Meryl Dorey, 28 April 2012 nocompulsoryvaccination.com

Very convenient Meryl, perhaps the Office of Liquor Gaming and Racing doesn’t require you to keep that info but apparently the Department of Fair Trading does, or they would not be asking for it. You need to abide by ALL regulations not just the ones most convenient to you.

Meryl continues her tirade against all who oppose her anti-vaccination stance.

The real villains here are those members of the Australian Skeptics and Stop the AVN who – though they themselves have not been harmed by any of these products, by any of this information or by any of these remedies – intentionally waste the public’s time, money and expertise by pursuing vexatious and absolutely ridiculous complaints. The Skeptics have worked out a way to rort the system by using current legislation to victimise those who they disagree with. And the ones who lose out when this sort of fraud is perpetrated by a group that opposes freedom of choice and speech are the Australian taxpayers. -Meryl Dorey, 28 April 2012 nocompulsoryvaccination.com

How dare we “use current legislation (sic)” to file complaints against you. Perhaps if you weren’t so often in the wrong you’d have nothing to fear from those complaints. Just some food for thought.

It has to be asked What sort of “charity” fears government investigation? 

More on the Scrayen Threat.

My Apologies for not posting this sooner. Last week was the Global Atheist Convention and I forgot that I had this sitting in Draft.

So recently the controversial (soon to be infamous) homeopath Francine Scrayen sent me a Cease and Desist notice as a result of some criticisms I wrote on this blog. My opinions of Scrayen and the way she treated one of her patients are less than humbling. After reading a report from the State Coroner I am happy to say that I find Ms Scrayen’s involvement; as detailed in the report to be nothing less than that of a callous fraud. Homeopathy is a fake “medicine” that has never been proven to work. So I have to seriously question the integrity of anyone who would sell it as a cancer treatment. According to both the Coroner Report and the letters written by Ms Dingle, Francine Scrayen has done just that.

Clearly Ms Scrayen is not happy about my criticisms and wants me to censor myself. I believe that the Cease and Desist notice she sent me was intended to intimidate more than anything else. She graciously decided that a four day public holiday would be sufficient time for me to prepare my legal response. However I’m not convinced that the court would consider that to be an acceptable time frame, and for this reason I do not think the Cease and Desist is anything more than an intimidation attempt.

There is such a thing as acting in “Bad Faith” and someone looking to file legal action would probably not want to act in any way that could possibly be construed as Bad Faith, such as giving someone a public holiday to seek legal advice for example. I also have to question her motivation for going after me rather than the sources I reference.

She claims that I have made the following “false” statements about her. There are sixteen point in all but a lot of them are just the same thing repeated. I suspect this was done to make the legal threat look more intimidating. So rather than just repeating myself on multiple similar points I will cut it down to the key points. I think I can justify my statements. Obviously this is just a quick summary for the purpose of a blog post. Going through the courts will require far more scrutiny and more extensive examination. 

has been sued for the death of Penelope Dingle;

–Legal Correspondence 

On this point I would suggest that Ms Scrayen retake an English class and learn the difference between past and present tense. Since no where on this website have I ever claimed that Ms Scrayen “has been sued for the death of Penelope Dingle” starting off on a lie is not a good start Francine. I do however state that she is currently being sued for the death of Penelope Dingle.

Feel free to check my source. Does Ms Scrayen deny that she is being sued by Toni Brown for the death of Penelope Dingle? If so perhaps she should file action against the newspaper for covering the storey.

My Source: http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/breaking/13310801/woman-sues-homeopath-over-sisters-cancer-death/

defrauded Penelope Dingle;

 –Legal Correspondence 

Did Francine Scrayen convince the deceased that she could cure her cancer? Yes, did the deceased receive the service that Ms Scrayen charged her for? No, therefore any reasonable person could conclude that Ms Scrayen committed an act of fraud by misleading the deceased with false promises. My opinion after reading both the Coroners Report and the letters that Penelope Dingle wrote to Ms Scrayen is that the deceased chose to have an effective treatment that would cure her of cancer. But instead Ms Scrayen provided a bogus treatment (Homeopathy) that has never been shown to cure cancer. 

sold witchcraft;

–Legal Correspondence  

Ms Scrayen provides an alternative medicine that has never been proven to work beyond a placebo effect. To date the scientific community has been unable to determine any mechanism by which Homeopathy might work. In light of this fact it is perfectly reasonable to call Homeopathy “Witchcraft” as it falls into the same category as other mythical clap trap, such as magic, psychic powers and many more.

Selling magic water or magic sugar pills would fall within the general populations idea of witchcraft.

killed Penelope Dingle;

–Legal Correspondence  

Going all out to persuade a cancer patient to avoid treatment so that you can sell them your mythical clap trap certainly sounds like killing to me. There is no doubt that any reasonable person would interpret a person to exploits a cancer patient in this manner as; at the very least indirectly killing the patient. I feel that my claim that “Ms Scrayen killed Penelope Dingle” falls well within the grounds of fair comment, especially in the context of my publications.

intentionally influenced Penelope Dingle into making bad medical choices;

–Legal Correspondence 

Who am I to disagree with the State Coroner? Does MS Scrayen expressly deny influencing Penelope Dingles medical decisions? Because the findings of the State Coroner state otherwise.

Source: https://www.danbuzzard.net/storage/Dingle_Finding.pdf

is the very worse type of fraud;

–Legal Correspondence 

Ms Scrayen is indeed the very worst type of fraud and I will be happy to repeat my opinion in court. Duping a cancer patient so you can sell your unproven “medicine” to them, sounds pretty despicable to me. Especially when the patient who might otherwise live ends up dead from lack of treatment. Cheating the sick and desperate is the worse type of fraud that one can commit.

sold fake medicine;

–Legal Correspondence  

FACT: Francine Scrayen is a Homeopath, or does she deny providing homeopathic (fake medicine) “treatment” to the deceased?

I want to thank everyone who’s been blogging and tweeting about this. Normally this blog is quiet and only a few people ever read the articles that Scrayen complains about, that is until she sent me a Cease and Desist notice.

I believe they call this the Streisand Effect. Apparently Ms Scrayen’s attempt to silence me has only drawn more attention to the facts surrounding the death of Penelope Dingle. It has also lead to a lot more people downloading and reading the Coroners Report. If Scrayen wants to put both herself and Homeopathy on trial in the Supreme Court then she can pursue legal action against me and open her “treatments” up to the scrutiny of the courts. Many of us, myself included look forward to the possibility of a Supreme Court examining the evidence, or rather lack thereof for Homeopathic treatments.

Coroners Report. <- Read this and decide for yourself.

Letters by Ms Dingle

Francine Scrayen sends me a Cease and Desist.

It looks like two of my previous blog posts have upset Ms Scrayen to the point where she is willing to call in the lawyers. Of course nobody likes such harsh criticism of their business practices, especially when they are already surrounded by intense public scrutiny.

Ms Scrayen is so strongly opposed to my opinions and criticisms of her that she even wants me to remove them from my blog. 

I have no desire to publish inaccuracies and posting such a retraction would be doing just that. My opinions and criticisms of Francine Scrayen are based upon the facts surrounding the death of Penelope Dingle and I am more than willing to defend them in court if need be.

Ms Scrayen may be unhappy with what I’ve written about her, but I will not be removing it unless it is shown to be false. If Ms Scrayen thinks she can silence my criticism with lawyers then she is in for some disappointment.

I’m sure Ms Scrayen will read this so I’ll make this perfectly clear. You cannot silence legitimate criticism with lawyers. If you can prove the Homeopathy works and is effective for treating cancer, as Penelope Dingle was led to believe. Then I will gladly make the necessary corrections to maintain the accuracy of my blog. But if you want to sell unproven medicines to vulnerable cancer patients then you can expect to be justifiably criticised for it; especially if the patient then dies due to your ineffective treatment.

Cease and Desist Letter.

Coroners Report

My First post about Francine Scrayen

My Second post about Francine Scrayen

Homeopath Francine Scrayen in court for the death of her "patient".

Francine Scrayen the homeopath who defrauded one of her patients with bogus medical treatments is now being sued for the death of her patient; or should I say victim. Toni Brown is suing Scrayen over the death of her sister, Penelope Dingle who died after giving up conventional treatment in favor of the witchcraft that Ms Scrayen sold.

Penelope Dingle’s sister is suing the homeopath who persuaded the cancer victim to ignore conventional treatment in favour of fighting the deadly disease with alternative medicine.

The case made national headlines in 2010 when State Coroner Alastair Hope held an inquest into Mrs Dingle’s death, finding that her husband, Peter Dingle, and homeopath Francine Scrayen had played important roles in the decision.

Mrs Dingle’s sister Toni Brown has launched District Court proceedings against Ms Scrayen, claiming she suffered her own psychological problems as a result of the way in which her sister died. –The West

I have already written about the tragic death of Penelope Dingle at the hands of Francine Scrayen in “Scammed to death: How Francine Scrayen killed Penelope Dingle.” (Comments at the bottom of the page are worth reading)

In my view the deceased’s rectal cancer was present and causing bleeding and other symptoms from at least 31 October 2001.  During the period 31 October 2001 until at least the end of November 2002, the deceased regularly described the symptoms of her rectal cancer to a homeopath, Francine Scrayen.  It was not until November 2002 that Mrs Scrayen and the deceased discussed the possibility of reporting her rectal bleeding to a medical practitioner and it was not until 5 December 2002 that she first reported those problems to a doctor.

I accept that Mrs Scrayen  believed that the deceased had suffered from haemorrhoids years earlier and the bleeding and pain was “an old symptom coming back”, but a competent health professional would have been alarmed by the developing symptoms and would have strongly advised that appropriate medical investigations be conducted without delay.

Mrs Scrayen was not a competent health professional. I accept that Mrs Scrayen had minimal understanding of relevant health issues, unfortunately that did not prevent her from treating the deceased as a patient.

This case has highlighted the importance of patients suffering from cancer making  informed, sound decisions in relation to their treatment.  In this case the deceased paid a terrible price for poor decision making. 
 
Unfortunately the deceased was surrounded by misinformation and poor science.  Although her treating surgeon and mainstream general practitioner provided clear and reliable information, she received mixed messages from a number of different sources which caused her to initially delay necessary surgery and ultimately decide not to have surgery until it was too late. –Coronors Report; conclusion.

So after such a conclusion from the coroner it’s good to see that action is being taken against Francine Scrayen. While it won’t undo the damage already do it will bring fake medicines such as Homeopathy and those who sell it back into the spot light.

I personally feel that criminal charges should be filed against Francine Scrayen because she intentionally influenced her “patient” into making bad medical choices. Francine Scrayen is not a medical professional, but that didn’t stop her from treating Ms Dingle as a patient and charging her for “treatment”.

Francine Scrayen is the very worse type of fraud. Not only did she cheat her victim of money but she also cheated her out of life. Francine Scrayen sold fake medicine to a cancer patient who died as a result of being given snake oil instead of real medicine. This type of practice is unacceptable and Ms Scrayen needs to be held accountable for her despicable actions. 

#Anonymous script kiddie #opBlackout set for failure.

Anonymous, the so called “hacker” group that is in reality just a script kiddie legion of idiots. Has threatened to take the entire internet offline this Saturday, on the 31st of March. They are expecting to do this by launching a Distributed Denial of Service Attack against the Internet’s DNS Root Servers.

These root servers are an essential part of the Internet’s DNS system. Without DNS servers you (or rather your computer) cannot resolve domain names such as Google.com, Microsoft.com or even DanBuzzard.net to their corresponding IP Address, and without the Root Servers the system collapses.

The DNS System has a hierarchy and at the top of the hierarchy is the “root”. Anonymous knows this and has evidently discovered that there are just 13 servers in the root that are responsible for the entire DNS system below them.

To protest SOPA, Wallstreet, our irresponsible leaders and the beloved 
bankers who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of 
sheer sadistic fun, On March 31, anonymous will shut the Internet down.
———————————————————————–
In order to shut the Internet down, one thing is to be done. Down the
13 root DNS servers of the Internet.

To protest SOPA, Wallstreet, our irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of sheer sadistic fun, On March 31, anonymous will shut the Internet down.
———————————————————————–
In order to shut the Internet down, one thing is to be done. Down the13 root DNS servers of the Internet.

….

By cutting these off the Internet, nobody will be able to perform a domain name lookup, thus, disabling the HTTP Internet, which is, after all, the most widely used function of the Web. Anybody entering “http://www.google.com” or ANY other url, will get an error page, thus, they will think the Internet is down, which is, close enough. Remember, this is a protest, we are not trying to ‘kill’ the Internet, we are only temporarily shutting it down where it hurts the most. –Some Twat

However the 13 root servers aren’t really just 13 servers, thanks to IP Anycast the 13 IP addresses actually have hundreds if not thousands of servers behind them. The root servers are all asigned letters A through M and I am informed by a very reliable source that the “I.root-servers.net” server with an IP address of 192.36.148.17 exists in no less than 25 different countries; and that’s just one of 13 clusters of servers.

Another problem that Anonymous has is that DNS Records have a cache. For example I set my DNS records to 86400 seconds (24 hours) which means when you visit my blog your computer won’t need to resolve the address www.DanBuzzard.net to its IP address for upto 24 hours so not only would Anonymous need to achive the impossible of knocking down huge server clusters, but they would need to keep them down for a prolonged period of time because DNS caching is a standard practice.

DNS Root response times.

The idea that a bunch of pissed off teenagers could take down the DNS Root is nothing short of laughable. Just because you can DDoS your mates off their home internet connection doesn’t mean you can take on the huge server clusters that makeup each server in the DNS Root. So quit making up stupid shit, you never know someday you might learn something.

Phishing URLs for #FraudWeek

Earlier tonight a tweet caught my eye.


Incorrect security advice from a government department, who would have thought. You would think the Government could do better, but no. Apparently logging off will keep you safe. This isn’t the early 90s anymore an threats have grown beyond another user on the computer after you. Besides do people really share computer much these days anyway? Even if they do, an errant sibling or spouse is your least concern.

As part of fraud week I thought I would post something a little more useful than the Australian Government. While there are many security threats both online and offline the one I keep needing to educate users about is Phishing. Whereby criminals will impersonate a legitimate website in order to trick a user into supplying their username and password for the legitimate site.

For example have a look at this website. (click the image)

Now take a look at the second website (click the image)

Did you spot the difference? Unfortunately allot of people do fail to spot the difference and become victims of crime due to the theft of their credentials. This is because only one of these websites is real and the other a fake. If you happen to enter your username and password into the fake site then your credentials are in the hands of the criminals running the fake site; this process is called “Phishing”.

Here is the all important difference that users need to be taught to look for.

It’s in the URL, while both sites contain gumtree.com.au only one of those sites is actually gumtree.com.au while the fake site is actually a subdomain in disguise. Just because you see the name in the address bar it doesn’t mean you are at the correct site. In this case the criminal owns 209058589.co (the domain extension for Columbia) and you’re simply visiting a subdomain hosting the fake site.

One of the ways criminals trick users into going to the wrong site is by sending them an email pretending to be from the legitimate site but instead linking to the fake site. Users with HTML enabled are especially at risk because urls are much easier to hide inside of hyperlinks. For example http://www.microsoft.com links straight back to this article, but if placed in an official looking email pretending to be from Microsoft a user could be duped into thinking it’s a link to microsoft.com when it actually links elsewhere. This tactic combined with a good fake site and URL is enough to fool most users.

So as part of #FraudWeek teach some of the less tech savvy users how to spot the fakes. Just because you can spot them it doesn’t mean your friends and family can.

Google Chrome blocking access to a Phishing site.

Fortunately most modern web-browsers have the ability to scare users away from Phishing sites, but they shouldn’t be solely relied upon as some Phishing sites do manage to escape detection. Therefore user education is the key.

Homeopathic quack uses The Conversation to pimp health scam.

Well it didn’t take long for a supporter of Homeopathy to respond to calls for an alternative “medicine” crackdown. Sandra Lucas from La Trobe University has responded in defence of Homeopathy. While I am not surprised to see someone defend outright fraud, I am surprised by the platform that was used.

Sandra’s article was posted on none other than TheConversation.edu.au

People have a right to choose the treatments they want and decide how to manage their health issues. All health professionals including homeopaths should be qualified so the public has appropriate treatment. Treatments should be based on how well they make people feel rather than how scientific or traditional the medicine is. –Sandra Lucus

This came as a surprise because this is a site that tries to bill itself as a source of reliable information from experts in the academic field. Yet, they allow people like Sandra Lucus to post such un-scientific rubbish that I am now going to have a hard time taking their site seriously.

We will:

  • Unlock the knowledge and expertise of researchers and academics to provide the public with clarity and insight into society’s biggest problems.
  • Give experts a greater voice in shaping scientific, cultural and intellectual agendas by providing a trusted platform that values and promotes new thinking and evidence-based research.
  • Provide a fact-based and editorially-independent forum, free of commercial or political bias.
  • Create an open site for people around the world to share best practices and collaborate on developing smart, sustainable solutions.
  • Ensure quality, diverse and intelligible content reaches the widest possible audience by employing experienced editors to curate the site.
  • Ensure the site’s integrity by only obtaining non-partisan sponsorship from education, government and private partners. Any advertising will be relevant and non-obtrusive.
  • Work with our academic, business and government partners and our advisory board to ensure we are operating for the public good.
  • Support and foster academic freedom to conduct research, teach, write and publish.

–The Conversation, Charter

Fact based my arse. If you want to provide a “fact based” forum then you shouldn’t be allowing people to pimp bogus medicine. Homeopathic theory is so thoroughly debunked that we have a greater chance of proving the existence of Unicorns and Pixies than we do of finding evidence to support Homeopathy.

I’m not allowed to write for The Conversation because I’m not an academic. Yet kooks like Sandra Lucus are given a special privilege due to their academic status, regardless of the trash they may write. The editors should realise that just because someone has credentials it doesn’t mean they know what they are talking about. Or that they won’t deliberately make false, unsupported claims in order to defend an ideology.

Homeopathy in the firing line, again.

People who sell bogus Homeopathic “Medicine” in Australia are coming under fire from health authorities once again.

Homeopaths are facing a fight to defend their practice in Australia after the National Health and Medical Research Council flagged it might declare their work baseless and unethical.

A draft public statement seen by The Age concluded it was ”unethical for health practitioners to treat patients using homeopathy, for the reason that homeopathy (as a medicine or procedure) has been shown not to be efficacious” –The Age

I have written about Homeopathy on numerous occasions. Most notably the incident in which it lead to the death of local Perth woman Penelope Dingle at the hands of her homeopath Francine Scrayen who was treating her ineffective treatment. Like all homeopathic practitioners Francine Scrayen wasn’t a medical professional but rather a fraud looking to cash in on the vulnerable.

The draft statement by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council said that although homeopathy was not harmful in its own right, it might pose a risk to patients if safe and efficacious conventional treatments were delayed in favour of homeopathic treatments. –The Age

Unfortunately it is not uncommon for people to skip legitimate medicine in favor of a treatment that has never been proven to work, despite being more than 200 years old. The late Steve Jobs was also a victim of Homeopathy.

So its about time that Homeopathy became recognised as the unethical sham that it is.

Presenting Anti-abortion fruitcake, Kristin Terheqes

Ok, I’m used to encountering insane propaganda but sometimes I encounter something so absurd that it needs to be shared. This one comes from one Kristin Terheqes.

Also, my comment telling them they haven’t a clue about medical procedure has disappeared from the comment thread. I think it perfectly reasonable to call this ridiculous image propaganda. Judge for yourself.