Dear NSW Premier and Ministers: this is what Meryl Dorey and her AVN really think

Meryl Dorey, the leader of the callous anti-vaccination pressure group, the Australian Vaccination Network, likes to tell all and sundry that she and her public health menace of a cult are not anti-vaccine. She claims that because her rotten little cabal never specifically tells anyone not to immunise that they are, therefore, not anti-vaccine. It doesn’t matter that they still sell t-shirts claiming “love them, protect them, never inject them“, and that that was their motto until Stop the Australian Vaccination Network gathered apace. It doesn’t matter that even their own supporters beg them to be honest about the AVN’s anti-vaccinationism, to no avail. Here is homeopath and friend of the Doreys, Fran Sheffield:

I think almost everyone, supporters and non-supporters, believe the AVN is antivaccine in spite of its protests to the contrary.

How can they do otherwise when 99.9% of information about vaccines released by the AVN is anti or reveals their problems? When there is not explanation why this imbalance exists?

…

If the AVN wants to be perceived as being a truthful organisation then it has to proudly accept the anti-vaccine label or do something that explains (repeatedly) why most of the information it provides about vaccines and vaccine promoters is negative.

I love the info that the AVN provides so people can make an informed choice – and I want it to survive – but I can’t tut tut about them calling us anti-vaccine and I hate feeling as though I have to support the deception.

So why is it that Dorey and her president Greg Beattie go to any and all lengths to fight the tag which most accurately defines them?  They know it’s bad for business. Basically, apart from being wrong, and pining for a regime which would see more dead babies, anti-vaccinationists are perceived to suck by the general community; and the AVN know it. That must sting.

We must also remember that the AVN have been ordered to ditch their current duplicitous name, by Fair Trading NSW. This still hasn’t happened.

But, today, Dorey kindly let out a reminder of the nasty, dishonest, conspiratorial, anti-vaccine troll which inhabits her head. We all know it’s in there. But, it’s just nice of her to publicly state it from time to time. More people need to see the real AVN, and the real Meryl Dorey.

And the people who need to see it the most are NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell; his Health Minister Jillian Skinner; his new Fair Trading Minister Stuart Ayres; and the NSW Health Care Complaints Parliamentary Committee (get your submissions in before February 7, folks).

I give you the real Meryl Dorey, January 30 2013. This is the Meryl Dorey who is representing her organisation, commenting under the official Facebook account of her organisation:

The ‘science’ behind vaccination is so weak, so very fragile, that the only way to protect it is to stifle any and all debate. Robust science doesn’t need protection. Robust science stands on its evidence. Vaccine science is tobacco science. It is unverified, corrupt and based on factoids produced for profit by white-coated vested interests who don’t care about the negative outcomes – only about the money, prestige and power. This entire machine is supported by the media which is almost fully-reliant on the fund provided to them by their advertisers.
MD

Her claims don’t so much need debunking, as disinfecting.

And remind people that Dorey also claimed this, on November 23 2013:

I have spent 20 years obsessively reading anything and everything I can get my hands on including thousands of medical journal articles and consider that I have more understanding of this subject than most GPs, immunologists and public health officials.