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The AVN were never really bothered by the HCCC public warning issued about them. Meryl refused to post it cause “she didn’t agree with it” and was happy to call the HCCC corrupt and slur their reputation far and wide. What the AVN really wanted from this Supreme Court Case was to be granted certiorari. .

What’s that you say? Put simply, this means the AVN wanted the Supreme Court to declare the actions of the charity watchdog, the Office of Liquor Gaming and Racing (OLGR) in revoking their charity license, illegal.

To assert this, the AVN focused on the OLGR’s reliance on the HCCC public warning arguing that if it was deemed not valid, then it followed that the OLGR actions could be lifted. This indeed was the crux of their case.

Here’s an excerpt from the judgement

- 21 – The plaintiff submitted that its rights were not only directly affected, but also altered, by the HCCC’s decision to issue the Public Warning…It argued that the decision directly exposed it to a new hazard of an adverse exercise of public power (having its fundraising capacity revoked).

But the judge was not convinced

“However, the plaintiff could not point to any provision in the Charitable Fundraising Act 1991 that made the Public Warning a mandatory relevant consideration in the Minister’s decision whether to revoke the authority.”

As a result of this, the judge made the following decision

“Accordingly there is no basis on which I could find that the Minister for Gaming is legally obliged to take into account the Public Warning. For these reasons, certiorari does not lie.”

This is the important bit. Whilst it is true that the OLGR took the HCCC warning into account when making the decision, as the judge pointed out, this was not a legal obligation and the loss of their charity license was for reasons much more serious.

An audit of the AVN by the OLGR found several serious breaches of the Charitable Trusts Act 1993 which have now been referred to the Department of Justice and Attorney General and are awaiting decisions. In revoking the AVN’s charity licence the OLGR cited three reasons; that monies had been raised for specific purposes then spent elsewhere, that monies had not been administered properly, and it was in the public interest as the AVN were dishonest in denying an anti-vaccine agenda. The final point cited the HCCC warning in support, but was concerned with the contents of the AVN website.

Meanwhile in Meryl-land

“…the OLGR had found several errors with the network’s bookkeeping system and some minor problems with the way in which fundraising income was accounted for… errors which any small, volunteer-run organisation can and does make…”

With respect to the AVN website the OLGR said,

“The Organisation’s website is misleading in that it may lead people making donations to believe that they are donating to a cause which promotes vaccination whereas the Organisation adopts an anti-vaccination position.”

(Indeed, the judge even enquired as to why the AVN were so “coy” with respect to their anti-vaccine agenda. Meryl can deny it until she’s blue in the face, but nobody is falling for that one anymore).

Then

“When requested by the HCCC to publish a disclaimer on its website the Organisation failed to do so.”

So as you can see, the OLGR did not rely solely on the HCCC warning when making their decision and as the judge stated, neither did they have any legal obligation to do so.

So as far as I can see, nothing has changed as far as the OLGR issues. The AVN are still in the shit in this regard, and I can’t see any reason why the OLGR would back down now.

The HCCC warning constituted but a small part in support of their actions, indeed as much as being cited as supporting evidence for their website being misleading. But this is by no means the only evidence that the AVN website is full to the brim with anti-vaccine canards. Just ask anyone who knows anything about the anti-vaccine movement (pick me! pick me!).

Now Meryl is not known for her comprehension skills, but even I was a little surprised by her interpretation of what I have just explained to you above. From her victory e-newsletter.

“This (HCCC) warning led to the OLGR revoking our charity authority to fundraise though they were under no legal obligation to do so.

No Meryl. It’s a bit more complicated than that.

Which brings me to another point. Meryl is now claiming that the decision yesterday found the 2 complaints used by the HCCC to investigate the AVN to be invalid. This is absolutely not the case.

The court found that the HCCC investigated the complaints under Section 7 of the Health Care Complaints Act 1993 which allows for an individual to complain about an unregistered health practitioner or service. This was the technicality I was referring to earlier.

The judge asserted that the Ken McLeod complaint needed to provide evidence of a person being directly influenced about their vaccination decision as a direct result of the AVN’s website (the subject of the investigation by the HCCC) in the form of one person who showed they made a decision based on the AVN website. And if not Section 7 did not apply.

From the judgement

“..all I needed to be satisfied of was that at least one person had read the plaintiff’s website and that its contents had affected that person’s decision whether to vaccinate, or have another person  (usually a child) vaccinated. It was not necessary that any particular person be identified. ”

The HCCC lawyers could not provide this evidence, thus the investigation was declared illegal and the public health warning quashed. No judgement was made about the validity of the complaints, nor the information contained within them. The judgement was purely based on the HCCC investigating the complaints under the wrong section of the legislation.

Likewise, there was no discussion about the validity of the HCCC’s conclusions that the AVN’s information is misleading and purely antivax. This still stands. The judge’s ruling was purely based on the HCCC using the wrong section of the legislation to investigate the AVN.

But over in Meryl land;

“I am just so pleased that the Supreme Court agreed with our original contention that the HCCC had no jurisdiction to investigate us based on the complaints which were not valid complaints according to the HCC Act (sic).”

Wrong again. And there’s more on the HCCC having jurisdiction over the AVN below.

So the AVN got off on a technicality. Damn nation you might shout, how can this happen? What the hell is wrong with the HCCC?

Well let me tell you some good things that came out of this case.

When the HCCC first received these complaints they were unsure how to deal with them because in the classical sense, the AVN were not a health care provider. They didn’t openly offer medical advice (but they did do it), they didn’t take blood or massage you, so they fell between the gaps of the HCCC legislation.

Indeed, in the early days, Meryl asserted everywhere she went that the HCCC did not have jurisdiction over the AVN because she was not a health care provider. She said it. Everywhere.

But by suing the HCCC, she has performed an epic foot bullet. She gone done and got herself legally classified as a health care service.

Here’s what the judgement says:

“Vaccination is a matter about health. The provision of information about vaccination is a health education service. It is common ground, and I accept, that the plaintiff is a “health service provider” within the meaning of s 4 of the Act since it provides “health education services”.

What does this mean? Well it means we have precedent and she now opens herself up to a whole lot more litigation as she is now officially a health service provider.

Whoops.

So prior this case, when she had been running around saying the HCCC had no jurisdiction over her? Maybe they didn’t but they absolutely and officially and technically do now.

So whilst the AVN are screaming victory from the rooftops, some of us have bothered to read the judgement and what we see is something of a hollow victory for the AVN. I certainly can’t see any evidence for the OLGR loosening their grip on the AVN’s precious charity license and this is ultimately what the AVN want back.

In closing, there are a couple of other interesting things about this case which are worth mentioning. During the lengthy discussions about whether there was any evidence for the AVN directly influencing someone to not vaccinate, the judge made the following statement

“…the health service has not been shown to “affect the clinical management or care of an individual client”. Although it might have that tendency, and although the plaintiff hopes to have that effect, I do not consider this to be sufficient to establish that it has had that effect.”

Note; “..the plaintiff hopes to have that effect..” In other words, there was no evidence that the 20 years of research and constant campaigning and thousands of Facebook posts and tweets are having any effect on peoples’ decisions about vaccinating. Jeez. That’s a kick in the face to the AVN isn’t it?

And finally, all the reports on this story have referred to the AVN as anti-vaccine, despite Meryl continuing to deny her group is. This has made made one of Meryl’s mates pretty annoyed and she wrote about it this morning (h/t Dave the Happy Singer)

From the AVN Y! Group, from Fran Sheffield of Homeopathy Plus!

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“I think almost everyone, supporters and non-supporters, believe the AVN is antivaccine in spite of its protests to the contrary.

How can they do otherwise when 99.9% of information about vaccines released by the AVN is anti or reveals their problems? When there is not explanation why this imbalance exists?

It is possible to be BOTH anti-vaccine and pro-choice but when the anti-vaccine label is denied in the face of evidence to the contrary, it makes us look dishonest – something the judge hinted at with her ‘coy’ statement? It also places our pro-choice position in the back seat, out of people’s minds.

As far as public opinion goes, I don’t think the anti-vaccine position is the problem – they can cope with that.

The problem is that most people, even supporters in secret, now believe the AVN is dishonest and this has caused the AVN more harm than anything else. This is what will take a long time to get over, not any perceived anti-vaccine stance which they can respect even it they don’t agree.

Do we have a blind spot?

If the AVN wants to be perceived as being a truthful organisation then it has to proudly accept the anti-vaccine label or do something that explains (repeatedly) why most of the information it provides about vaccines and vaccine promoters is negative.
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Watch out Meryl. Even your mates are seeing through you now.

PS If you are a lawyer and spot any obvious errors in my interpretation of the judgement, please leave a comment below

Please see this recent update from Reasonable Hank where Meryl claims the OLGR based their actions entirely on the HCCC warning. I have no words.

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A few days ago, I received an email via the organisers of a talk I’m giving in Canberra in a few weeks’ time. I’ve decided to publish it here with comments correcting the person’s accusations as I was frankly gobsmacked at their lack of ability to research some very simple claims.

Backgound: The email is from Judy Wilyman who is a PhD student who is being supervised at the University of Wollongong (UoW) in NSW by Dr Prof Brian Martin (yes, THAT Brian Martin).

Ms Wilyman began her PhD at UoW in 2007, then in 2008-2010 she transferred supervision to Murdoch University, WA, where she was supervised by Dr Peter Dingle (who no longer works there, and yes, THAT Peter Dingle). She transferred back to UoW in 2011, to Dr Prof Martin again, where she is completing a project entitled “A critical analysis of the Australian government’s rationale for its vaccination policy”.

Phew, so far that’s a long PhD!

It seems she objects to me giving a talk to the Canberra Skeptics on February 15th. I won’t copy paste the entire email, for clarity I’m going to address each claim separately, but there is a copy in full here.

Firstly, she got the date wrong (15.1.12). I’m speaking on 15.2.12.

“…she is regularly observed putting misinformation about vaccination on websites such as ‘The Skeptics Book of Pooh Pooh.”

I like to think I only publish accurate information, so I always check references and sources to the best of my ability before publishing. It would have made it easier for me if Ms Wilyman indicated which information on my site was wrong, because I can’t find any.

Note that she says “regularly” which leads me to think she doesn’t agree with much of what I post here. She also mentions other websites, and perhaps she means the piece I wrote some months back for Mamamia. There was a healthy debate about the info I posted there, mostly from people who don’t agree with vaccination full stop, but the information was very well received. I would have thought if it was an example of my “regular misinformation”, I would have been thoroughly corrected by the health professionals who applauded me for the piece and passed it on to their patients and colleagues.

“She recently received a letter from Murdoch University asking her to remove a poster (presented by myself at the National Health Promotion Conference in Perth in 2009)which she had inaccurately presented on this website”.

Not exactly. I received an email following a very polite phone call from IP lawyer Madeleen Rousseau from Freehills in WA on January 20th, 2012. To say she sounded exasperated on the phone is an understatement. You see it appears she has been given the job of chasing down where Ms Wilyman has misused the Murdoch logo on said poster and without permission. Her job is to try to remove all traces of it from the Internet.

I removed the poster from the above link, sent a confirmation email to Ms Rousseau, she responded with a thank you, that was it. Notice she says in her correspondence, “Murdoch…has spent considerable time and energy in having the poster removed from various (anti vaccination) websites and cannot allow the poster to be used in any format on any website”. She was polite, I co-operated, there were no stand-over lawyer tactics or threatening letters.

As for Judy’s allegation that  I had somehow “..inaccurately presented (the poster) on this website..” I’m not entirely sure what she means by this. On the contrary, it appears that Judy has misused the Murdoch logo which is why their IP lawyers are trawling the Internet and attempting to erase the poster from history.

Next she says I was asked to remove derogatory comments about academics. There was no such request in the email I have published in full above. I don’t ever recall being asked this. This is a fabrication as far as I can tell.

Next she says I left derogatory comments about her on my site, incorrectly referring to her as anti-vaccine. I did indeed call her anti-vaccine and for good reason. Let’s see why.

Ms Wilyman has pieces published on well recognised anti-vaccine sites including Whale.to, SaneVax, the AVN blog (whose website was called anti-vaccine by the HCCC), she has given lectures with Meryl Dorey, President of the AVN in Western Australia.

In June 2010, she wrote a letter to the West Australian newspaper which contained the usual anti-vaccine canards and scaremongering we have come to expect from her mates over at the AVN. It was covered in detail over at Second Sight who reported on what she wrote:
“…childhood vaccination schedule is “not based on science”. Vaccines contain toxins. Vaccines are not monitored by doctors. Vaccines are a “known cause of allergies, anaphylaxis and autoimmune diseases”. “There is no proof for the theory of herd immunity”. “Infectious diseases declined by 1950 in Australia due to improvements in sanitation, hygiene and nutrition.”

Even by this short account (and there is much more I don’t have time to cover), Ms Wilyman is anti-vaccine. See Dave The Happy Singer here and here for further information.

Ms Wilyman, you can claim you’re not anti-vaccine all you like, but your writings contain well known anti-vaccine canards and are published on high profile anti-vaccine websites. If you can show me evidence to the contrary I will look at it and remove my classification of you as anti-vaccine if I am satisfied you have changed your stance. At the moment, I’m not.

Update: Whilst Judy Wilyman claims not to be anti-vaccine, this recording suggests otherwise.

Next “and her derogatory remarks about the ABC’s policies are offensive to the community who would like an academic debate on this important topic”.

The community wants a debate on the ABC’s policies? That’s a first to me.

“She is openly spreading misinformation about the vaccination topic and yet your organization has invited her to speak about vaccination and the misinformation on Dr. Google?”

Below is the description of my talk sent to the organisers

Firstly, she hasn’t cited the apparent misinformation I am spreading and secondly my talk is about health information on the Internet with vaccination as an example. This does not mean the entire talk will be about vaccination. And is she saying that conspiracies and chemtrails are not misinformation? Curious.

Ms Wilyman is a PhD student, approximately 4/5 years into her project. She seems to know my blog/website quite well. As a research student one would have thought she would be able to do one of two things: 1) click the “About/contact” button on my website – I get plenty of email via this method; 2) Google my email address as the organisers of the talk did to forward me her email. Perhaps she didn’t contact me directly because she was attempting to tarnish my reputation with the organisers hoping they would cancel my talk? Pure speculation of course…

No, you’re not an “independent researcher”, you’re a PhD student. And why do I need to contact you to find out your views about vaccines? They’re pasted everywhere on the internet on lots of anti-vax sites.

“Please could you also inform me of the qualifications that Rachael Dunlop has to speak on the topic of vaccination as my understanding is that her specialization is heart research”.

My qualifications are easy to find Ms Wilyman. And if you are, as you claim an independent researcher you could have done some, you know research, and found out that my specialty is not heart disease.

Are you really too lazy to look further than the name of my employer (The Heart Research Institute)? This shows your complete lack of research ability. You see there are lots of research groups under the roof of HRI. Some work directly in heart disease, some work on diabetes, some work on nutrition. Me? I’m a cell biologist who happens to work on ageing and MND. You could have found that it you went to PubMed. Or even Google (chortle). Or even my Twitter bio. Fail.

As for my qualifications? You know she just might have me on this one. Given that the theme of my talk is Dr Google I can think on someone who is better qualified than me to talk about this issue, Wilyman’s mate Meryl Dorey. She’s had more than 20 years of education on Dr Google.

But there’s one thing that I have that Ms Dorey doesn’t have and that’s the ability to critically analyse information, whether it be a scientific study or a news article or a website.

You see, I have a PhD already (sorry to rub it in Judy) and more than 6 years of research experience which includes writing, reviewing and critically analysing scientific information. So my BS meter is pretty finely tuned. Thus, I can confidently say I’m more than qualified to sift between fact and fiction on the Internet. And given that I’ve been studying the tactics of the anti-vax movement for more than 3 years, this is a bonus. One might say, a desirable but not essential qualification.

Finally. “I will copy this across to the community as it is important that the public is aware of the credibility of the information they are receiving”.

And I will also copy this critique of your lack of ability to do your research across the community.

You’re welcome and thanks for trying.
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UPDATE: It seems Ms Wilyman has been alerting a lot of people to my talk. This just in

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Another update: Judy Wilyman has again written to Canberra Skeptics and the email has been published on Meryl Dorey’s blog. You can see the text in full on Reasonable Hank’s blog here. Contains the text that because I’m on the editorial board of a CAM journal I’m somehow a Big Pharma Shill. It’s worth a look. You will LOL.

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But this morning I had reason to leap out of bed at the ungodly hour of 05:30 to hit the computer and report on some very good news.

Our government has gone done something good and given that this doesn’t happen very often, I reckon it’s worthy of a pre-dawn blog post.

The news, which was brought to my attention by Fuzztwin on Twitter, reports on changes to the current childhood immunisation schedule to include three new vaccines and increase the incentives for parents who complete the schedule, effective 2013.

From http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/inject-children-or-lose-money/story-fn7x8me2-1226205382138

Chickenpox or varicella which as not previously been covered by the schedule (and hence was an out-of-pocket expense for parents wanting to vaccinate against chickenpox) will now be included.

Also new is vaccinations for meningococcal C and pneumococcal.

The new schedule brings the number of infectious diseases covered by the schedule to twelve.

Importantly, reports indicate that the number of shots kids will be required to get will actually be reduced however, since there will be new combination vaccines used.

According to a report in The Herald Sun a new combination vaccine will cover measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox in one shot and will be administered at 18 months replacing the previous MMR given at 4 years. The number of visits will increase however, owing to the new scheduled shot at 18 months.

There are also changes to the incentive scheme for parents and this is where it gets interesting (well, for nerds of legislation like me).

Under the current maternity immunisation allowance scheme introduced in 1997, parents receive two one-off payments totalling $258 if they complete the vaccination schedule. This will be scrapped under the new system and replaced with three payments of $726 each, paid at one, three and five years. If kids are not fully vaccinated, then the $2100 will be withheld. (This is part of the current family tax benefit part A end-of-year supplement so it’s not an entirely new benefit).

From http://www.smh.com.au/national/tax-threat-to-parents-who-dont-have-their-children-immunised-20111124-1nwwx.html

Health Minister Nicola Roxon said: “We know that immunisation is fundamental to a child’s lifelong health and that’s why we want to make sure that children are immunised at the right time.

“We want all Australian kids to grow up healthy, and immunisation is essential to that.”

What is not mentioned in any of the news stories is whether this effects the current options for conscientious objectors. Under the current system, you can still get the maternity immunisation allowance even if you don’t vaccinate, if you identify as a conscientious objector (CO). Excerpt from the Centrelink website which administers the payment:

a recognised immunisation provider (e.g. your doctor) signs a letter or form saying that:

• they have told you about the benefits and risks of immunising your child and you have a conscientious objection to immunising your child (your provider should complete a Health Insurance Commission Immu-12 form),

• immunising your child with a particular vaccine is medically contraindicated (your provider should use the Health Insurance Commission Immu-11 form),

• the child has a natural immunity to the disease, or

• the vaccine is not available,

• you or your partner are a member of the Church of Christ, Scientist and you have a letter from an official of the Church advising that you are a practising member of the Church.

This is certainly going to be the bit the anti-vaxers are interested in. The news stories appeared overnight (at least one was published at 12:00) so we have yet to see a reaction from Meryl and her buddies. But you can expect some major *head asplosions* on this one, guaranteed. Particularly since Meryl had previously claimed she has some sort of influence when it comes to vaccination policy. It seems she might have missed this one.

This is not the only piece of good news in this story either. Reports also detail a new pertussis awareness campaign in the form of mail-outs to warn parents about the dangers of the current epidemic and advise on ways to protect their kids.

This is a direct response to campaigning by the McCaffery family who lost their baby Dana in 2009 at 4 weeks of age in the grips of a pertussis epidemic. The family was never warned about the risks of pertussis or that they needed, as parents and carers, to get boosters, since the effectiveness of the vaccines wanes over time.

From the Age:

Ms Roxon said the aim of the whooping cough campaign was to raise awareness, particularly among parents planning pregnancies and others to be aware of the dangers to infants and the need to have vaccinations at two months, four months and six months after birth.
.

But the vaccinations do not provide lifelong protection from whooping cough and children should have booster shots at age four and then during teenage years, Ms Roxon said.

.

”Whooping cough is not just a childhood disease, as adolescents and adults can account for half the cases in the community.”

Overall, this is a step in the right direction by the Australian Government and I applaud Nicola Roxon for (finally) taking action. The introduction of the chickenpox vaccine is also a welcome addition to the schedule, since it costs as much to get as the current maternity immunisation allowance (~$200) making the incentive seem moot.

It’s still early in Australia, and since this story only broke overnight, I wait with interest for the response of the anti-vaxers. I’ve also searched, but to no avail, for a government media release, as I’m keen to find out if any changes have been made to the CO conditions.

One suspects they will remain in place, at least in some form, since they are necessary for kids with genuine medical reasons for not vaccinating, but given that the maternity immunisation allowance scheme is to be scrapped, it appears they will at least need to be migrated, if not re-drafted.

I await with interest.

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Update: the government statement about changes can be found here

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I get emails. And recently I was reminded of one I got back in June which somehow slipped from my consciousness. With all the negative attention Nimrod has been receiving of late the response from some authorities has been, “we can’t respond unless someone reports him.” Indeed, last month, chair of the Chiropractic Board of Australia urged people to make a formal complaint against Mr Weiner after Australian Doctor posted audio of his two-hour public lecture on the dangers of vaccination.

So I went back through my emails and found a complaint from Dr John Cunningham, forwarded to me and submitted to AHPRA (then passed onto the Chiropractic Council of NSW) on April 4th, 2011. Dr Cunningham received the following response on May 31st, 2011 (my emphasis).

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Really? So it’s okay for a registered health professional to disseminate false, misleading and dangerous information under the guises of “it’s my opinion”? But what if the evidence says the opposite, which in this case it most certainly does.

If you take a look at the references Weiner uses in the 4 pages of anti-vax rhetoric posted on his website (which was the subject of Cunningham’s complaint), and his 2-hr long lecture on “18 reasons to not vaccinate” (pdf of references here) you’ll find a grab-bag of some of the most prominent anti-vaxers. He cites all my favourite loons including the AVN and their previous publication “Informed Choice”, Not-a-doctor Andrew Wakefield, Viera “parsnip box” Scheibner, Joseph Mercola, Whale.to and Vaccine Information Service Australia or VISA (amongst others).

There’s a glass and a half of crazy right there.

Weiner also drags out the some of the old favourite canards of the antivaxers. See the following paragraph as an example of vaccines cause everything;

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“Other conditions linked to vaccination include pervasive developmental disorder (PDD), Asperger’s syndrome, eczema, encephalitis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, convulsions, seizures, anaphylaxis, thrombocytopenia, optic neuritis, ocular palsies, retinitis, deafness, otitis media, ulcerative colitis, bowel disease, Crohn’s disease, headaches, dizziness, hearing and vision problems, arthritis, arthralgia, learning disorders, chronic fatigue, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and more.”

–

He doesn’t provide a reference for these claims.

And as usual, Weiner beats the dead horse of vaccines = autism

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“After years of denying a link between vaccination and autism, on November 9, 2007 the US government in Court of Federal Claims admitted that vaccines can cause autism.”

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The reference Weiner cites for this claim is David Kirby writing for the Huffington Post in 2008. Kirby is also the author of “Evidence of Harm” a book detailing the personal stories of parents of children who have autism who went onto establish the advocacy group SafeMinds. So there may be a conflict of interest in what Kirby has to say.

There also *may* have been some advances on our understanding of the evidence against a link between vaccines and autism – which have occurred since 2008, both in the courts and in the lab.

But despite the fact that Weiner claims to base his information on the latest science, he uses outdated references, claims Wakefield’s work is “sound” and uses scary language that has no basis in science.

There’s more…

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Robert Mendelsohn, MD writes: “My suspicion, which is shared by others in my profession, is that the nearly 10,000 SIDS deaths that occur in the U.S. each year are related to one or more of the vaccines that are routinely given to children.”

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My suspicion? So you don’t have any evidence for that then? The reference for this statement is simply Mendelsohn. Ibid:250 which makes no sense to me. In any case, Mendelsohn is well known for his “unusual ideas”.

For example, he has opposed water fluoridation, immunization, coronary bypass surgery, licensing of nutritionists, and screening examinations to detect breast cancer. He has a listing on Quackwatch and whale.to.

The spurious claims about vax go on for 4 pages and at last check they were still there. (I’m actually surprised it is still up given the criticism Weiner has been under of late. Perhaps his cognitive dissonance is so strong that he thinks he is right. Sadly, I suspect this is the case).

But whether Weiner thinks he is right and that vaccines are bad “in his opinion” is irrelevant when it comes to his role a health care professional, especially when dealing with kids. Remember he’s a pediatric chiropractor dealing with kids as young as one-day-old.

And science is not formed via opinion, it’s based on evidence and there is no evidence for just about everything he claims (even chiropractic subluxations actually).

The fact that the CCNSW thinks it’s okay says a lot about their responsible approach to chiros under their jurisdiction and patients.

This story was covered in Australian Doctor today and rest assured, we have not seen the last of the Weiner files. More to come very soon.

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It all came to a head last week when his anti-vaccine “rants” were covered by our national media when The Australian newspaper and Radio National both took him to task over his public anti-vaccine lectures. The stories came after Australian Doctor published the audio of his talk online, against his wishes but in what they say was in the public interest.

Why is it in the public interest? Because Weiner gives talks to parents, pregnant mothers and young mums and effectively scares them into not vaccinating. Also, he’s the Vice President of the Chiropractors Association of Australia (CAA) NSW branch of whom Australian Doctor have previously accused of “fundamentalist ideologies” and “pseudoscientific dogma”. He’s also on the board of the Australian Spinal Research Foundation where he contributes content for the newsletter. So effectively, he’s a high profile chiropractor.

But leading up to the bad news week for Weiner was a heck of a lot of work behind the scenes. I thought it might be interesting to track the chronology of events which resulted in him getting pwned all over the media. Hopefully, it will give readers an understanding of the value of grass roots scepticism and how a little bit of investigation, like asking questions at the Mind Body Wallet Festival or spending two hours in a chiropractors clinic can result in exposing dangerous quackery. And anti-vaccine quackery is particularly dangerous.

Let’s begin.

November 14th, 2010. My mate Richard Saunders came across this flyer at the Newtown Festival last year where Newtown Community Chiropractic had a stall. He twitpicked it and we decided to go along (Richard didn’t end up going – we can’t remember why).

November 25th, 2010. Meryl Dorey sends out warning to chiropractors as part of her newsletter

December 4th, 2010. I attended the 2 hr free seminar with a friend and blogged it here the same day. Or watch it on the YouTube (thanks to the kind soul who made it).

March 8th 2011. A journalist from Australian Doctor contacted me as part of researching a feature on CAM published as Exploring the Alternatives (I eventually wrote a guest editorial). He was curious about chiropractors and their views on vaccination and knew I had been to listen to Weiner. He booked to go along to the seminar in March. He recorded the seminar, identified himself as from Australian Doctor and asked Weiner if he could post it on-line. Weiner declined.

(Note: according to the Australian Doctor article – which is paywalled – Weiner claims he’s done five years of a medical degree. I was unable to confirm this).

Literature handed out at Nimrod Weiner's December 2010 seminar

To provide you with some context for what happened next, chiropractors were copping it around this time for treating babies.

March 18th 2011. The first stories about a chiropractic clinic at a Victorian University treating babies and kids appears in national newspaper The Australian. Spearheaded by Loretta Marron, academics and health professionals including Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst petition the government to close the clinic down.

March 28th 2011. The British medical journal covers the story

April 27th 2011. Australian Doctor are the first to link chiropractors with the anti-vaccine group the AVN revealing that 130 of professional members of the AVN are chiropractors. This includes clinics run by the CAA president Simon Floreani, the association’s treasurer Taylor Vagg and board member Anthony Croke.

“Mr Floreani….insisted AVN was a valuable resource for patients: “For me it’s about critical thinking. You are only going to get one biased side of the debate from the medical profession. Can you trust the claims that the vaccines are safe when one-fifth of all deaths are related to medical error?

“The AVN has links and resources to an enormous amount of information that you don’t find elsewhere. As a registered health professional, your role is to help patients. I don’t think [of the AVN] as anti-vaccination. It is more pro-choice.”

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May 28th 2011. More bad publicity for baby-cracking chiros, where Marron says, “I would not have written a submission if the chiropractors were treating adults for lower back pain,” she says. “Pediatric chiropractic is a form of faith healing and it should be in theology, not health science.”

July 2nd 2011. A feature story on chiros treating kids appears in The Australian with another “pro-choice” chiropractor, Warren Sipser. (note: this the same one who commented in an article which Meryl Dorey went onto refer to as “vaccination is akin to rape with full penetration.”

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The decision sparked a reaction from the anti-immunisation movement in Australia, with one sceptic, paediatric chiropractor Dr Warren Sipser, saying the judgment was “dangerous” and some children could have severe reactions.

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18 reasons to not vaccinate. Literature from December 2010 seminar

July 11th 2011. The CAA sent a media alert out to their members about damage control, directing their members to send all media enquiries to a PR firm.

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“We wish to alert you to an article that may be appearing in this weekend’s edition of The Weekend Australian…..As always, we continue to make every effort to mitigate negative press that at times is being played out in the media, as well as our attempts to generate positive media..”

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July 23rd, 2011. A bunch of concerned citizens and some members of SAVN attended Weiner’s talk. They were “…criticised by the audience for doing such dreadful things as pointing out errors made by the speaker.”

July 24th 2011. I received a call from a journo who was investigating how widespread anti-vaccine beliefs were amongst chiropractors. The story was published a few days later.

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“Of the (AVN) network’s 198 professional members, 128 are registered chiropractors. Many are members of the professional body the Chiropractor’s Association of Australia, or CAA.”

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August 8th 2011. After obtaining legal advice, Australian Doctor posts the audio of Weiner’s talk online with commentary, even though Weiner did not agree to it. They state; “… we believe it is in the public interest, particularly given Mr Weiner’s profile within the chiropractic profession.”

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We…reported on accusations against the Chiropractors Association of Australia – the profession’s peak body – that it has turned its back on science to peddle “fundamentalist ideologies” and “pseudoscientific dogma”. The CAA has strenuously denied the claims.

On the issue of vaccination, it says the profession’s role is to educate the public on health issues – the risks and benefits of vaccinations is just one of those issues. So here we offer a talk on vaccinations given to members of the public by Nimrod Weiner…..vice-president of the NSW Chiropractors Association of Australia and ..on the board of the Australia Spinal Research Foundation, a self-styled scientific research body.

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August 15th 2011. Another journo, again from The Australian newspaper emailed to ask me about the Australian Doctor audio, since he knew I had blogged about the talk. A story entitled “Call to probe anti-vax rant” was published on August 17th (seen by approximately 128,985 people) where Weiner’s comments were described as “outrageous” by the Australian Medical Association who called on the CAA to intervene.

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Mr Weiner declined to comment, referring questions from The Australian to a PR company, which said the Chiropractors Association of Australia (NSW) had no position on vaccination and “any comments that Nimrod Weiner may have made would be his private opinions, not those of the association”.

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August 18th 2011. The following day, the story appeared on Radio National on the back of Australian Doctor audio and The Australian newspaper article.

August 19th 2011. Another critical article appeared in the press

Interestingly, shortly after these national stories broke, a link on Weiner’s website to his vaccine talks was showing a 404 but it could be found in Google cache. Today, as I was researching to write this article I again found the page, but it appears an attempt to hide it has been made, as indicated by the “_offline” text at the end of the url. You can still get the page though if you do some digging, but it has been moved thus breaking all previous links.

I guess the question now is will Weiner continue to give these seminars. According to this screenshot he has previously charged for the seminars.

UPDATE: Another critical article appeared in Australian Doctor today, where the Chiropractic Board of Australia is calling on people to complain about Weiner;

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The chair of the chiropractic board is urging people to make a formal complaint about high-profile chiropractor Nimrod Weiner over his public seminar on the alleged dangers of vaccines.

Phillip Donato stressed that chiropractors had a duty under the profession’s code of conduct to provide up-to-date, evidence-based information. He said: “It appeared at the very least he is misinformed and may be providing misleading information to the public. We would encourage notifications so that we can have a look at the case properly.” Australian Doctor understands that notifications have already been made.

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Indeed a complaint made to AHPRA then passed onto the Chiropractic Council of NSW was dismissed in June this year. The complainant flagged anti-vaccination material on Weiner’s website as being in breach of section 10.2 of the Code of Conduct for Chiropractors, which states; “good practice involves: c) understanding the principles of immunisation against communicable diseases.”

The complaint was dismissed on the grounds that “The Council considered that Dr Weiner was entitled to put his opinion forward and that this did was not in breach of the Code.”

I don’t think we’ve seen the end of this saga. I’ll be sure to keep you posted.

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First he got struck off the medical register in the UK, then his favourite paper was retracted from the Lancet, then the anti-vaxers favourite paper got withdrawn (which they still cite BTW*), then he was quietly removed from his job at Thoughtful House. Following his move to Texas in 2010, the phrase going around the internets was he “lost his career and his country”. Not only that, he also lost all respect from the scientific community and the chance to ever publish in the mainstream scientific literature ever again.

If you reap what you sow, then it appears Wakefield’s chickens have come home to roost – and these are not small chickens either. Imagine Brian Deer in a chicken costume, sitting aloft Wakefield’s tower, watching every move with beady eyes (well that was what I imagined anyway). Brian Deer of course being the “UK investigative journalist who exposed Wakefield’s Lancet work for not just “bad science” but for deliberate fraud. Deer has been on Wakefield’s case for some seven years now and was the first guy to blow the whistle on the now infamous paper which kicked-off the worldwide vaccines-cause-autism scare.

I’ve been following this case for a long time, so I knew the background well, but even I was shocked when I read the three part series published by the BMJ last week.

Deer provides evidence that Wakefield fabricated the clinical data for the 12 kids to make it appear they had suffered neurological disorders soon after they received their MMR. Wakefield had a business plan to set-up a company making kits to detect ulcerative colitis which was projected to make 72.5 million pounds a year. Wakefield received almost $AUD700,000 (plus expenses) from lawyers assembling a class action suit against the manufacturers of the MMR. The same lawyers had paid 50,000 pounds to fund the Lancet study. Wakefield had a patent for a single measles vaccine, which was projected to make him a very wealthy man once he had discredited the triple version.

And none of this was revealed to the journal before he published the paper. This constitutes a huge conflict of interest.

Of course, the reaction from the anti-vaxers has been predictable. Even Wakefield himself referred to Deer as hit-man sent by “them”. On Anderson Cooper in the US, Wakefield claimed it was an effort by the medical community to quash valid research into the safety of vaccines.

Which is interesting. Really interesting.

Because what was so revealing to me – out of all the revelations in the papers from the BMJ – was the fact that Wakefield was offered the chance to reproduce the results from the Lancet paper.

From “How the vaccine crisis was meant to make money“

“…UCL volunteered to support his work. It offered him continuation on the staff, or a year’s paid absence, to test his MMR theories. He was promised help for a study of 150 children (to try to replicate his Lancet claims from just 12) and, in return for withdrawing from the January London conference, he would be given the intellectual property free.

“Good scientific practice,” the provost’s letter stressed, “now demands that you and others seek to confirm or refute robustly, reliably, and above all reproducibly, the possible causal relationships between MMR vaccination and autism/“autistic enterocolitis”/inflammatory bowel disease that you have postulated.”

Then this:

“At the time, Wakefield agreed. Then his employer waited. It prompted, waited longer, and prompted again. “Three months have elapsed,” Llewellyn-Smith wrote to him in March 2000, asking for “a progress report on the study proposed” and “not to make any public statements” in the meantime.

But the study did not happen. The 1998 Lancet research had been a sham. Trying to replicate it with greater numbers would have been hopeless.

So Wakefield’s claims of “trying to quash valid vaccine research” are lies. He was given the opportunity to reproduce his work – he never did. And it all becomes clear why. A complex lie based on 12 children when amplified in 150, just becomes a bigger lie.

But it didn’t stop Wakefield from spiralling further down the rabbit hole. I hoped he might have retreated into a corner somewhere, maybe to slap out some more fictional books with forwards by our favourite Mommy warrior, Jenny McCarthy. But given that the man has an ego the size of a buffet in Vegas, sadly, this has not happened.

Instead, yesterday it was revealed on Twitter by @sthmnookin and @doctorblogs that he’s back stomping the pavements trying to recruit patients for his next favourite woo autism therapy. This time, instead of parents recruited by a law firm, he’s targeting the Somalian population of Minnesota who reportedly have a higher than usual occurrence of autism.

On January 18th it was announced that the CDC, the NIH and Autism Speaks National would begin a study to investigate this anomoly among Somali-Americans in Minneapolis. The Minnesota Department of Health released a report in 2009 confirming higher rates of Somali-American kids participating in special education classes for children with autism in Minneapolis. But it’s still unclear whether these data are real or artificially inflated because Somali parents prefer to enroll their children in school-based programs, as opposed to seeking help from autism specialists in the medical community. You can read more about it here.

So Wakefield, given that he is incapable of understanding he is a danger to children, has jumped on the bandwagon, sticking his fraudulent nose where it doesn’t belong and addressing a group of parents at a local restaurant in an effort to recruit patients for his own study.

This screen cap was published on Twitter by @doctorblogs and retweeted by @sethmnookin

So essentially Wakefield wants to use the Somali kids as more guinea pigs – as he did in his Lancet study – with the unproven and potentially dangerous therapy of hyperbaric chamber treatment for autism. According to the newspaper clipping, many parents have already signed up. And why wouldn’t they. There is no cure for autism, we don’t even know yet what combination of factors cause it. So of course desperate and vulnerable parents are only willing to agree to participate, even if it potentially puts their kids’ health at risk and in the knowledge that Wakefield is a fraud.

How much more harm can Wakefield do? Sadly, it seems a lot.

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Click to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of the Lancet’s investigations.

*when a paper is withdrawn or retracted it can be for a number of reasons, including the work has been published elsewhere, something fundamentally wrong with the data has been detected or the data is deemed to be fraudulent. Only under exceptional circumstances will a paper be retracted or withdrawn. When it happens, it means you can no longer refer to it or “cite” it – it has essentially been scratched from the scientific record (even if it is cached on InfoWarriors).

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Hello friends! long time no bloggy-blog etc. Apologies, but there was this small thing called #TAMOz. Dunno if you’ve heard of it, but it completely took up my life for the last six months so everything else had to take a back seat. I apologise, I hope you’ll forgive me, etc etc.

Let’s move on.

So now I’m back in investigative sceptic mode, I will tell you what I did on this fine Saturday afternoon. I attended a seminar from Pediatric Chiropractor, Nimrod Weiner, at Newtown Community Chiropractic entitled Vaccinations: Make an Informed Decision. Sounds like a loaded title doesn’t it? And it was, as you’re about to find out.

To set the scene, the audience consisted of about 20 people, mostly women (several pregnant) and assorted couples with very young babies (< 2 years old) gurgling in the background. Then there was me and my mate Frode (I don’t think he is pregnant).

Nimrod started by saying he was going to provide us with both sides of the story to vaccination. He acknowledged that vaccination is an emotive issue, but he asked that we do not let our emotions get in the way. He was happy for dissenting views to be aired and he would respect people for their views.

He also said (and I think I recall this correctly) that he had been called anti-vaccination after giving some of his lectures, but that he was no such thing. I settled a little lower in my seat when I heard this.

After detailing his qualifications (which include a masters in Chiro with units of peadiatric chiropractic) Nimrod emphasised he would stick to the science about vaccinations in an effort to arm parents with the ability to ask the right questions and weigh up the evidence from both sides. He said he approached the research from a logical and rational point of view and his aim was to “empower parents to make a good decision” (does this sound like someone else we know?).

He was also going to explain to us “how safe the diseases (we vaccinate against) are” and thereby allow us to make “an informed decision based on science”. So far this is sounding pretty anti-vaccine to me. I had so many flags up already it felt like a flag festival (or something) and we were only 5 minutes in.

After a brief explanation of what chiropractic is – chiros keep the nervous system healthy – stressors can “imprint on the nervous system” and cause decay, a healthy body heals itself – Nimrod attempted to explain the immune system to a room full of lay people. He used the rather unusual analogy of “Avatar” (the movie) and the reactions of the female versus male population of the fictional planet to invaders, to describe that Th1 cells are the warriors (they go in fighting without much thought, like the males in “Avatar”) and the Th2 cells maintain a memory and “learn” from the invaders (there were the female characters in “Avatar”).

I guess if you’ve seen Avatar this might work ( I haven’t) , but for me, it was a long-winded and not very effective approach. Further, I don’t think a lay audience needs to know the ins-and-outs of the immune system, especially since he hardly referred to Th1/Th2 later.

Finally we got on to vaccines, however the talk was still peppered with phrases such as “leave out emotions and propaganda”, “respect critical thinking and analysis” but immediately followed with “information about vaccines is laden with propaganda”. Nimrod continued to emphasise that his information is based on current research and science and further, he has spent more than 100 hours on “this topic alone”.

I reckon if you can count the number of hours you have spent on a topic, then you haven’t spent nearly enough. Also, it doesn’t matter if you’ve spent more than 100 hours, if you’ve read the wrong information from the likes of Mercola*, Mike Adams or the AVN, then you’re not going to glean anything based on research and science by the time you finish.

Nimrod then proposed, “no criticisms are allowed (from the audience) without an accompanying suggestion for improvement”. We’ll get to that later.

It was here that I began to tally the number of times he said, or referred to vaccines as “injected into the blood”. Granted, the first time he mentioned it, he did say “straight into the blood or a muscle….”.

But, I ticked off at least 6 mentions of INJECTED INTO THE BLOOD. Anti-vaxers love to do this – it sounds so SCARY and EBIL. He did follow this up with by saying that some vaccines can be inhaled but they are not as effective.

Which is interesting, because his whole explanation about the immune system being like “Avatar” was designed to illustrate that vaccines by-pass the “first line of defence” (being the skin and mucous membranes) therefore can never be as effective as natural infections. Yet vaccines that are inhaled are not very effective? Does not compute.

He also said that injecting a vaccine DIRECTLY INTO THE BLOOD means the immune system can’t respond as effectively. Which made me wonder, what happens when I cut myself and germs get in? Isn’t my immune system able to cope just as well in this instance, compared to when I breathe in a virus or bacteria?

So then we got the old antivax canards:
1) Non-one knows how long vaccines last
2) No guarantee of their effectiveness
3) Antibodies have no role in immunity
4) These diseases are designed to come into our bodies when we are kids
6) Vaccines have never been tested

Nimrod then went onto to talk about lots of pseudoscience, lack of ethics and negligence associated with vaccine manufacturers and government health bodies. Some of his points were quite valid, such as Big Pharma test the vaccines they make hence there is propensity to bias, some government advisors have links to Big Pharma suggesting a conflict of interest, and the TGA doesn’t independently test drugs.

But then he went and undid all his good work by saying something like:

No lot of vaccines have ever been recalled for increased adverse reactions, lots that may have caused harm in children, they have never been taken off the shelf. In the “whole history of the world” this has never happened.

Oh, except in WA with the recent fluvax reactions scare.

So he scares parents into thinking that vaccines batches that may be faulty and cause increased adverse reactions are ever recalled EXCEPT that time when they were.

He also claimed that parents are not told what to expect after a vaccination. I’m pretty sure everyone is told what to expect and even made to wait for at least 15 minutes in case of an immediate adverse event.

He then cited deaths from vaccine preventable diseases in the last decade (cited as sourced from Immunise Australia) and proposed reasons for the cause of death, since vaccine preventable illnesses are not so bad. Really.

He suggested that since vaccination status was unknown, these people may have had other illnesses, they may have been Aboriginal (a population which suffers a greater incidence of disease that the rest of the country), they may have lived in unsanitary conditions and perhaps they were in refugee camps. So in other words, any number of explanations – including they were somehow in squalid refugee camps – could explain their death from vaccine preventable disease. Cause it sure as hell wasn’t the disease.

As we moved onto vaccine ingredients, I felt as if I was reading the AVN’s page or something from Joseph Mercola as he listed all the SCARY CHEMICALS in vaccines.

There was no acknowledgment of the “poison is in the dose”, or that there are 2 types of mercury, the one in some vaccines being much less SCARY. All the usual suspects got a mention including ABORTED HUMAN FOETUS, thimerosal, aluminium, bacteria, formaldehyde, and anti-freeze.

We were also reminded that scientists say that vaccines are safe but what about ASBESTOS AND CIGARETTES AND THALIDIMIDE!!!!1!!eleventy11 – they said they were safe too.

As expected, the old “vaccines cause autism” show boat was rolled out several times. When myself and Frode politely pointed out that Nimrod should probably not be using Wakefield’s Lancet (since retracted) paper as evidence for such – if, as he claims he was basing his research on good science – he insisted that the science was still valid. According to him, Wakefield was only in trouble for 2 things in regards to that paper – he didn’t have ethics for the birthday party blood taking and he paid the parents – otherwise it was solid science. When Frode gently pointed out that you generally have to do more than that to get struck off the medical register, Nimrod said it was political.

During this discussion Nimrod also stated he had read The Lancet paper. I propose he didn’t read it properly, because in his summary he wrote it showed a link between MMR and autism. But The Lancet paper doesn’t address a connection between MMR and autism, this was suggested at a press conference after the paper was published.

When both Frode and I informed him that Wakefield was paid by lawyers to show a link between MMR and autism and had a patent pending on a single measles vaccine, he again claimed to not know anything about this. So he was quite happy to throw mud at Big Pharma for bias, pseudoscience and vested interests, but these same rules do not apply to Wakefield.

In fact, the Wakefield-in-the-room was addressed several times, once by a lady inquiring about the Swedish study (actual it’s Danish) of all children born in Denmark from January 1991 through December 1998 which provided strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism. Nimrod said he had not heard of that study either but he would like to see a copy.

There was more vaccines cause autism to come, with evidence in the form of a American Dental Association video showing a neurone dying in culture when incubated with mercury. The dose of mercury was not specified, how a cell in a dish is relevant to a child’s brain was not discussed, and fortunately for us the video stopped working half way through.

We were then told that vaccines are associated with shaken baby syndrome, SIDS, ADD, asthma, MS, suppress the immune system and “shift the balance for life”. We were told that polio has not been eradicated in many countries, but has simply been renamed (in an attempt to hide the ineffectiveness of the vaccine I presume) by Big Pharma, as flaccid aseptic meningitis or aseptic meningitis. We were also told that one in two people now have a chronic disease, herd immunity doesn’t work, and most childhood illnesses are self limiting, rarely dangerous and have few serious consequences (except the ones that kill you).

Nimrod ended by saying he treats babies as young as one day old and if your baby is sick get it to a pediatric chiropractor for treatment as soon as you can. Thanks, but I’ll go to a real doctor.

So after listening to this propaganda for two hrs and asking a few polite questions here and there, I decided to offer “criticism….with an accompanying suggestion for improvement”.

I asked Nimrod why he didn’t tell us from the very beginning that he was against vaccination. Recall that he told us at the beginning of the lecture that some people come away from his seminars thinking he is anti-vaccine, (he didn’t like me reminding him of this btw, and mumbled something about “not my words”). I suggested that he had not shown anything about the risk/benefit ratio of vaccination – that is, the risk of getting an adverse reaction to a vaccine is tiny compared to the risks associated with the disease. He said he was not anti-vax, but admitted that he would not choose to vaccinate, but it is the choice of the parents. My suggestion for improvement was therefore that he inform people from the very beginning that he is against vaccination.

I’m not anti-vaccination, I just don’t recommend it. Although we were told this was not an anti-vax seminar, this was the literature handed out at the end.

My second criticism was that nowhere in his seminar had he addressed the issue of the seriousness of childhood diseases and that as a pediatric chiropractor, it was irresponsible not to inform a room full of mums holding babies and pregnant women that there is currently an epidemic of pertussis and pertussis kills babies. I suggested to him that he had glossed over the seriousness of this disease (and others) and that whilst he spent a lot of time talking about vaccine reactions, he didn’t even mention that in babies under the age of two years, pertussis can be fatal at the worst, and at the best have complications such as broken ribs, hernias, vomiting after coughing episodes, pneumonia etc. My suggestion for improvement was that when there is an epidemic of a vaccine preventable disease in our community, he might remind parents that they should vaccinate their kids and get their own booster shot to protect theirs and other babies.

My final criticism was he said that vaccines don’t work because I can still get the disease even if I am vaccinated. My suggestion for improvement was that although a vaccine is not a force field, it can significantly reduce the severity of the disease. So kids who have had two or three shots for pertussis can still get the disease, but they have a reduced risk of getting complications and suffering long term effects.

It was at this point that a discussion ensued around the room in which one pregnant lady asked Nimrod if there was a cure for whooping cough. She looked over to me and I shook my head and Nimrod confirmed this. She then asked Nimrod which vaccines were important and which you could skip. As she listed them off, she said one thing that made me pause. She said something like, “Obviously I can’t skip the pertussis vaccine, that disease sounds really bad”.

So maybe we achieved something today.

Yet, sadly, she included chicken pox in her list of “not so bad childhood diseases”. It was on my tongue to remind her of the death of a seven year old from chicken pox recently, but by this stage I was tired and also losing my temper.

For a pediatric chiropractor I couldn’t be more disappointed in Nimrod Weiner. He’s a smart man who has studied extensively, but he sat in a room filled almost exclusively with pregnant women and parents with babies and scared them into not vaccinating. He told them never to get vaccinated if they are pregnant “no matter what they tell you”. He cited studies that have been struck from the literature because they were found to be fraudulent and he defended them when questioned. In the middle of a pertussis epidemic in which at least three babies have died, he told parents that childhood diseases are self limiting and not very harmful.

But worst of all, as we were gathering our stuff and about to leave, someone asked him a question about homeopathic vaccination. He said although he wasn’t a homeopath, he understood it worked like vaccines, in that it had contained small amount of the infectious material, but was safer because it didn’t have the toxic chemicals that vaccines have.

Ironic really, when he had just stood in front of us for two hours, spouting misinformation about vaccines and never once did he say he was not an immunologist or a medical doctor. He gave medical advice to pregnant women and parents for two hours and much of it was wrong.

I guess all we can hope is that Frode and I planted a seed in some people’s minds today. Also thanks to the lady who cited the Danish study (woo hoo!). As for us, We didnt give up on the Wakefield stuff. We didn’t let it go when Nimrod kept saying it was “good science”. He told us he updates his slides every time he gives a talk, to which I suggested next time you do that, remove the Wakefield one.

Who knows if he will. At least he was willing to listen to our criticisms. Unlike some, he didn’t have us ejected from the room as soon as we started to ask questions. But when someone who calls themselves a pediatric chiropractor and says homeopathic vaccination works and “That Lancet Paper” is valid, well it’s time to notify the relevant authorities.

Especially when kids’ lives are at risk.

* To his credit, Nimrod did end by saying he reads Mercola “with a grain of salt” and that his website does have some strange ideas about medicine, but if this is the case why mention him at all?

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Odd that this should happen really, since I often get accused of not reading what the anti-vaxers have to say. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In additional to the tripe on the Facebook pages, the forums, the mailing lists and comments on news articles, I have perused the information pack for conscientious objectors, flicked through Living Wisdom and looky over there >>> a copy of Callous Disregard by Andrew Wakefield.

It’s more than I suspect they do with respect to research. Although, Meryl Dorey says she reads papers about vaccination but apparently comes away with completely different conclusions to the authors, making the exercise rather futile.

Indeed, the recent HCCC investigation concluded that whilst the AVN may cite peer-reviewed research, they quote selectively from it, often in contradiction to the conclusions or findings of the studies themselves.

Ms Dorey explained this discrepancy with the following:

“It is true that oftentimes, our information will contradict the conclusions or summaries of the studies. This is because, as opposed to most doctors and government officials, we actually read the studies and frequently, the summary and conclusion does not agree with the raw data itself…..Many times, that disconnect can be explained by the financial links between the study’s researchers and the companies whose products are being studied. So, whilst the AVN does frequently draw different conclusions to those printed at the end of these articles, it is because our analysis of the data shows that the printed conclusions do not correspond with the raw data. This is not selective reporting – it is accurate reporting.”

Raw data. It doesn’t mean what you think it means Ms Dorey. And the financial links? Oh course, the old shill canard again. When you ‘aint got nothin’ else.. (and you don’t know how to read papers).

The AVN have been in oodles of trouble lately, the most recent being for multiple breaches of copyright associated with selling material on their website without permission. Which is funny, because one of the things I came across in the information in Living Wisdom was their permission to reproduce policy:

“Whilst reproduction and dissemination of the information found in Living Wisdom is actively encouraged (unless otherwise stated), it is expressly forbidden for anyone to reproduce any of this information for the purpose of profit…”

My emphasis.

Which directly contradicts the reason they were recently in strife – for selling other authors’ material on their website, without permission.

An article from the Sydney Morning Herald describes:

“an anti-vaccination group is under fire for allegedly breaching copyright laws by selling newspaper and medical journal articles online without permission from the authors.

The packs, which were selling for up to $128, included home-made books filled with articles photocopied from journals around the world, information on drugs taken from MIMS, the medical guide used by doctors and nurses, and copies of brochures inserted in medication boxes by pharmaceutical companies.

Under the Copyright Act, articles can be copied for personal research or for use by students but cannot be disseminated widely or sold.”

In response, Meryl said she was “unaware she had breached copyright”. This is despite the fact that she is listed as the editor of Living Wisdom and therefore probably wrote the policy. Even if she didn’t, one would think it is part of her job to understand copyright restrictions as the editor of a magazine for more than a decade.

But the duplicity of the AVN is something we have come to know well. This is a recent screen capture from their website.

So it appears Meryl knew about some of these copyright rules “a couple of years ago” at least.

One wonders if the authors contacted by the Sydney Morning Herald decided to take any action against the AVN given some might be owed a nice wad of booty. Based on the AVN’s permission to reproduce policy, they themselves would be joining a queue to recoup any lost funds. So what’s good for the goose is good for the gander right?

Oh wait, except when you’re a bunch of hypocrites.

There are all kinds of crazy versions to choose from on the site, from creationists to physics cranks to my favourite, anti-vaxers. As the site says, “Phun phor the whole phamily!” Go check it out.

The AVN was targeted in the statement in which AMA Vice President, Dr Steve Hambleton said that recent media reports outlining the views of the AVN show that this organisation has drawn the fire of the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC).

“While we all value freedom of speech in our society, groups that promote what the NSW HCCC has described as misleading, inaccurate and deceptive information about immunisation, under the guise of ‘pro-information’ and ‘pro-choice’, are putting Australians at risk of diseases that can be prevented through vaccination” he said.

The AVN have previously been in legal strife with the AMA. Back in 2007 they published an advertisement on mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers in NSW which made some rather spurious claims about the AMA. The ad had been submitted to NSW Doctor magazine but was rejected upon the committee checking the AVN website and “finding out that we only had one medical practitioner listed amongst our Professional Members”.

So the AVN published it on their website, until the AMA’s lawyers got a gander at it. The AVN was forced to remove the ad and publish a retraction in its place which said (in part):

In particular it has been brought to the attention of the Australian Vaccination Network, the the Australian Vaccination Network accepts, that:

1- AMA (NSW) does not obtain any of its funding from pharmaceutical companies;

2- AMA (NSW) has not published any advertisement or advertorial for a pharmaceutical company in the NSW Doctor for a period of at least four years, and at no time has the advertising in NSW Doctor been almost exclusively that of pharmaceutical companies;

3- AMA (NSW) does not actively censor information made available to its members.

The Australian Vaccination Network unreservedly apologises for any offence or embarassment the publication may have caused AMA (NSW), its officers and employees.

Ads being rejected sight unseen by publishers is something the AVN are also familiar with. Remember when Sydney’s Child also rejected an ad from them back in April?

Today’s statement from the AMA is reproduced in full below. There is a link to the AMA story here.

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Misleading claims about vaccination putting Australian lives at risk

2 August 2010 – 2:15pm

Vice President, Dr Steve Hambleton, said today that the AMA is greatly concerned that groups that are promoting discredited theories about immunisation are exposing Australians to the devastating effects of preventable illnesses.

Dr Hambleton said that recent media reports outlining the views of the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) show that this organisation has drawn the fire of the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC).

“It is important for parents to have their children immunised. Immunisation saves lives,” Dr Hambleton said.

“While we all value freedom of speech in our society, groups that promote what the NSW HCCC has described as misleading, inaccurate and deceptive information about immunisation, under the guise of ‘pro-information’ and ‘pro-choice’, are putting Australians at risk of diseases that can be prevented through vaccination.

“We are now almost two generations away from deadly diseases such as tetanus, diphtheria and polio. Our grandparents will still remember how bad it was.

“Parents who choose not to immunise their children need to consider that they are putting not only their own children at risk, but they are also risking other children, with potentially fatal consequences.

“If immunisation rates fell because many parents relied on the efforts of other families to vaccinate their children, under the misapprehension that this would provide sufficient protection to the whole community, there would be new epidemics of old illnesses.

“The last outbreak of measles occurred in a school in an area with low immunisation rates. The outbreak was so severe that it interrupted the educational curriculum.

“The NSW HCCC’s findings and concerns regarding the AVN released last month are consistent with the views of the medical profession.

“It is critical that Governments promote the evidence and benefits of full immunisation and run an ongoing public education program that informs the public about the devastating effects of diseases that can be avoided through vaccination.

“The AMA welcomes the announcement last week that seasonal flu vaccination of young children can now be resumed, and commends the Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer for taking early action to investigate this matter and the latest advice, which means we can maintain confidence in our vaccination program,” Dr Hambleton said.
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Image screen capped from Vaccination Awareness and Information Service