“Shaken Maybe Syndrome”

Anti-vaccinationists do a lot of despicable things. Apart from the obvious – lying about the safety and effectiveness of vaccination in their ideological agenda of seeing infectious diseases return – they occasionally come out with a claim so outrageous it cannot be ignored.

Meryl Dorey: President; Treasurer; Spokesperson; and, Public Officer of her Australian Vaccination Network is no stranger to this habit of making outrageous claims. Dorey has recently equated vaccination to child rape, and pharmaceutical company employees to paedophiles.

Recently, Orac wrote a post appropriately titled The vilest antivaccine lie that won’t die: Shaken baby syndrome as “vaccine injury”, about this anti-vaccine meme which really sticks in my craw. I’m not alone. Anti-vaccinationists blame Shaken Baby Syndrome on, you guessed it, vaccines. As noted by Orac, Peter Bowditch has been on this story for longer than anyone would like; indeed, longer than most should endure.

To this day, Meryl Dorey and her associates cling to this defence of baby killers and assaulters.

Eleven years ago, on January 7 2001, Meryl Dorey commented on her Yahoo! Group. A call was put out for a campaign slogan to defend baby killers. Dorey wanted something with bite, because “sound bites have it”.

Dear Barbara,

I just read this out to my husband who is great with catch phrases and he suggests – Shaken Maybe Syndrome. I like Shaken from the inside too – both are good. And a great thought – you are right – sound bites have it. And as my 16 year old niece would say – that bites!

Take care,

Meryl

Good to see a family working together on a project

If I was Meryl Dorey’s husband, Ken Dorey, I would be aghast that she had made this glib callousness public. Luckily, I’m not Ken Dorey.

Some things will never be forgotten; nor should they.