AVN lies: are they pathological?

On June 28 2013 anti-vaccination pressure group president Greg Beattie published a self-congratulatory gotcha blog post on the official Australian Vaccination Network blog. In the post he included audio of a phone call he made to Senator Richard Di Natale (notice I’m not publishing the audio of the call here). The phone call was recorded without the permission of the Senator. The Senator was not advised that the shouty-Beattie phone call was being recorded until the end of the call, when the Senator hung up the phone. One can only hope that the Australian Federal Police have been made aware of Beattie’s actions.

In the Beattie blog post he makes this claim about the membership of the AVN:

When I pointed out that I was not the AVN he asked me what the view of the membership was. I explained that I didn’t know because we didn’t ask them. [my bold]

Beattie also states, about his view of vaccines:

He then wanted to know what my personal view was. So I told him I was unconvinced of their value.

“Unconvinced of their value”. Unconvinced of their value? I don’t know much about understatement, but, this is what was found in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission about Beattie’s (the president of the AVN) views on vaccination:

Okay. Remember Beattie’s comment up there, pertaining to the vaccination views of the AVN membership: “I explained that I didn’t know because we didn’t ask them.” This won’t take long.

Only six days later, on July 4, the AVN published a blog post pointing readers to a survey of AVN members. The survey was conducted in late 2012. Today, July 5, the AVN sent out a media release (which was funny, as you know what the AVN has to say about all media except nutty conspiracy pod-casts), which was a precise copy of the survey blog post. Here is what the survey found, about the AVN membership:

Almost all had a negative attitude to childhood vaccination, with 85% being able to recall a time when they had become less positive to vaccination than previously.

You had one job, Greg Beattie. One job.

You couldn’t even go six days without proving, with your own words, that you lied to Senator Di Natale, whilst at the same time recording the conversation of a Federal Senator without his knowledge, and publishing it on the official blog of a Charitable Fundraising Authority holder and Health Service Provider.

One job.