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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.
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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.

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”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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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.

Dr Ken Harvey, a lecturer at Latrobe University School of Public Health, who authored the complaint (read the full complaint as a pdf here), objected to claims on the website that “homeopathic immunisation is effective against poliomyelitis, chicken pox, meningococcal disease, hepatitis (all types), Japanese encephalitis, Hib, influenza, measles, pneumococcal disease, smallpox, typhoid, cholera, typhus, whooping cough, rubella, mumps, diptheria, malaria, tetanus, yellow fever, dysentery and many other epidemic diseases”.

The websites, classified as advertisements for the purposes of the complaint, also claimed that “recent research conducted at Swinburne University by Australian homeopath, Dr Isaac Golden confirmed that homeoprophylaxis provides the same degree, or better protection, than vaccines with none of their side effects or complications.”

About influenza, the websites state that the homeopathic preparation, “Anas Barbariae relieves the intensity and shortens the duration of flu symptoms better than anti-virals…..without the side effects” and “symptoms are sometimes removed in a few hours”.

In reference to the claims about the positive results of Isaac Golden, Dr Harvey noted these claims are directly contradicted by the thesis from where they are sourced. Golden’s thesis contains the statement; “the effectiveness of the homeopathic immunisation programme could not be established with statistical certainty given the small sample size..”. In spite of this, and in lieu of providing further evidence,  the complainant stated (in part) that the thesis had “indeed reached a positive conclusion with a high degree of confidence”.

The findings from The Complaints Resolution Panel stated that although the complainant cited references for homeoprophylaxis, they “did not provide complete copies of the papers cited.” Further, the material on the websites was deemed “misleading”, “unverified” and “abused the trust or exploited the lack of knowledge of consumers” (my emphasis).

The Panel found that none of the material supplied by the advertiser supported claims made on the websites, and therefore the information was misleading and “likely to arouse unwarranted expectations” from consumers. The Panel ruled for Homeopathy Plus! and www.d-n-h.org to remove the misleading material and issue a retraction on their websites which is to remain for 90 days. The advertiser has 14 days to comply with the ruling.

Claims about efficacy of homeopathic immunisation are in direct contravention to statements from the National Council for Homeopathy London which “strongly supports the conventional vaccination programme..”. In Australia, The Executive Director of the Australian Natural Therapies Association said “no properly qualified natural therapist would recommend homeopathic immunisation as an alternative to conventional immunisation”.

This comes at a time when NSW Health authorities have issued a warning about meningococcal disease following the death of a woman in Sydney, and a spike in cases in NSW, with eight reported in December 2009, in Sydney.

For more information about homeopathy, see the 10:23 campaign. To participate in a mass homeopathy suicide attempt in Australia, see the events page on Facebook.

Nothing strange about that you might say, except for the fact that she insists publicly that she is absolutely not anti-vaccination but rather “pro-choice”. She even stated as much in a recent article about the dangers of not vaccinating, published on July 18 in the Brisbane QWeekend magazine;

“We are labelled as the antivaccination group but that’s simply not true,’’

Really Meryl? Then please explain why you have joined a group which describes itself as follows;

“First and foremost, THIS IS NOT A DEBATE if you are pro vax don’t even bother. This group exists to help educate the Australian public about the dangers of vaccination if you are here to learn and contribute stay, if you want to argue, leave.

Wow, now that doesn’t sound very pro-choice to me! Could it be that Meryl has not been completely transparent about her views on vaccination?

I was contacted by the journalist Amanda Watt after the McCaffery’s suggested she talk to me about the damage being done by the AVN in Australia. Naturally, I was very pleased to be able to furnish Amanda with lots of information about the misinformation and lies spread by my favourite organisation. She has done a great job on the article, especially considering she did not know anything about the anti-vax lobby before writing this.

Even though I only get one quote, the article does a good job of exposing the lies and half-truths perpetuated by the anti-vax lobby in Australia. Amanda also poses the question of why the job of educating the public about the dangers of the anti-vaxer lobby is left to the McCafferys and Australian Skeptics, which is a very good point indeed. Perhaps the government might want to sit up and listen.

You can read the entire article as a pdf here.

You know the type;

“Was Dana a premature baby? Was Dana breastfed? As a baby suposedly (sic) receives antibodies from the mum in the first eight weeks of life. Did Dana receive the Hepatitus (sic) B injection? Did Dana receive the Vitamin K injection? Did Dana have any reactions to these injections? Was Dana on any medication, etc?.”

Thereby, strongly inferring that pertussis, or whooping cough was not the cause of Dana’s death. I find this highly offensive and told @watf as much.

These type of questions were part of the reason why Toni and David McCaffery spoke out in the first place. They were appalled that the AVN, and in particular Meryl Dorey, were suggesting that the official cause of death (according to the Dept. of Health) as pertussis, was simply a plot by authorities and government to force people to get vaccinated.

But, as we have come to expect with the AVN, just about everything that involves conventional medicine is deemed a conspiracy of some sort; Big Pharma is only interested in money and not our health; they want to keep us sick to make more money; vaccines have never been tested, vaccination causes disease, etc etc. These are the kind of people who wouldn’t surprise you if they told you that the world is flat, the Holocaust didn’t happen and that 911 was a government/inside job.

But, this post was so offensive, Toni McCaffery decided she had well and truly had enough of the misinformation, half-truths and outright lies spread by these people. She responded to @watf to tell them precisely that, the facts.

I am amazed by the strength and resolve of Toni McCaffery at a time like this.  But, as she says below, she has had enough of the AVN and associated cronies and their nasty intent to somehow prove that pertussis was not the cause of Dana’s death.

It was. It’s that simple. Pertussis can be deadly, for every 1 in 200 children. Three babies have died from infections in Australia this year.

Wake up anti-vaxers. And learn some respect.

Toni’s comment is re-posted below, with her permission. You can see the entire comments thread here.

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@where are the facts

Where is your sense of human decency? Your comments are the most hateful and hurtful words that any grieving parent could read.

As Dana’s parents, we are absolutely outraged that groups such as the AVN are intent on proving that Pertussis did not kill her and is not dangerous. We expected opposition to vaccination, but it is unacceptable and despicable that we have to ‘prove’ that Pertussis killed her. Haven’t we suffered enough – now we have to defend the very thing that killed her.

We are outraged that without our knowledge, Meryl Dorey rang the Director of the NCAHS Public Health Unit on 12 March seeking details on Dana’s death and contended the department had misled the public.

Even after I told Meryl what happened to Dana at the debate, a few weeks afterwards I found an AVN blog with members making false claims that stated they had information she was sick from birth, immune-compromised from the HiB vaccine or died as a result of the antibiotics or medical treatment she received.

Not only is no-one privy to this information, it is wrong and extremely distressing. In the latest Living Wisdom, Meryl got every fact wrong about Dana – her age, when she died, where she might have caught it, when the last death was and uses language to downplay the seriousness.

I am pleading with the AVN to leave my beautiful daughter alone and stop this misleading chatter. And I plead to other parents, please do not expose your child to this dangerous disease.

Don’t you think as Dana’s parents, watching every agonising moment of her death, we would know what killed her. We undertook extensive research and spoke with the specialists over several weeks to understand what happened.

Let me be very clear. She was born in perfect health, was breastfed and was putting on weight. Nothing is sacred. We decided to speak out after reading comments in media and blog sites that dismissed the severity of whooping cough, claims of ‘only one baby’, criticisms that we had not acted quickly and that I had not passed on immunity to Dana through breastfeeding.

Reading this blog is almost too much to bear!

Let me be very, very clear – Pertussis can and does kill 1 in 200 babies. Sadly, THREE babies have died in Australia this year – we are the only family to go public and I wouldn’t recommend it. If your baby is ‘the one’ – it is unstoppable.

The intensive care experts were in contact with experts all around the world and tried everything. I stood and watched them try to save her and did the unthinkable and wished she had cancer instead, because maybe then she would have had a chance.

Meryl might call what we have done a fear campaign. We call it a reality check. We only wished someone had warned us of the epidemic as we would have done everything in our power to protect Dana from catching it.

We saw the healthiest, most beautiful baby suffer the most agonising death – and there was nothing we could do.

We will not stand by and let this happen to another family.

Please STOP DEBATING our daughter’s death. Show some respect and leave Dana in peace. We are so sorry we have exposed our beautiful girl to such hurtful people.

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Please note: Comment threads that are deemed offensive, at the discretion of the author, will be removed from this post out of respect. Comments are now closed.

To download a high resolution pdf version, click here . We encourage you to distribute this widely; perhaps drop off a copy at your local child care centre or pin one of the community notice board. We need as many parents as possible to see this information to warn them about the dangers and consequences of listening to misinformation spread by scaremongering groups such as the AVN.

“Defiant mummies, whom one pictures at the helm of their 4x4s, trailing clouds of particulates and rubella, declare that they don’t care what anyone thinks about their lifestyle choice. It’s not their fault if their unvaccinated children should chance to infect babies, pregnant women or anyone with a weakened immune system”.

She goes on to say that if they can’t be convinced by science and evidence then “…I can only suggest that vaccine-dodgers have their principles fully tested, but in a really non-authoritarian way” by giving schools the power to rule whether they will accept unvaccinated kids.

“…most schools would probably support the MMR as a condition of enrolment, leaving dodgers to send their children to schools tolerant of the unjabbed, where their diverse immune systems can be challenged in a truly diseased environment. Admittedly, these MMR-free academies may be unfair on the children. But so, when they could have been eradicated, are measles epidemics”.

Hear, hear.

* NB:  they are bona fide Americans and so perfectly entitled to spell it with a “k”!

First there was Rebecca Letourneau’s accurate report on the dangers of not vaccinating on Channel 7s Sunday night programme. You can hear my interviews with her on The Skeptic Zone episode 28 and 29.

Further, an update on my most recent post about the ABC Immunisation Fact Files. This was brought to my attention by my blogging colleague, Fuzztwin, who wrote to the ABC to ask them why, on a page purporting to offer sensible advice about vaccination, they had hyper-linked to the Australian Vaccination Network. Testament to the power of Twitter, and the tenacity of those who think the anti-vaxers are doing harm, the following paragraph was modified today. The original appearing below;

“The internet has become a popular source for those seeking further information on vaccination. But be warned, studies have shown that when you type immunisation into a search engine, you will get a disproportionate number of sites that carry an anti-immunisation message.”

has now been modified to say the following;

“The internet has become a popular source for those seeking further information on vaccination. But be warned studies have shown that when you type immunisation into a search engine you will get a disproportionate number of sites that carry an anti-immunisation message. The Australian Vaccination Network is one such anti-vaccination site.”

Thank you to the ABC for listening, considering what we said and making changes for the benefit of the community. Also, thank you to Fuzztwin for alerting me to this and to all who commented, especially David McCaffery.

“..Well done sceptics! Keep working hard to save and protect our babies and community”.

Following on from an equally damning article by Adele Horin from the Sydney Morning Herald in January 2009, the Sydney tabloid newspaper, the Daily telegraph published an article written by Joe Hildebrand about the irresponsible anti-vax movement today.

It has not been a good day for the anti-vax movement in this country. To add insult to injury, the Stop the AVN Facebook page reached over 500 members today, and this has occurred shortly after the AVN Facebook Fan page (can’t show you the link, because I quite simply can’t find it!) has seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth.

Fear not readers, we have many other irons in the fire, which I hope to reveal to you very soon. In the meantime, keep up the fight by signing the Stop the AVN petition and leaving a message of support at Dana McCaffery’s Facebook page.

Also, don’t forget my report from Dr Rachie that started my campaign against this group of scaremongers. Or listen to the audio from Episode 19 of The Skeptic Zone.

The world really has gone topsy-turvy and I couldn’t be any happier!