Aussies Fight Back Against Anti-Vaccine Nonsense
August 13th, 2009
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The anti-vaccine movement is nothing new. The US, the UK, Germany, Canada and many other countries all have their own anti-vaccine activists, working to misinform the public and kill people through preventable infectious disease. In the US, we have Jenny McCarthy, who I may remind everyone, is only well known because she showed everyone her who-who in 1993.
In Australia they have the AVN, or “Australian Vaccine Network.” The Australian Vaccine Network claims to be “pro-choice,” as opposed to “anti-vaccine,” as many other organizations do. They also claim to be empowering people by providing information, although their information ranges from one-sided and misleading facts to outright lies. The biggest anti-vaccine assclown in the Australian anti-vaccine movement is Meryl Dorey. Ms. Dorey makes the standard comments, claiming that vaccines cause autism (they don’t) and that they harm the immune system (they actually stimulate antibody production) and that they’re ineffective.
Click here for a video of the news report that got this started.
But recently there has been a major shift in public opinion in Australia, as a series of events have lead to the AVN getting some well deserved bad press...
What touched this off was a story on Australia’s Channel Seven over the tragic death of Dana McCaffery. Dana was only four weeks old when she caught whooping cough, the disease that would ultimately kill her. This disease was almost eliminated in most of the industrial world decades ago but is making a comeback. At such a young age, Dana had not yet received the vaccination that would have saved her life, and thus was counting on the “herd immunity” of the community to keep her safe and healthy.
I really don’t like the term “herd immunity,” but it’s an accurate way of describing how widespread vaccination can prevent illness, even in those who are not vaccinated. In any population, there will be a few individuals who are not immune to a disease through no fault of their own. Some of these individuals are simply too young to have had the vaccine. Others may have immune system diseases like AIDS. Still others may have received an organ transplant or have an auto-immune disease which requires immune suppression drugs. Yet in such cases, their chances of getting a disease is very low as long as the community has a high enough rate of immunization. For a disease like whooping cough to exist at all in such a community, it must be introduced by an outsider, who must transmit it directly to one of the individuals without the immunity. Even if this happens, the disease will not have a chance to get very far, because there are not enough suitable hosts to sustain the pathogens spread.
One could compare the concept to critical mass in a nuclear reaction. Bellow critical mass, one might get an occasional fission and it may even trigger a second, but it will not create a significant propagation of the effect and the reaction will die out rapidly.
So why didn’t herd immunity protect little Dana McCaffery? It seems that in her region of Australia, the level of vaccination has fallen to the point where the disease can take hold. This is not unique to Australia, as whooping cough has made a comeback in the US, along with diseases like measles. Full blown outbreaks of such diseases have occurred in areas that had not seen them in decades.
There is one thing that sets Australia apart from most other countries, however: the report on the death of Dana McCaffery seems to have touched out an appropriate level of outrage and the AVN has been enduring some very very bad publicity…
The report got so much attention that Channel Seven decided to hold a forum on vaccines. Meryl Dorey was spouting off her BS and writing off the deaths of children due to the lack of vaccination. However, she was countered by more rational guests as well. Our friend Richard Saunders (whom I had lunch with just last month) of the Australian Skeptics was there. Indeed, it seems that the Australian Skeptics have taken the bullshit by the horns on this one and are responding by countering these claims and working to improve vaccination rates. They’re joined by numerous medical professionals along with a few good reporters.
Here is a small portion of the broadcast. You can read a full account of it here.
There’s really nothing like a sad story of a dead baby to rally the press and public against the killers, even if they did so by indirect action. But make no mistake, this death was a tragedy and it should stand as an example of what this movement, which cloaks itself in claims of being for the children and against the big bad pharmaceutical companies, is really all about. No other couple should have to live their life in sadness over the childhood that never was, due to a disease that could be prevented.
But it does not end there. Her father posted a heartbreaking account of the death of his daughter on a major skeptic blog in Australia in the hopes of preventing this from happening again. The Australian Skeptics have really taken advantage of the recent momentum on this issue, and I don’t mean “taken advantage” in a bad way. The organization has lead the charge that has the AVN playing defense.
Thanks to the generosity of Australian Businessman Dick Smith, the following advertisement ran in “The Australian,” one of the country’s largest newspapers.
The ad even generated some press of its own. The fact that many of those involved clearly had no interest in pharmaceuticals and are independent from the government makes this all the more helpful. It seems that the amount of negative press to rain down on the AVN has become a deluge. It’s great and very heartening to see such a big shift and to see a country start to wake up about this important issue.
(Note to any Australians: Please send some of that our way, because we need it just as bad!)
Keep up the good fight. Don’t let up on these murdering bastards. Send them back to the state of disrespect and ridicule they deserve. Australia, I salute you!
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 12:52 am and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Good Science, Misc, Obfuscation, Quackery, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 6th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
DV82XL said:
Yes, it does. It shows that vaccination status is not relevant as regards susceptibility to infection.
Boosters are given in accordance with the principle of “If something is useless, more may be better” – or if not better, at least more profitable!
Even the medical literature admits, in a roundabout way, that vaccination theory is a load of horse manure. It refers to a vaccine’s immunogenicity, that is its ability to create antibody levels deemed adequate to provide immunity to a particular disease, but then points out that immunogenicity does not necessarily correlate to protective efficacy. Vaccination theory is quite obviously pseudo-science. But I guess that this doesn’t really matter, because as long as people including doctors are stupid enough to believe that injecting these poisons into the body protects against diseases, this multi-billion dollar organised criminal enterprise will continue to thrive.
Quote Comment
March 6th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
“But I guess that this doesn’t really matter, because as long as people including doctors are stupid enough to believe that injecting these poisons into the body protects against diseases, this multi-billion dollar organised criminal enterprise will continue to thrive.”
How is it that almost all doctors are so stupid? I was under the impression that doctoring took some mental acuity.
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March 6th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Erwin Alber said:
No, an anecdote proves nothing at all. At best it is an observation, in this case an observation of correlation, but that simply does not prove dependence. But even if you were to depend on strict correlation to determine the effectiveness of vaccines, you would find that fewer people get infected with a given pathogen when vaccinated than those that don’t. Thus by your own logic, they work.
You can’t have it both ways.
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March 6th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
The very notion that vaccines are not effective is so loony and out in left field that it’s amazing to me that anyone could actually buy into it. History proves that vaccines are extremely effective.
Polio was once the great feared crippling disease. Sanitation, prevention, quarantine all could reduce the risk a little bit, but no matter how hard they tried, it never truely eliminated the risk. Polio could strike any and was a big fear of parents. Even Franklyn Roosevelt, a member of a rich family who spent his time protected in mansions with maids to change the linens daily could not escape it.
Today, polio does not exist in the first world and it would be all but gone by now if not for the anti-vaxers spreading their lies in third world countries.
Smallpox was once a disease that could never be completely eliminated from society and caused many deaths. Now it’s gone. The disease no longer exists and the virus is only known to exist in two laboratory freezers.
Could anyone be so stupid as to not be aware that smallpox and polio are gone because of vaccination? They were here, killing and crippling. Now, no more.
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March 7th, 2010 at 12:33 am
Well Vaccines are not always effective
Nor are they 100% safe and without danger.
I take Diptheria tetanus and updated my smallpox.
Childhood diseases used to be a right of passage and mothers did not run screaming if a child had measles.
Yes there are always some who die or suffer complications but who ever heard of ADHD before vaccines
We DID NOT have the rampant Autism DESPITE THE HYPE THAT IT IS NOT RELATED
Eventually it will be proven
Just do the math
LOOK UP stats on Autism and when the epidemics began to emerge.
Many famous well respected Drs disagree with vaccination.
Consider who gets the most benefit
the kids or the Drug companies.
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/risk.html
http://www.naturalhealthstrategies.com/ineffectiveness-of-vaccines.html
Swine Flu AKA H1N1
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cdc-vaccines-ineffective-against-swine
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=6262607
Measles
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5497945
http://www1.whdh.com/features/articles/hank/50/
Quote Comment
March 7th, 2010 at 12:46 am
CJ said:
* Pro-disease anti-vaxers want vaccines that are 100% safe. This is never going to happen, as all medicines carry some risk. However, the relative risk of injury from vaccines is significantly lower than the risk of injury from getting the disease naturally. For more information,
see: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/6mishome.htm
* Reduced vaccination rates lead to higher incidents of infection. This has been illustrated in the U.K. following Wakefield’s bogus study, in Germany in 2006 (including two deaths in unvaccinated children –
see: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/2/07-050187/en/index.html
In California see: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm57e222a1.htm
In MN (where an unvaccinated child died from hemophilus influenza type b) – see: http://www.emaxhealth.com/1020/50/28863/minnesota-child-dies-lack-hib-meningitis-vaccination.html.
* Pro-disease anti-vaxers claim that “Big Pharma” makes lots of money from vaccines. If vaccination rates dropped, however, there would be an increase in preventable illnesses, many of which have high rates of complications resulting in hospitalization and expensive treatment.
* The basis of the “MMR vaccine causes autism” argument is a flawed study by Andrew Wakefield, who had several ethics breaches, including failure to disclose financial compensation from a lawyer representing families claiming MMR cause their children’s autism, failure to disclose financial interests in patents for MMR alternatives, failure to include data which contradicted his conclusions, use of contaminated samples to support his conclusions.
* Independent studies trying to replicate Wakefield’s results have come up negative. To date, no well-controlled study has shown a causal link between vaccines and autism.
* Wakefield, on the other hand has been disciplined by the British for his action during this study.
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March 7th, 2010 at 3:00 am
DV82XL said:
Yeah, unfortunately to some that just proves that the British Government is part of the conspiracy!
Seriously though, Wakefield is one sick bastard. I don’t think his proponents have ever addressed why he stuck kids in the spine with a big needle for no apparent reason or why he was collecting blod samples at a birthday party. I mean, nobody seems to be able to deny that he did do those things, and I’d love to hear an explanation for how that’s something a reputable doctor or researcher would ever do. They like to just ignore that it seems.
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March 7th, 2010 at 4:32 am