Meryl Dorey mocking death: claims chicken pox was never considered deadly

Meryl Dorey wrote a blog post today attacking a private citizen who made a report to child protection authorities regarding the deliberate infection of a child with Chicken Pox. The post is, of course, a call to Dorey’s followers regarding the evilness of her detractors; in this case, Ken McLeod. For a perfect example of how Dorey has previously defamed McLeod, see here.

The driving force behind Dorey’s blog post is the complaint lodged by McLeod. Other issues raised by Dorey, such as death by medicine, are quite simply unrelated to her argument: it is a Non sequitur. I won’t bother addressing them. I will address one specific claim made by Dorey, below.

For now, here is the article in question, from The Cambridge Post, in Western Australia. It is a very good piece, demonstrating why it is appropriate to raise the deliberate infection of a child with child protection. Anti-vaccination, disease-advocates, like Meryl Dorey, do not come out looking very rational. They certainly are not depicted as having children’s health as one of their priorities:

Full credit given to The Cambridge Post for the use of this image.

As noted above, there is one sinister claim from Dorey to which I wish to draw attention. In her blog post, Dorey states:

chicken pox – a disease that has never been considered deadly (the vaccine was not introduced to prevent deaths but rather, to allow mums to continue working so the country would not lose out financially)

For some reason I can’t come to grips with this intentional distortion of reality

I admit, I’m having trouble digesting this demonstrable mistruth. It is obvious to all why the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission stated that Dorey and her AVN “pose a risk to public health and safety” by providing “incorrect and misleading” information which is “solely anti-vaccination”. I’m not even going to attempt an in-depth debunking of a claim which is so demonstrably and deliberately untrue. The evidence is easily obtainable. Here is an abstract from the journal Pediatrics from May 2011:

Nothing more needs to be said. Varicella kills. Vaccines reduce mortality and morbidity.

For a more heartbreaking example of the truth that Chicken Pox kills, see this video of a grieving father begging the community to take notice. For this father, and all families like his, and for your children, Meryl Dorey and her band of misinformants need to be stopped. The sooner the better.

I leave you with this. This is a screenshot of the Australian Vaccination Network, from September 1 2010, mocking the death of that very child:

Anti-vaccinationists are nice.

Help us Stop the Australian Vaccination Network. Meryl Dorey and her AVN a malevolent force in our community.

Update: the attack on Ken McLeod’s character continues.

Two hours after Meryl Dorey posted the link to her blog post on the AVN Facebook page, this exchange was captured. We see here exactly how the AVN administrators deal with those who hold them to account: unfounded slurs against those people, which are baseless, and inaccurate; displaying precisely the type of Google research skill failures that we have come to expect from an ideologically driven cult. McLeod’s wife is not the same person attacked in this comment by courageous, anonymous admin “B52”. Ken McLeod retired from his former employment. McLeod has done no “atrocious things” as accused by Dorey. I would like to see some substantiation for these attacks by Meryl Dorey and her anonymous, courageous colleague; but, I won’t hold my breath.

Why the need to attack the man, indeed. Dorey likes to repeat this claim.

Meryl Dorey should heed her own advice, uttered only this morning on Twitter:

Like I frequently state: I like to point out the hypocrisy of those that claim the moral high ground