Proponents of CAM, and opponents of vaccines and allopathic medicine have for a long time been saying that Big Pharma is in cahoots with the Medical-Industrial Complex and has politicians in our pockets. This is of course, they say, why we vaccinate: to destroy children’s immune systems and even infect them with various diseases. We cause cancer by various nefarious means, and withold numerous guaranteed cures, so as to maintain control over the masses.

Of course we deny this vehemently. We are here to serve, we have people’s best interests at heart, we’re actually normal human beings rather than demons made flesh, and so on ….

But I can’t do it any longer. I have to come clean. You need to accept that there is a shadowy cabal of evil (sorry: The Cabal Of Doom) to which doctors, pharmaceutical companies, politicians and so on all belong, that is bent on maintaining control of the masses by way of making – and keeping – you ill. By keeping you ill we make oceans of money, lord it over you, and get to laugh like Vincent Price (he’s actually not dead; we know how to live forever – another thing we keep from the unwashed masses – and we have him in our underground lair teaching new inductees how to do a really good evil laugh).

The thing is, I’m tired. Being evil takes a lot of work. The secret handshakes alone take up half my day. And coming up with new ways to hide the bodies … that is really getting hard. But the worst thing?

The Cabal Of Doom has a damn good recruitment pitch, but their accounts department is total crap. I haven’t yet been paid for my evil works from back in 2006! Seriously, where’s my (3rd) yacht? My hookers and blow? If I don’t start seeing some of this I’m going to consider seriously just not being evil.

In all seriousness, I might actually have to leave the Cabal Of Doom if they don’t start paying me properly. You think the Government is tight? Try getting money out of a shadowy cabal (of Doom) sometime. Honestly, if I weren’t the Antichrist I think I’d just give it up and start trying to help sick people.

Australian Vaccination Network

There’s more information around about the Australian Vaccination Network and Meryl Dorey, their loathsome leader.

Unbelievably, the Australian Vaccination Network‘s website is the first hit if you google “vaccination” on google australia. Happily, although the first result if you search for “australian vaccination network” is to the AVN site, the next few are all very clearly describing the awfulness of that organisation.

Please everybody, do what you can to help keep this link: http://www.hccc.nsw.gov.au/Publications/Media-Releases/PUBLIC-WARNING-/default.aspx as close as possible to the top of search results for the Australian Vaccination Network (I don’t know if me linking the same link to the same text numerous times in one post does anything more than once would, but I’ll give it a rip )

I’ve just listened to this clip from 2UE: an interview with Toni McCaffery, the mother of Dana McCaffery, a 4 week old girl who recently died of pertussis. As if that weren’t bad enough, they were then subject to harrassment from the revolting Australian Vaccination Network.  Have a listen to her description of what they had to deal with on top of their daughter dying:

2UE interview with Toni McCaffery

It’s just absolutely appalling what Dorey and the AVN are prepared to do in order to push their anti-vaccine agenda. Loathsome reptiles.

That link is to a story on the ABC News website about the safety warning issued recently by the Healthcare Complaints Commission against the Australian Vaccination Network – Meryl’s baby. The AVN has however refused to include on its website a notice on their website to the effect that they are anti-vaccination. This was one of the things the HCCC ruled should be displayed prominently, given the clear anti-vaccine misinformation spewed by the AVN.

As to why the AVN has refused to add such a notice, teh Meryl, AVN’s spokeswoman, is quoted as saying:

The only thing that the AVN refuses to put up on the website [is] the Health Care Complaints Commission wants us to state that we are anti-vaccination.

We are not, never have been, anti-vaccination. We are pro-information, pro-choice and a health safety watchdog.

Well. First for a clear, reasoned, dispassionate and logical rebuttal: BULLSHIT!

Ok, so I failed at the reasoned and dispassionate first response. Never mind, I’ll try again …. Fighting … urge … to shout …. Bile … rising ….

Basically, though I hate to send them even a single hit, and had to force myself to click on their site, I would suggest having a look at the AVN site, and specifically the vaccine information they provide. Remember teh Meryl says the AVN is “pro-information” and “pro-choice” – not anti-vaccine. Since they’re pro-information, and not anti-vaccine, they will of course provide all the relevant information about vaccines. Right? So certainly: information about failing, adverse effects and so on; but also information about the benefits, and in fact overwhelming safety of vaccines. Like, perhaps, oh, here at Science-Based Medicine?

Unsurprisingly no: the AVN website has nothing but some anecdotal/spun/exaggerated stories about harm, and nothing about benefit. They in fact seek to paint the deadly diseases so effectively combatted by vaccines as mild and really nothing to worry about.

That isn’t pro-information; it’s pro-the AVN’s beliefs. It’s not pro-choice; it’s pro-the choice the AVN believe you should make.

- And Meryl Dorey, in saying they are not anti-vaccine, either has a spectacularly idiosyncratic understanding of the English language, or is a liar. The AVN website includes only anti-vaccine information, despite the existence of plenty of pro-vaccine evidence that could sit there for “balance”. Ergo, the AVN is anti-vaccine.

Meryl, if you’re going to say your organisation isn’t anti-vaccine, you’re going to have to have at least some pro-vaccine information on your website. Y’know? Teach both sides of the manufacturoversy ‘n’ stuff? Just sayin’ …. I know you’d hide it away and surround it with caveats and disclaimers, and steer your visitors away from it, but to not have it there at all, and yet to say you’re pro-information, and not antivax? I do not think it means what you think it means.

I wish simply that this Christmas Jenny Mcarthy might be visited by the Ghost of Childhood Diseases Past, and come to realise what dreadful harm she is doing by encouraging parents to not vaccinate their children.

Merry Christmas all (except for something something something Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey, and J.B. Handley, and Generation Rescue, and Age of Autism, and so forth; they can have about as merry a christmas as all the parents of children needlessly ill or dead of vaccine-preventable illness are having)