Friday 7 August 2009

The AVN: Lies, Lunacy and Conspiracy Theories

The Australian Vaccination Network, despite their name and claims to be “pro-choice”, are a rabid group of anti-vaccination ideologues led by the (possibly well-meaning, possibly evil, definitely misguided) Meryl Dorey.

Spreading lies about the contents of vaccinations and debunked pseudo-science about their supposed effects (for the thousandth time: vaccines don’t cause autism!), recently they’ve gone right off the rails. On the AVN blog last week Meryl re-posted an article with some insane conspiracy theories incorporating Big Pharma, the Illuminati, and a nefarious plot to use vaccinations to infect us all with nanobots.

So that’s why they don’t like vaccinations. Huh. Here was me thinking they just had an aversion to needles.

One would hope this lunacy means they’ll stop being taken seriously by the public at large. It certainly won’t look good on their record now that they’re being investigated by the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission for breaches of the Public Health Act of 1993.

We’ll be watching with interest to see how that turns out.

The legendary Dick Smith has also gotten in on the action, taking out a huge ad in yesterday’s Australian to publicly denounce the AVN as the menace to society that they are.

Immunisation Get The Facts

The battle continues, and I suspect it will continue for some time. After all, anti-vaxxers have been around for as long as vaccinations.

We must remain ever vigilant and ensure the correct information gets out there.

Vaccinations save lives. Meryl Dorey and her crowd are spreading lies and misinformation. Left unchecked, lies like this will lead to death and suffering.

These are the simple facts.

2 comments:

StopThatAstronaut said...

This, Matt my good friend, is a battle which we will win, one way or another. The price of failure is too high, and besides, truth generally wins.

See you on the FB "Stop The AVN" group

;-)

@drunkenmadman

Dave ~ said...

I honestly can't understand how this lunacy is sucking people in. When did facts become an optional extra?

Did you see that clip of Jenny McCarthy on Oprah? It's sad beyond words. Millions would have watched that and far too few would have said, 'hang on a minute....that doesn't sound right....'

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/385209/jenny_mccarthy_tells_oprah_that_autism.html?cat=5