Category Archives: Anti-Vaccination Network

The anti-vaccination movement in Australia Is spearheaded by the Australian Vaccination(-sceptics) Network. An organisation that has repeatedly run afoul of government health authorities for its attempts to undermine public health.

The AVN and its members routinely engage in campaigns of harassment, stalking and abuse against parents, doctors, nurses, medical researchers and anyone else who speaks out in support of science based medicine.

I have been documenting their abhorrent campaign against public health since 2010 and all posts relating to Anti-vaccination are listed here under the category/topic “Anti-Vaccination Network”.

Jane Beeby is unfit for public office.

I have just learnt that a board member of the Australian Vaccination Network wishes to run for office in Clarence Valley, New South Wales.

People who oppose vaccination do not belong in civilised society, the information spread by the Australian Vaccination Network is both dangerous and misleading. Not only is Jane Beeby playing a role in the spread of this anti-vaccination fear mongering but she also wishes death upon people who challenge her seriously delusional anti-vaccination ideology.

Photo via ReasonableHank.com

Jane Beeby writes “May your next shot be lethal one Jason, or at least one with a few brain cells.”

Jane Beeby did have a Facebook page for her political campaign, but she has since deleted it thanks to Reasonable Hank who went there to ask questions. Apparently she doesn’t like answering questions about her wishing death upon those whom she disagrees with.

Here is Jane Beeby telling another critic to drink bleach.

Photo via MyColleaguesAreIdiots.com

Jane Beeby writes “gargle with bleach peter, it will help with the smell of shit of your breath.”

Did I mention this woman also thinks children should be denied life saving vaccinations leaving them vulnerable to horrific disease. Yes, I did mention she was anti-vaccination earlier but it’s worth mentioning twice. Jane Beeby is absolutely unfit for anything except a straight jacket. Do NOT vote for Beeby; your children will suffer for it.

Anti-vaxxers don't like the truth.

Is it fair to suggest that those who spend a significant part of their lives advocating against vaccination derive some kind of sick pleasure from the damage caused by vaccine preventable disease?

Vaccines have prevented millions of people from suffering horrific deaths from disease. Measles alone was responsible for 139 300 deaths in 2010, and is one of the leading causes of death amongst young children [source]. However Anti-vaccination activists, whom I prefer to call ‘Disease Advocates’ actively campaign again vaccination for diseases such as Measles, Polio and Pertussis.

I think Peter Bowditch’s question is a fair one. Yes it’s rude, but if I had a choice between being rude or endangering the lives of children. I know where the moral high ground resides. People who actively oppose vaccinations are not just endangering their own children; but the entire community.

If anti-vaxxers only endangered their own offspring then an argument for natural selection and Darwin awards could be made. But these people aren’t contempt with living under rocks and instead choose to walk amongst society where they can pose a serious threat to the health of everyone within that community.

Of course anti-vaxxers don’t like the cold hard truth being pointed out to them. Meryl Dorey the lead anti-vaxxer in Australia and her loyal minion Liz Hempel have this week kicked up a fuss about the suggestion of death induced orgasms.

Of course it’s a bit rich for Meryl Dorey to accuse anyone of being rude after she and her fellow anti-vaxxers engaged in the vicious campaign of harassment against a family who lost their four week old daughter to Whooping Cough (pertussis) in 2009. [Source]

Meryl Dorey’s motivation for attacking a grieving family was that she personally disagreed with the cause of death, despite not being a medical professional and having no involvement with the patient prior to death. Meryl Dorey thinks she knows better than any doctor, and she’s not afraid to attack a grieving family or anyone else who disagrees with her ideology. [Source]

So here’s a message for Meryl Dorey and her fellow anti-vaxxers/Disease-Advocates

Vaccination akin to kidnapping: Meryl Dorey

I stumbled upon an interesting article posted by Australian Doctor about a new mobile service aimed at increasing vaccination rates amongst youth. The new service has proved effective so far at increasing vaccinations from around 50% up to nearly 100%.

Tracking down and vaccinating wayward youths at bus stops and skate parks could prove a solution to raising immunisation rates in rural Australia.
The approach has paid off at a high school in rural Queensland, where a drive-by vaccination squad has seen an increase from about 50% to up to 100% of 13-15-year-olds being immunised. –Australian Doctor

Of course this increased protection from lethal disease has greatly upset Meryl Dorey of the deceptively named Australian Vaccination Network.

Yes, Meryl Dorey has likened the application of life saving medicines to kidnapping. This shouldn’t come as any surprise given her history of calling vaccinations Child Rape, but I have to wonder how foolish someone would have to be in-order to take anything Meryl says seriously. Perhaps AVN supporters should take a good look at their beloved leader. She may be in need of psychiatric help, at least her past, present and possibly future actions seem to indicate a very disturbed individual.

Perhaps Meryl Dorey missed this vital clue.

“We’ve had parents contacting us and giving us permission to meet the children at the school bus … and we would have them immunised by the time they return to school,” said Gordon Luck, director of nursing at Mount Morgan Hospital, which runs the mobile service.  –Australian Doctor

Then again, never let the truth get in the way of your lunatic fear mongering. That’s the anti-vax agenda.

Anti-vaxxers trying to censor skeptic blogs.

An interesting event came to light recently. Two well known Skeptic blogs Reasonable Hank and Lucky Losing were being blocked by Trend Micro.

We believe supporters of the Australian Vaccination Network have been reporting skeptical blogs as malware in an attempt to have them blocked by malware vendors. This type of behavior has come to be expected from those who lack the evidence to backup their claims. 

There is an especially nutty fruitloop called Liz Hempel who had a few things to say on Twitter regarding the blockage of Reasonable Hank.

Liz Hempel (if that’s even her real name) is quite clearly making false accusations of fraud and criminal conduct. Without any evidence to backup those accusations of course, but then lack of evidence is what the anti-vaccination movement is all about (and promoting disease).

Liz continues…

Liz clearly knows little about the Internet. She receives the warning because she is most likely using Trend Micro which is blocking the page. Perhaps she thought reporting a page she didn’t like would get it removed entirely from the web, she is wrong only users of that particular blacklist are affected by the blockage.

I like her suggestion of reporting it to WordPress.com. Services providers receive threats, abuse and complaints as part of their daily business but no decent service provider is going to remove content unless compelled to by a court of competent jurisdiction. They espesially aren’t going to act at the whim of anti-vaxx bullshitters. Nice try Liz but once more you fail.

Incidents like this just highlight the lengths that anti-vaxxers will go to; or in this case attempt to go to in order to silence critics of their ideology. While Liz Hempel doesn’t know what she’s doing not all anti-vaxxers will be so incompetent with technology and those of us who run sites likely to incur the wrath of others should take steps to ensure that our sites and services are secure from those who would like to silence their critics in desperation. I expect we will see more underhanded tactics being used in the future, by those with an otherwise indefensible position.

Pathological Liar Meryl Dorey's pathetic attempt at impersonation.

That infamous assclown Meryl Dorey of the Australian [anti-]Vaccination Network (AVN) has created the website AustralianSceptics.com (fake Site)  in a pathetic revenge attempt towards those who expose her fraudulent “charity” for the money making sham that it really is.

For the past three years a group called Stop the Australian Vaccination Network (SAVN) has been exposing the misdeeds of Meryl Dorey and her dodgy “charity”. As a result Meryl has gotten into a whole heap of legal trouble with government regulators. Although SAVN and Australian Skeptics (Real Site) are not the same thing, Meryl repeatedly blames Australian Skeptics for the actions of SAVN. Which is a fairly moot point because all activism undertaken by SAVN falls well within the law; and Meryl even acknowledges this fact.

The Skeptics have worked out a way to rort the system by using current legislation to victimise those who they disagree with. -Meryl Dorey, 28 April 2012 nocompulsoryvaccination.com

So blaming Australian Skeptics for the actions of SAVN isn’t the insult she thinks it is.

In what I can only assume is an act of desperation Meryl has decided to seek revenge on the Australian Skeptics by creating a website in their name and filling it with bullshit. The domain name AustralianSceptics.com is indisputably owned by Meryl Dorey.

Click to Enlarge.

Although she’s owned the domain name since 2009 I have always wondered what she might do with it. Now we know, this is clearly a desperate attempt to lash out at her critics after all legitimate avenues have failed. This pathetic attempt at impersonation shows just how desperate the anti-vaccination network is becoming.

Her choice of domain name and the wording of the website are an obvious attempt to mislead and deceive the public into thinking they are visiting the real Australian Skeptics website. Considering how much trouble she keeps getting into for spreading lies and deception a rational person would of expected her to learn her lesson by now. No such luck it seems.

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? 

AVN wants to get personal.

Oh Dear, it looks like the Australian Vaccination Network is is upset by Stop the Australian Vaccination Network a group of skeptics intent on holding the AVN to account for the dangerous and misleading information that it spreads.

Apparently the anti-vaxxers are so upset about the disruption to their disease advocacy that they want to make things personal.

Neither Stop the AVN nor it’s members dispense medical advice. Neither do the Australian Skeptics so I’m not sure what ‘Medical Advise’ those two groups are supposed to have made; other than recommending people speak to their doctors.

Anti-vaxxers want to target the individual.

This should be good. I’m sure the health authorities will really appreciate a known public health menace wasting their time with childish vendettas. However it’s not the first time the Australian Vaccination Network has hit out at people who criticise them.

These are just my favorites I could go on as there are countless examples but I’m not sure I would finish the list before the heat death of the universe.

Justice for Wakefield

The modern anti-vaccination movement began when a paper written by Dr Andrew Wakefield was published in the Lancet medical journal in 1998. The now infamous paper suggested a link between the Measles Mumps and Rubella vaccine and the development of Autism in children.

However over the following years researchers were unable to reproduce Wakefield’s results to confirm this hypothesis. However despite this Wakefield paper caused panic amongst parents leading many of them to abandon vaccination all together, and so the modern Anti-vaccination movement was born.

Wakefield’s paper was later retracted from the journal after extensive research by the scientific community concluded that it was ‘bogus‘; for lack of a better word.

A prominent British medical journal on Tuesday retracted a 1998 research paper that set off a sharp decline in vaccinations in Britainafter the paper’s lead author suggested that vaccines could causeautism.
The retraction by The Lancet is part of a reassessment that has lasted for years of the scientific methods and financial conflicts of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who contended that his research showed that the combinedmeasles, mumps and rubella vaccine may be unsafe.
–The New York Times
Unfortunately by this time allot of the damage has already been done and we now have Die Hard Anti-vaccine fanatics the Australian Vaccination Network who continue to cite Wakefield’s discredited paper to scare parents into not vaccinating their children. 
Dr Wakefield was struck of the UK medical register for his misconduct.
A U.K. medical regulator revoked the license of the doctor who first suggested a link between vaccines and autism and spurred a long-running, heated debate over the safety of vaccines.
Ending a nearly three-year hearing, Britain’s General Medical Council found Andrew Wakefield guilty of “serious professional misconduct” in the way he carried out his research in the late 1990s. The council struck his name from the U.K.’s medical register.
…..
A 2004 statistical review of existing epidemiological studies by the Institute of Medicine, a respected nonprofit organization in the U.S., concluded that there was no causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Some autism activist groups, however, continue to advocate against vaccinations for children, despite the lack of scientific evidence for such a link. –The Wall Street Journal
and the trouble for No-longer-a-doctor Andrew Wakefield continues thanks to journalist Brian Deer who has further exposed Wakefield as a fraud.
THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found.
Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.
…..
However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal. –Brian Deer
However the Die Hard Anti-vaccine fanatics are still backing Wakefield even after his research has been shown to be a fraud. Meryl Dorey certainly still supports him and she’s as fanatical anti-vaccine as you can get.
So I support calls for justice when Wakefield is concerned. That of course means a long prison sentence for this fraud who gave birth to the modern anti-vaccination movement.

The Australian Vaccination Network is being brought to it's knees.

There was a time when Mery Dorey of the deceptively named “Australian Vaccination Network” would be called upon as a medical expert on vaccination. When the media used to treat her as a credible source for information on vaccines. Before the Health Care Complaints Commission issued it’s public warning against her.

Since then things have been going downhill rapidly for Dorey and her organisation, very rapidly. Only a few months later the Australian Vaccination Network had it’s charitable status revoked preventing Dorey from engaging in fundraising activities.

The loss of charity status appears to be taking its toll. ‘Reasonable Hank’ from Stop the AVN has pointed out the difficulty Dorey is having delivering her magazine; to the point where she is attempting to redefine the meaning of the word subscription in a desperate attempt to justify failure to fill her orders. Of course this doesn’t stop Dorey from selling the subscriptions even if there is no magazine to ship.

Meryl Dorey sent out a newsletter on Monday confirming what many of us have already suspected and hoped for; the Australian Vaccination Network is indeed being brought to it’s knees by the skeptical community, health authorities, media and medical professionals.

It is necessary, once again, to ask you to read about another ignorant and vicious allegation by Stop the AVN (SAVN) and the Australian Skeptics. Without any cause whatsoever, both myself and the AVN National Committee are being accused of fraud because our magazine, Living Wisdom, is late.

You would know – and I have been quite open about this – that Living Wisdom magazine is very delayed in its publication. And there is good reason for this. Here are just some of the jobs that are necessary, day-to-day for the AVN to continue operating:

  • answering all phone calls;
  • entering all orders;
  • keeping the accounting programme up to date and reconciling all accounts;
  • sending out all orders;
  • writing the blog;
  • maintaining the Facebook and Twitter sites;
  • producing this e-newsletter;
  • moderating and contributing to the email discussion group;
  • organising regular seminars (arranging venues, accommodation, transport, slides, advertising, etc.);
  • preparing webinars; and
  • assisting an ever-increasing number of people who are in legal strife because of their vaccination decisions (more about this a bit later on)

Previously, we had 5 people in our office to perform these jobs – a graphic designer, a bookkeeper/office manager, her assistant, an advertising salesperson plus me. Now, there is just one person to keep it all under control – me. When it comes to the day-to-day work of the AVN, there is nobody else besides me to do the job (though our committee does an incredible amount to support me and other AVN members, the tranny of distance means they cannot be working here on the spot). -Meryl Dorey

So while Meryl Dorey insists that SAVN are not scoring any victories the truth is that the Australian Vaccination Network is battered and broken. Dorey has lost her hold on the media, lost all her staff and is struggling to keep the organisation together. All thanks to a dedicated group of individuals called Stop the AVN who are dedicated to holding Meryl Dorey and the Australian Vaccination Network accountable for the dangerous misinformation that they spread. As for the slow but certain demise of the Australian Vaccination Network, I’ll drink this scotch to celebrate.

Stephanie Messenger makes me sick.

One of the downsides of following issues of science denialism is that you often have to encounter the very worst of our society. There are allot of unpleasant characters out there who take advantage of people either for some quick cash or to back an ideology.

Stephanie Messenger is one such individual. She has written a book titled Melanie’s Marvellous Measles where she glorifies childhood disease. To make matters worse the book is intended for children, to tell them that disease is a good thing.

This book takes children aged 4 – 10 years on a journey of discovering about the ineffectiveness of vaccinations, while teaching them to embrace childhood disease, heal if they get a disease, and build their immune systems naturally. –Book Description

Meanwhile the World Health Organisation has this to say about Measles:

Measles is a highly contagious, serious disease caused by a virus. In 1980, before widespread vaccination, measles caused an estimated 2.6 million deaths each year.

It remains one of the leading causes of death among young children globally, despite the availability of a safe and effective vaccine. An estimated 164 000 people died from measles in 2008 – mostly children under the age of five. –World Health Organisation

Yet, people like Stephanie Messenger openly advocate Measles for children. Messenger is not a doctor, knows nothing of medicine and yet she tells children that disease is good for them. Contrary to the overwhelming consensus of the medical community.

Stephanie Messenger is an inhumane child disease advocate. It is sickening that people like her exist, but unfortunately they do and those of us who see these people with their true colours have a moral obligation to shine the spotlight on them.