Dan's Journal of Skepticism

On the 9th of May the Australian Vaccination Network sent out an email to every political party they could find demanding to know what the parties stance on vaccination was. Unsurprisingly the majority of responses have been in favour of vaccination and public health.

As expected the Australian Vaccination Network is not happy about this and has sent out a newsletter calling upon their members to vote on parties that oppose public health measures.

The Federal election will be taking place in just over a month and we here at the AVN have been busy polling the political parties to find out what their views are on that basic of human rights

-AVN Newsletter, 1st June 2016

Contrary to the ideology of anti-vaccination campaigners, there is to right to threaten and endanger the community, nor is there a right to neglect the health of a child. Anti-vaxxers like to cry “Human rights, Human rights.” but only for people who embrace their ideology. Anyone else is to be suppressed and silenced.

Some of the answers we’ve received (like those from the Sex Party and the Pirate Party) could have been written by people who are members of the hate group, Stop the AVN. In fact, the Sex Party got help from members of that organisation before sending us their response.

And the larger parties – the Greens and the Liberals – who are responsible for this unconstitutional policy, never even bothered to respond which is incredibly arrogant.

-AVN Newsletter, 1st June 2016

Meryl Dorey wonders why the Greens do not respond to her when she has this abuse to hurl at their leader.

B52 is a common pseudonym of Meryl Dorey that she used to hurl abuse at people between 2010 and 2014 when she accidentally revealed herself to be the notorious B52 Troll by signing off as B52 under her personal Facebook account back in 2014.

Dorey accidentally reveals herself to be B52 in 2014

This is the first time B52 has been seen since 2014 so I assume she has forgotten that this pseudonym is compromised.

Considering the Greens and Liberals spearheaded the No Jab, No Pay legislation I think their position on the matter is quite clear. The Australian Labor Party has also made it’s views on public health clear.

We believe the science is clear – vaccines save lives.

According to a recent World Health Organisation report, before widespread vaccination in 1980, measles caused an estimated 2.6 million deaths each year. In 2013, the number of deaths from measles had fallen to around 145,000.

Vaccines mean less disease and considerably fewer deaths.

Higher rates of vaccination are vital for infant children who are too young to be vaccinated, as well as the elderly and sick that may be too frail to be vaccinated. They are also vital to people for whom a vaccine may not produce a strong immune response.

That is why it is so important we maintain and encourage high rates of immunisation across the country. –Australian Labor Party

With support from the two major parties and the Greens it is almost a certainty that the next Federal Government will uphold the current legislation. No matter what the anti-vaccination movement tries to pull.

The AVN will not advise you how you should vote – that is not within the terms of our Code of Ethics.

…..

We are asking you to vote 1-12 below the line – giving preference to candidates representing any of the following 7 parties who have made this pledge. With your help, we can get 5-6 people elected to the Senate who will speak for us. -AVN Newsletter, 1st June 2016

To start off with a “Code of Ethics” is in no way compatible with anti-vaccination. That’s like training your cat to do differential equations, it just isn’t going to work. However true to form Dorey proceeds to tell her readers how to vote, right after acknowledging that it would be unethical to do so.

The Parties that the AVN are asking there members to vote for are all minor parties.

Health Australia Party
Consumer Rights and No Tolls Party
Greg Beattie, Independent (former AVN President, running for the Senate in QLD) – Website to be advised
Rise Up Australia Party
21st Century Australia
Non-Custodial Parents Party
Voteflux.org

So long as no mainstream parties are willing to oppose public health Anti-vaccination campaigners will continue to be limited in the damage they can cause. The public is not stupid and the overwhelming majority of people recognise the value of modern medicine.

Of all the responses to Meryl Dorey, most of which she posts on the AVNs blog. By far the best and most comprehensive comes from the Australian Sex Party.

The Australian Sex Party was contacted by notorious anti-vaccination campaigner and science-denier Meryl Dorey, asking for our position on “both No Jab, No Pay/No Play legislation and the right of Australian citizens to make free and informed health choices for their families without financial penalty or discrimination.” Here is our response:

Dear Ms Dorey,

I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Australian Sex Party, to your request for information on our position on vaccination issues. I’d like to request that my response be published in full, and unedited, on both your website and social media. Please do share it widely.

The Australian Sex Party believes in individual liberty, and the freedom to make choices regarding your own life. With this freedom, however, comes responsibility. As members of our community, and beneficiaries of the privileges provided by the community, we have an obligation to ensure that exercising our freedom does not put others at undue risk.

No Jab, No Pay. The Federal Government’s No Jab, No Pay measures aim to reduce the spread of preventable disease¹. Knowingly and willingly putting one’s own child and others at risk of dangerous and preventable diseases is irresponsible, reckless, and antisocial. The Australian Sex Party does not believe that those who choose not to participate in our collective enterprise of disease prevention should be rewarded with tax benefits or rebates. In Australia, parents are not forced to vaccinate their children. Those who contribute to the broader community’s health by vaccinating their children (or have genuine medical exemptions), receive a contribution from the community in the form of the FTB-A end-of-year supplement, Child Care Benefit, and Child Care Rebate payments. The Australian Sex Party supports this public health measure.

No Jab, No Play. Victoria’s No Jab, No Play laws were introduced to protect public health². The Australian Sex Party believes that if a parent wishes to use our community’s early childhood education and care services, they should be expected to play their part in protecting the community from preventable diseases. Those who choose to endanger the health of others by not vaccinating their children should not be welcome to do so in an early childhood care setting.

The right of Australian citizens to make free and informed health choices for their families without financial penalty or discrimination. The Australian Sex Party supports the right of Australian citizens (and others) to make free and informed health choices for their families. The Party does not, however, believe that going against the best scientific information available, represents an informed health choice. The anti-vaccination movement encourages parents to “do your own research”, however doing “research” by reading web-pages is not comparable to actual research done by scientists who work hard to protect us all from dangerous and debilitating disease. The Australian Sex Party rejects the insinuation that expecting all parents to participate in preventing diseases is a form of discrimination.

The safety and efficacy of vaccination is not an area of scientific controversy³. The claim that governments and scientists are all conspiring to mislead us for some nefarious purpose is absurd and irresponsible. The dangers of complications from vaccines are much lower than the dangers posed by childhood diseases such as measles⁴. The claims of the anti-vaccination movement have been thoroughly debunked⁵. Choosing not to vaccinate your children amounts to medical neglect; this is a serious ethical issue. Whilst it can be tempting to imagine that we parents have access to some special kind of knowledge that somehow eludes the scientific community, it’s just not so. We at the Australian Sex Party would like to encourage parents who are questioning what’s right for their children, to follow the advice of the scientific and medical communities, rather than charlatans and conspiracy theorists.

Regards,

Darren Austin
Senior Policy Advisor
Australian Sex Party
sexparty.org.au
References
1. http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubp/rp/BudgetReview201516/Vaccination

2. https://www2.health.vic.gov.au/public-health/immunisation/vaccine-safety-myths-facts

3. http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/no-jab-no-pay/

4. https://www2.health.vic.gov.au/public-health/immunisation/vaccination-children/no-jab-no-play/frequently-asked-questions

5. https://violentmetaphors.com/2014/03/25/parents-you-are-being-lied-to/

I think it’s fair to say the anti-vaccination campaigners have few friends in politics. They might be incredibly loud, abusive and crash public health seminars.  But in reality they are a very small minority of the population and enjoy little support from the general public. They think they can look big if they make enough noise but all I see are desperate fringe dwellers.

One of the great things about Australian politics is the ability for people to organise and form political parties provided you can get at least 500 members and pay a $500 application fee to the Australian Electoral Commission. This is a pretty low barrier to entry but it means minority groups and interests are able to have a larger voice which is overall a good thing. However when a minority group, such as Anti-vaccination campaigners have an interests that are against the public interest this low barrier to entry quickly becomes a double edged sword.

There is a new political party in Australia deceptively calling itself the Health Australia Party (HAP) a conspiracy driven pseudo-science based party that unsurprisingly has the support of many well known anti-vaccination campaigners.

The HAP believes that natural medicine should be placed on an equal footing with pharmaceutical medicine.  Australians should be able to choose between pharmaceutical medicine practitioners and natural medicine practitioners without being disadvantaged financially for their choice. –Health Australia Party policies.

By “equal footing” I have to assume they mean “Special Privilege” whereby they pretend that crooks and charlatans have the same validity as science based medicine. Because they are already on “equal footing” in that anyone proposing a medical treatment must have it subjected to scientific scrutiny. In all areas of science there are claims that can be proven and claims that cannot be proven. If a claim of cure cannot be proven and supported by evidence then it is not science and should not be treated as such.

Medicine or “pharmaceutical medicine” is supported by evidence and is subject to rigorous scrutiny and regulation. So called “natural” medicine on the other hand is unregulated, doesn’t hold up to scrutiny and is not supported by evidence. Therefore the Health Australia Party is proposing to grant undeserved recognition to pseudo-science at the cost of public health.

The HAP recognises with great concern the attempts by well-resourced and influential lobby groups to stifle academic freedom within Australian universities and research institutes. The HAP will expose and oppose such attempts to prevent researchers from undertaking and publishing potentially controversial research, and will support the heads of institutions who stand up against individuals and groups who oppose academic freedom. –Health Australia Party policies.

The University of Wollongong has received extensive criticism for awarding a PhD to an Anti-Vaxxer who submitted a paper full of unfounded conspiracies. The poor academic standards of Wollongong rightly deserve criticism as universities are supposed to uphold a higher standard of academic integrity, especially when awarding the highest academic degree.

However anti-vaxxers consider anyone who challenges their ideology to be part of a big brother conspiracy to silence them. Opposed to the more rational explanation that their claims simply don’t stand up to scrutiny.

The HAP recognises that our country suffers when medical research is manipulated to produce results which serve vested interests, but which is then used by politicians to form the basis of public health decisions. The HAP will expose deliberate corruption in medical research using the considerable body of evidence which already exists in professional journals and elsewhere, and will support the recruitment of researchers with proven independence and integrity to undertake needed medical research which will then be published, whatever the findings. –Health Australia Party policies.

More unfounded conspiracies. If the data from your research isn’t proving you hypothesis it’s likely that your hypothesis is wrong. That’s not to say corruption doesn’t exist. For example Andrew Wakefield poster-boy for the anti-vaccination movement was outed as a fraud a few years ago and stripped of his medical license.

If Health Australia Party has a “considerable body of evidence” for corruption within the medical community then I’m sure the media and health regulators would like to see it.

The HAP believes that until nuclear energy can be produced with complete safety and until nuclear waste can be rendered completely harmless then Australia should not use nuclear energy, and instead focus on safe renewable alternatives. –Health Australia Party policies.

At last something that I do agree on and in fact I have some good news for The HAP. Nuclear Energy is completely safe and the by product is reusable fuel. I have already covered the topic of Nuclear Energy and why environmentalists need to embrace it.

The more I look into the Health Australia Party the more obvious their pseudo-science, conspiracy driven narrative becomes. Perhaps the most damming of all is the response they sent to the Australian Vaccination Network following Meryl Doreys email.

HAP understands that the overwhelming majority of the huge amount of submissions both Federally, and in Victoria, were against this legislation, and that many of these came from well-respected legal, healthcare, and social justice organisations.

HAP echoes their views and opposes this legislation. It is predicated upon several demonstrably false assumptions, and flies in the face of what would be considered best practice in almost any other Western nation except the USA. –Health Australia Party responce to AVN

Not actually true. The majority of the response No Jab, No Play was supportive it was just the highly vocal anti-vaccination campaigners doing the only thing they know how to do, which was to bombard the Federal Government with phone calls in order to jam the phone lines, a crime in Australia.

So given The Health Australia Party’s position of valuing pseudo-science over medical science, and use of big brother conspiracy theories to excuse their lack of evidence. This party would be more aptly named “The Pseudo-science Party” as it is clear that the they have adopted a deceptive names just as the Australian Vaccination Network did in order to confuse people into thinking they are pro-health when in fact their pseudo-science is more likely to harm public health.

The Australian Vaccination Network is starting to ramp up its political campaign in time for the election. Their tactic involves contacting political parties to find out who cares the least about public health so they can direct their members to vote in a way that’s likely to cause the most harm to the public.

Meryl Dorey their Head Cretin sent out the following:

To whom it may concern:

I am writing on behalf of the Australian Vaccination-skeptics Network, Inc. (AVN) and our tens of thousands of members and followers across Australia to ask for your assistance in helping us distribute information that may be helpful in their decision-making process regarding the up-coming July, 2016 election.

Well it wouldn’t be Dorey of the AVN if it wasn’t full of lies. The AVN is known to of had 234 members back in 2014 so the likelihood of them having “Tens of Thousands of members” is laughable, but lying is all anti-vaxxers know how to do.

There is a Facebook page called “Fans of the AVN” which currently has 11,137 likes, but likes are not members. Also the AVN officially disowned the page (rather than appologise) after they likened vaccination to rape. They have even informed NSW Fair Trading that they do not operate the page in question (Facebook ID: avn.living.wisdom). Therefore either Meryl Dorey is lying now when she claims to have “Tens of Thousands of members”, or she lied to government regulators back in 2014 in order to avoid complying with a court mandated directive.

Of course anyone who has been following this saga knows that she is infact lying both times. The AVN has always owned its official Facebook page, and the organisation almost certainly does not have more than a few hundred members at most. But while we are on the topic of Facebook likes I should point out that Stop the Australian Vaccination Network has 16,854 likes. So if Meryl Dorey wants to play this numbers game and have Facebook likes used as a metric to leverage political pressure I will happily write to these parties myself and inform them that more people are looking the shut anti-vaxxers down than be friends with them. Also this isn’t just limited to likes on Facebook since nearly the entire scientific (especially medical) community as well as the general public would also like the see the AVN go away.

Dorey continues:

Our members and supporters believe that a parent must always have the final say in health and other parenting issues when it comes to their own children. This single issue will be a game-changer for many of them.

To help them make an informed choice on July 2nd, could you please forward by return email your written policy in regards to both No Jab, No Pay / No Play legislation and the right of Australian citizens to make free and informed health choices for their families without financial penalty or discrimination.

If your party has no written policy on these issues, please forward a statement from the party leadership that speaks to your position on these vital issues.

No parent should be permitted to neglect their child’s health by refusing to vaccinate them. I’ve stated previously that you cannot refuse to feed children so why the fuck should anyone be allowed to refuse to vaccinate them?

Back in 2013 Civil Liberties Australia highlighted that vaccination is the Right of the Child, not the right of the parent. I wholeheartedly agree that “Vaccination is a Human Rights Issue” and it is the right of every member of the community that diseases such as whooping cough, polio, measles, Haemophilus influenzae, and rubella never be allowed to return.

Since the election is less than 2 months away, we would appreciate your response no later than close of business on Monday, May 23rd.

Your responses will be posted on our website at www.avn.org.au and will be shared widely on social media as well. Should you not respond, that will be noted too.

I’m not sure what the “Should you not respond, that will be noted too.” I assume this means target practice for the trolls, thugs and online stalkers that seem to make up a disturbing percentage of the anti-vaccination movement in Australia.

It’s worth noting that the anti-vaccination political party the AVN once backed seems to have been forgotten. I still remember the time it lost its domain name.