The AVN president Meryl Dorey has just advised her subscribers that three domains have been suspended following a ‘legal complaint’ to their American host.

In an e-newsletter titled “AVN under attack” Dorey says the following;

“I came home this afternoon after doing our week’s grocery shopping, to find that all 3 of our domains have been suspended by our American server. When I contacted them, they told me that the reason for the suspension was a ‘legal’ complaint they had received. They would not give me any other information about the complaint so I have to wait to speak with their legal department next week.”

But then she says something very interesting;

“As soon as I hung up the phone with the web hosting company, I received a phone call from a friend who works in the Australian media. This person warned me that a media smear campaign against the AVN is about to start. They said that this campaign has been planned for some time and that it will involve trying to link the AVN with pornographic material.”

Okay, bizarre. And a little bit crazy. A smear campaign designed to link the AVN to porn? Sounds strange and a little bit pointless to tell you the truth. I’m not sure what this is designed to achieve. I hope Meryl knows and trusts her media source, cause this sounds a little too outlandish to be true.

Yet, the AVN has had a rough 12 months, so perhaps Meryl is inclined to believe anything at the moment. There are numerous complaints pending about the organisation, including an ongoing investigation by the Health Care Complaints Commission for spreading bad health advice and one with the Office of Liquor Gaming and Racing for alledegly trading as a charity without a valid license for more than 2 years.

Meryl describes the last 12 months in a slightly more hysterical fashion;

1- The spurious complaint against the AVN and myself with the HCCC.
2- Harassment of our advertisers.
3- Harassment of our professional members.
4- Death threats by email and telephone.
5- Establishment of websites and blogs specifically intended to stop the AVN.
6- Ridiculous accusations which state that the AVN supports conspiracy theories including the Illuminati and alien body-snatchers.
7- Harassment of the families of AVN supporters which, among other things, includes the posting of personal and business details on the internet.
8- Complaints filed with the Department of Fair Trading.
9- Complaints filed with the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing.
10- Complaints filed with ASIC.
11- Attempts to stop AVN-hosted seminars.
12- Hacking of the AVN website and email server.
13- Accusations that AVN supporters are child murders.
14- Threats to file defamation lawsuits.
15- Legal complaints which have shut down our website and email server.
16- Harassment of people who have donated to the AVN including tampering with their websites.

But the facts are pretty straight forward in this case. The AVN disseminates dangerous and inaccurate information about vaccines to vulnerable parents, who are then frightened into not vaccinating. Children are getting sick, some are dying.

It is therefore not such a bad thing that this information is removed from the public domain for a few days at least. It could save some kids’ lives.

Read the full text of the e-newsletter here.

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UPDATE: Ms Dorey’s suggestion that a smear campaign is about to commence linking her to porn may be a little late off the mark. There exists an adult website called AVN.com for Adult Video Network, which has been in existence for a very long time. Is this what her ‘anonymous media caller’ was referring to? Hat tip to TAG for making this connection.
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UPDATE#2: It seems most likely that the website being suspended is a mix up in a complaint against the adult site AVN. There has been mention of child pornography allegations, making it most likely that the American service provider banned the AVN.org not AVN.com

The ACCC statement of claim recently filed in Federal Court, says Advanced Allergy Elimination (AAE) and its director Paul Keir had breached the Trade Practices Act by falsely claiming the company can test for, and cure, allergies with natural therapies.

AAE clinics use a “muscle response test” to identify human allergens. The $115 test involves a client’s tricep being monitored as they are exposed to different “allergy testing vials”.

Treatment, at $85 a session, then involves gentle stimulation down the client’s back while they are exposed to suspected allergens through more “allergy testing vials”.

But according to the ACCC, the techniques have no scientific foundation and cannot test for, treat or cure allergies. The ACCC also alleged the chain had told clients that, after treatment, it was safe to have contact with the allergen to which they had had an adverse reaction.

The ACCC is seeking various orders including declarations, injunctions, corrective notices and costs. It is also seeking an order that Mr Keir attend trade practices law training.

Mr Keir said he would defend all the allegations, but had to wait for legal advice before he could comment further. A hearing is listed for June 24.

Consultant allergist Dr John Weiner, of St Vincent’s Hospital, said although he could not comment on the case, bogus alternative treatments had been offered to people with allergies for the past 20 years.

“It’s an ongoing issue. Allergists and immunologists in Australia have been trying to provide education through the media and GPs about this, but because there is a big population of people with allergies and a shortage of specialists, there are a lot of people out there trying to find quick fixes,” he said. “That sort of market pressure means alternative practitioners will arrive.”

Dr Weiner said some of the techniques that had no merit included “applied kinesiology”, “bioprobe” or “vega testing”, and “pulse testing”.

“These are all bizarre and un-validated,” he said, and people should visit a GP first. “If an unorthodox or unproven test is done, there is always a possibility that the patient is not only not cured, but at risk of severe sudden allergies on exposure to things they are truly allergic to.”

Source: The Age on-line

This sort of alternative allergy woo sounds an awful lot like the vega machine, which as been demonstrated to be a scam numerous times. You can read more about it here.

“[The comments] do not address the debate about the use of MMR and that is the reason for taking the comments off Jeni’s website,” Common said.

Jeni invited people to join the debate about MMR following her controversial broadcast on January 7 th where she spouted misinformation about MMR, autism and vaccinations in general. However, comments posted disagreeing with her stance, no matter how polite, were quickly removed from her blog.

Some of the comments left on the journalism.co.uk blog make this point.

Andy Says:

February 11th, 2009 at 8:08 pm

Whilst I would not approve of any threatening or abusive comments, the vast majority left on Jeni’s blog were simple and robust criticism of her stance and behaviour. Plus the subsequent behaviour of LBC.

As so many people did take the time to explain quite carefully what was wrong, I have reposted these blogs and comments on my own site. Make your own mind up.

Perhaps Jeni, or her agent Robert common forgot about the internet cache, but Andy from Quackometer.net did not. He has posted all the comments, as they originally appeared for us all to see.

One thing that surprised many people posting on this story, was Jeni’s somewhat hypocritical cry that these comments were abusive personal attacks. This is a bit rich when you consider she herself yelled over the top of Yasmin, now identified as an NHS nurse, then later referred to her as “vicious”.

The Biologista Says:

February 11th, 2009 at 9:26 pm

1. Jeni herself described at least one of her pro-MMR callers “vicious” and has been very dismissive of all of her critics. Regardless of the evidence they produced or how mannerly they were, their concerns were regarded as “sarcasm”.

David Jones Says:

February 11th, 2009 at 9:42 pm

Most of the messages have been saved and are on the Internet for all to see. None were personally abusive. On the other hand, Barnett described a perfectly reasonable and concerned nurse who called into the show as ‘vicious’, which is simply untrue. The transcripts are available, read them for yourself, see who’s indulging in personal abuse.

This is precisely the point Jeni. You can put all the spin on it you like but the facts remain. The audio, the transcript and the blog comments as they originally appeared are available for us all to see.

In the meantime, Ben has issued a personal plea on his blog to not send abusive emails to Jeni following a phone call from the programme director of LBC.

As the saying goes, if you give people enough rope….

JB: Amanda, talk to me.

Amanda: Hello! Um, I’ve got eight children,

JB: Mazel-tov! Are you still sane?

Amanda: No! Anyway, and I started off, young, about twenty – did all the things you were supposed to do and presented my daughter and she had all her vaccinations and my second daughter had all her vaccinations. Then my son was born and he reacted very badly to the first, and what I think then was the double or triple jab.

Um, so he then didn’t have any more, although he did then have the MMR, well, he did have some more, but he didn’t have any more Whooping Cough. He then had the MMR, um… and then when he was three he was diagnosed with autism. And so I got quite involved in vaccines, because I wasn’t sure, um, my paediatrician was quite sure that it was the cause of the autism, but I mean, I didn’t know.

And from then on, I decided not to have my children vaccinated – I just thought ‘better be on the safe side’ – I mean, my paediatrician thought it was great, my GPs weren’t; they were always very unhappy that I didn’t have them vaccinated.
TIMESTAMP: 1.00

JB: Why, why though, that the GPs won’t take on what the paediatrician did??

Amanda: I don’t know! I mean, my paediatrician is great, she’s a very holistic paediatrician – she was the of big chief consultants at a hospital down on the south coast, so she’s a very good paediatrician, but she very much believed in … in just sort of holistically looking after the child. Um, she didn’t like giving drugs for things if you didn’t need it.

JB: But you know, people do throw ‘guilt things’, at you, don’t they? They must say to you ‘all right, for you, Amanda’.

Amanda: Um…

JB: How do you cope with that?

Amanda: Well, yeah, they probably do, um, … the main thing I found is that my eldest who has everything, she actually had a really bad case of Whooping Cough, about two years ago. And we did get quite a lot of things thrown at us then but she was the one who had been vaccinated. None of my other children picked it up.
TIMESTAMP: 2.00

JB: Now what would you say – I mean, it’s not my job to say to people ‘don’t do it’, it’s not my job to do any of that. But you’re allowed to have your say. What would you say to people as a mum of eight little lives that you’re deeply responsible for? What would you say to people who are in two minds about it?

Amanda: Um. Well, I would never recommend having children vaccinated, and people think I’m very strange. But all my younger children who have never been vaccinated have been very, very healthy. Um, the youngest had measles, um, now three months ago. And he was fine, he wasn’t very well for about a week, ten days – and then he was fine, and none of my others picked it up. So, I think they must have a certain amount of natural immunity – and I’m far, far happier for them to have developed that ‘natural immunity’ – than to be constantly filled with artificial substances.

JB: Well, thank you so much, my darling, that was Amanda in Hayword’s Heath.

“I was just listening to your show, if people took the time to look at what’s in vaccines, they would think twice about giving them to their children. As well as not being a hundred percent effective, they also have cancer-causing agents.
Timestamp: 3.00
“Also a child’s immune system takes approximately two to three months to fully get up and running from birth. Also, if we look at the countries that have the highest population vaccinated, you will notice that they have the most allergies. I’m not totally against immunisations, but we should be giving children at least a year to develop their own immune system to deal with the onslaught.”

I didn’t say that – I wish you’d given me your name? There’s a third way, says somebody else who’s nameless: “Why don’t we allow children to have the jabs individually?” Why not? It’s half-past two!

END 3.35

[STATION IDENTIFICATION – ADVERT FOR HER NEXT GUEST]

RESTARTS 4.00

I’ve just got one or two announcements, and there are many of you who want to talk about this measles thing – I get so impassioned about it, because I think it’s about freedom – and I think that self responsibility for your body and children and health is top of the list! You know, early to bed, early to rise, makes you HEALTHY, wealthy and wise! The four-square of life: health, wealth, love, and perfect surface expression!

Where do you go from there? About being healthy – and YOU have to make a decision, don’t you, on behalf of your children! It’s the WORST decision you’ll have to make – should you / shouldn’t you! It’s alright when you’re making it for yourself – but I want you to tell me, why you think we have to have this measles jab and why I’ve got several things I’m going to read out in a minute, why you think it’s not necessary!

And I’ll be talking to a doctor in a moment, and somebody who is pro-jabs, I just have to make two announcements…

[the audience for Jeni Barnett advert]

During a rant on her LBC radio show, she spat misinformation and conspiracy theories about the safety of MMR and vaccination. In addition to shouting over the top of nurses and GPs who had called in to politely correct her. But like Jenny McCarthy she has a “Mommy” instinct, so she obviously knows best. No-one can compete with that, least of all science.

When Ben Goldacre was sent a clip of her rant, he did the responsible thing and posted it to his blog so that millions of people could hear the irrational, ill-informed, potentially damaging opinions for themselves.

And believe me, you will not believe how bad this is until you hear it.

The response from LBC was to threaten Ben with legal action for a breach of copyright. This threat has backfired in a major way for LBC. By threatening to slap Ben with a lawsuit unless he remove the offending material (which he subsequently has), they have effectively started a huge Streisand effect which is currently resonating across the globe.

“To all of you Bad scientists, who are SO angry with me, good luck with your research. Should you fall ill I will attend you as best I can with my motherly love. Should I fall ill, as a non paid up member of your club, will you administer to me? And should I refuse your drugs then what?” Jeni Barnett

The mp3 appeared on Wikileaks sometime this morning with 13 servers hosting it from all over the world. People have already begun blogging it, with links to the Wiki page.

My good friend Res posted the entire 40 minutes (the excerpt originally on Ben’s blog) on my YouTube channel. Several people have commented that transcribing the segment is the best way to get around the legal red tape. Time will tell if this is the case, however…

Click here to hear the 40 min rant on YouTube

…I hardly think it matters anymore, following pleas for help on his blog and twitter, Ben has mobilised an army and this thing has gone viral.

As a example of Jeni’s complete lack of scientific understanding she said this gem during her show; “Have you had the flu jab? But still you’ve got the cold?”. The influenza virus is not the same virus that causes colds. FAIL.

Well done LBC for making what could have been an embarrassing stuff-up which may have resulted in a few cranky posts on Jeni’s blog into a world wide scandal. (Interestingly, someone calling themselves Andy Wakefield from Thoughtful House posted a message on Jeni’s blog offering assistance. Well, I guess he would know!)

Thank you Ben for bringing this to our attention. Thank you Res for posting this to YouTube.

Here are some other links worth reading.
Podblack
NHS Blog Doctor
Holford watch