Monthly Archives: October 2011

Meryl Dorey to lie about mercury and vaccinations in perth.

Meryl Dorey head of the deceptively named and widely discredited Australian Vaccination Network is returning to Perth for another round of lies and bullshit. The Anti-vaccination group is going to hold a seminar called “VACCINATION:MAKING THE RIGHT CHOICE” however Meryl Dorey intends to repeat the same lies an discredited information that she has become infamous for. Including the claim that vaccines contain Mercury.

It’s true that some vaccines use thimerosal as a preservative, but the mercury found in thimerosal is ethylmercury which is safely discharged from the human body it is a very safe preservative, which is why it’s use in the first place. However mercury can also be bound as a methyl and methylmercury is dangerous to humans. People often get these two different types of mercury confused. However no vaccines or thimerosal has ever contained methylmercury. This is simply scaremongering from the anti-vaccination groups. What’s more childhood vaccines do not contain thimerosal so not even the safe, organic ethylmercury is used in childhood vaccines.

There simply is no mercury in childhood vaccines. It’s a lie to scare parents our of vaccinating their children. Don’t just take my word for it; ask your doctor.

This is just one of many lies that Meryl Dorey intends to present as fact to perents tomorrow in Floreat. Along with her normal tirade of government and corporate conspiracies, and of course those evil skeptics.

If you’re in Perth you can attend her seminar but be warned it’s very difficult to sit through. There’s nothing worse than seeing someone lie to parents and provide them with misinformation that puts the whole community at risk.

A much better source of information for people attending the AVN seminar is at Vaccination Facts a website setup by Kylie Sturgess in response to the AVNs misinformation seminars held in Perth.

Dead people can be recycled too.

What’s the difference between the local cemetery and the local landfill. The answer is not much, both get filled with a waste product that is no longer wanted and could pose a health risk to the community if not safely disposed of into the ground.

Of course when a human body is disposed of in a cemetery it’s normally lowered gently into the ground rather than tipped into the hole as is done with the regular landfill. But the purpose of the cemetery is the same as the landfill, while the landfill takes care of general waste the cemetery takes care of human bodies that essentially become a waste product once the conscious person has ceased to exist. The family of the deceased often waste little time in disposing of the now vacant body into one of these cemetery landfill; an indication that they no longer want or need it.

But like many other things that our society disposes of the human body can be recycled. They say “one mans trash is another mans treasure” and vital organs that may survive the death of their owner can be used to save someone’s life. Instead of having a system where people have to opt-in to donate organs we should allow our doctors to use the organs of any deceased person to save lives. It’s allot better than disposing of them along with the rest of the body, and there are many people on waiting lists for organs that may save their lives.

With demand outstripping supply like this it should be considered a crime against humanity that we dispose of so many human bodies instead of recycling organs from them. Just because the family have no use for the body and wish to dispose of it as waste it doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t have a use for the Heart, Lung, Kidney etc.

You can see by the graphs above that our organ donor rate is pitifully low. I am confident that we could abolish the organ waiting lists if we got rid of the opt-in and let doctors do their job. A landfill is no place for valuable organs. If your loved one dies and you refuse to donate their organs if asked then you are an asshole; and I do not respect your decision to dump good organs into the ground.

Source of Graphs: Australia and New Zealand Organ Registry 2011 Report

Why I can't take #occupywallstreet seriously.

After last weeks debunking of an #occupywallstreet promotional image/poster I have been able to gain a little more of a glimpse into the Occupy Wall Street movement. One of the problems with this protest is that it does not appear to have any defined goals, so it’s hard to know exactly what these protesters want. However a list of demands has now appeared but there is a disclaimed on the page stating that there is “No official list of demands”. So how can any take these people seriously if there are no demands? Is the Occupy Wall Street movement just protesting for the sake of protesting?

Let’s look at some of these demands for the proclaimed ‘unofficial’ list. Without an official one this is all there is.

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr. –Source

Bring the US minimum wage to $20 an hour. Currently the US minimum wage is $7.25 so that is a 176% wage increase. That is equivalent of raising Australian minimum wage to $42.80 an hour. Now you don’t need an economist to realise that doubling the income of a large percentage of people is going to cause huge problems. Why should a person working a minimum wage job suddenly be paid more than double their normal wage. How would employers cope with such a labour cost increase? My bet is Replacing workers with automation, reducing number of staff for same work load, more stringent employee selection (only employ those who are worth the higher wage).

Such a downright silly demand will at best cost allot of jobs, clearly this demand was never though out. Not that I expect much thinking from protesters without a cause. Otherwise they might think “Why the fuck am I protesting?”.

Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period. –Source

This is almost laughable, if it wasn’t so stupid. Suggesting that people should be able to borrow as much money as they like an never give it back is just ludicrous. Would you be willing to lend people money and have them never pay you back? In fact if you think debt forgiveness is a good idea you can lend me money via PayPal to Dan@danscomp.net or mail cash to PO Box 72 Northbridge, Western Australia, 6865, AU and I promise not to pay you back. After all that’s what debt forgiveness is all about.

Between these insane demands, the conspiracy theorists and the apparent lack of central purpose I cannot take these Wall Street protesters seriously. They seem to consist of idealistic hippies, paranoid tin-foil hatters and people with too much free time on their hands.

The conspiracy theorist. Apparently I’m a Christian.

At the end of the day Occupy Wall Street will achieve nothing. It’s one thing to bitch and protest, but getting something done actually requires effort. Protesting is a good way to get media attention, but you need to have a message you can present. It’s not enough to just protest and that’s all this appears to be. A protest for the sake of protesting. Yes, some people are bringing their own messages to the protest but the lack of consistency and consensus about what that message is ultimately means that the protesters are wasting time and effort that might be used elsewhere. Encouraging people to become involved in the political process is a good start. The United States is still a democracy, despite what the conspiracy theorists claim. Protest to popularise the idea (you need to have a message), and political action for the change.

#occupywallstreet lies, deception and photoshop.

For the past 10 days protesters have been camping in lower Manhattan in a protest called Occupy Wall Street. Twitter, Facebook and Blogs all over the internet have been alive with talk of the protest.

This is the image that has been doing the rounds of Facebook. See the streets jam packed with protesters. A protest that big certainly is impressive, but are there really that many protesters?

#occupywallstreet promotional image.

No, the photo is a fake, it was made by Jason Wettstein in a dishonest attempt to make the protest seem bigger and more significant than it really is. The forgery came to light when Travis Roy of the Granite State Skeptics posted it to the Skeptalk mailing list questioning it’s authenticity. Within 41 minutes fellow skeptic Tim Parkinson exposed the photo as a fake.

Forgery exposed by skeptic Tim Parkinson.

By forging this image Jason Wettstein has undermined his own cause. His image proclaims “DON’T TRUST THE MEDIA THEY LIE” so it is with great irony that I can now say. Don’t trust Jason Wettstein he lies.

I hate hypocrites; especially dishonest hypocrites. Checkout Tim Parkinsons blog about this. (especially the comments section.)