Why would you kick someone when they’re down? Simple – because you don’t want them to get back up again. While that may sound a bit cruel, if the one you’re kicking happens to be fond of spreading disease and death across your country, it’s actually about the most merciful thing you can possibly do for the health and well-being of everyone.

In Australia, the AVN, or Australian Vaccine Network – a major anti-vaccine and anti-science advocacy group got some extremely bad press not long ago when a newborn baby died of whooping cough – a disease that can be kept in check by vaccination and which has been spreading in the country due to low vaccine rates as a result of misinformation.   Recognizing that this was a big blow to the AVN, an impromptu effort was made by skeptics, medical professionals, rational thinkers and others in Australia and elsewhere to keep the pressure on the organization and put them on the defensive when it comes to their lies and the concequences.

A number of forces helped in the PR assault.   The Australian Skeptics lead the charge, while individuals and groups helped by donating the funds to run ads in several Australian papers.  Bloggers and podcasters helped spread the word and when the Australian media ran stories slanted in favor of the AVN, readers and viewers deluged them with complaints. Groups like “STOP AVN” used social networks like Facebook to gain support and members.

Well it seems to have worked.   This ran on the primary blog of the Australian Vaccine network:

AVN to close its doors at the end of this month
A Journey ends…and a new one begins
A Journey ends…and a new one begins

After almost 17 years of running the AVN, it is my bittersweet duty to inform you that within the next 3-4 weeks I will tendering my resignation as President of this great organisation and moving on to the next stage of my own personal development as mother, wife, activist and researcher.

Though this subject is my passion and always will be, I have found that I spend up to 40 hours each week trying to get in enough money to pay the bills and next week’s wages which leaves me no time to actually do what I need to do and what you want me to do – write, research, lobby and support parents who are trying to make informed choices and who are being discriminated against as a result of their vaccination decisions.

I am getting older; my children have missed out on so much so I could run the AVN; and at this stage in my existence, I need to be able to work on this subject and still have a life. Without a large injection of capital behind me, I simply cannot continue.

It has been an indescribable pleasure to have been involved with the AVN, to have gotten to know so many of you personally and over the phone or internet and to have participated in a chapter of Australian history that has seen the rights of parents upheld and the consciousness of an entire generation regarding vaccination and health raised. The AVN has played no small role in both those events so you should all feel very proud of your involvement.

This has been a bumpy road we have travelled since early 1994 – one filled with potholes, traps, landslips and washed-out bridges – but for every detour we hit, there were an equal number of times where a corner would be turned and the whole world right to the horizon was just laid out there for all to see. These golden moments will stay with me for the rest of my time on this earth.

I thank you for travelling this road with me; for helping to ease the journey wherever you could and for being such wonderful companions along the way.

The AVN’s Future

I am hoping that someone reading this now will feel compelled or called to take on this position – if you have the passion, you will know it. If you feel that this is something you would like to do or would like more information about what is involved, please let me know and we can have a good chat about it.

Alternatively, if a benefactor or series of benefactors come forward to establish a fund that would guarantee the AVN’s existence for at least the next 2-3 years, or if donations were to be come in during the next week that would give us the same financial sustainability, then I would be willing to continue in my role for the foreseeable future.

Well, the message here seems to be clear: having spent the past fifteen years with little direct opposition to their rehtoric, the AVN suddenly found itself unable to deal with actually being called to task for what they stand for. Now their only hope for survival is their plea (a very tacky one I may add) for some rich benefactor to step forward and give them a handout to keep lying. I’d advise them not to ask Bill Gates. He just pledged to help fund vaccination programs to the tune of up to ten billion dollars over the next several years.

If nothing else, this should demonstrate that a concerted, grass roots effort, made up primarily of relatively small time groups and individuals can actually turn the heat up enough to make an organization like this croak. I’d like to think I played at least some little part in this by running a story or two about them and encouraging readers to call ABC over their misleading reporting. Of course, everyone who called a news outlet over this, singed a petition or just left a comment on a news story or bulletin board deserves a little credit for being part of what became an all out assault of bad PR and legitimate questions that crushed this organization and will likely save many lives.

Of course, the Australian Skeptics and STOP AVN deserve special praise for their work. Now lets see what we can do about similar groups in the US, Europe and elsewhere!

---

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 12:03 am and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Good Science, 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.

---

View blog reactions