My response to Meryl Dorey
Dr Rachael Dunlop has exhorted all her Twitter followers to contact the Northern Star and respond to this piece by Meryl Dorey:
- And I see she’s been banned by the AVN for her troubles. Oh Noes!!
Anyway, I just dashed off a quick email, and thought I’d put it up here:
Dear Sir/Madam,
Meryl Dorey’s opinion piece in the Northern Star today manages to neatly obscure the real cause for concern that led to her being honoured with the Australian Skeptics’ Bent Spoon Award.
She cites an increasing incidence of pertussis despite an overall increase in the rate of vaccination in Australia as evidence that vaccination is an ineffective strategy. She appears either unaware or unconcerned that this overall average obscures significant pockets of reduced vaccination: to levels below that required for herd immunity (for example in the Northern Rivers, where she and her group campaign).
She also praises herself and the AVN for pressuring the Government to remove mercury from vaccines. To be clear: it was not in fact mercury that was in vaccines; it was thiomersal. This contains mercury – much as table salt contains chlorine. I do not know whether or not AVN truly have the ‘credit’ for Australia removing thiomersal from vaccines, but that is unimportant in any case; the concerns about thiomersal were – and remain -the result of a belief it was implicated in autism: a belief that has been demonstrated clearly and repeatedly to be false.
Dorey and her group campaign against arguably the most successful public health measure in history, responsible for greatly reduced levels of death and disability. They do this based on belief and pseudoscience, not on the basis of any measurable reality.
Yours faithfully,
Dr. Raphael Fraser
Sydney, Australia
Please all do get involved. Maybe you and I can get ourselves banned too 
Popularity: 7% [?]
The criteria listed by Meryl, ” … small, volunteer-run, un-funded … “, are irrelevant to the publicity and attention drawn to the comments made by the AVN.
Any comments concerning a national health policy, and especially one which affects children, is going to gain substantial attention and downstream promotion by news media.