I was kinda hoping Danny Nalliah and his anti-abortion noodles would get a guernsey, but the Australian Skeptics have instead gone for Meryl Dorey and her fellow anti-vax nutters for this year’s award. As Barry Williams tells it, the award has its origins back in 1982:

In 1982, Australian Skeptics instituted an award to be presented annually at the National Convention to individuals or organisations who made the most outrageous claim of a paranormal or pseudoscientific nature in the preceding year. After conferring with leading American Skeptic and illusionist, James Randi, who had earlier instituted a Bent Spoon award, it was decided that our award would also commemorate one of the less useful, though widely acclaimed, alleged paranormal claims; the psychic ability to distort items of cutlery. So was born the Australian Bent Spoon Award. Some years later, in a masterpiece of alliteration, it was decided that the preamble to the award should read ‘presented to the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudoscientific piffle.’

As Dorey’s brand of woo-woo actually helped to undermine herd immunity in areas where the AVN operates, contributing to a whooping cough epidemic and several deaths, I agree with the powers that be in the Skeptics that she trumps Nalliah (who still rates an honourable mention, in my view):

Testament to the efforts of the AVN are the significantly low vaccination rates on the North Coast of NSW where the AVN is located, which corresponded with a 2008 whooping cough epidemic. Measles outbreaks in QLD and whooping cough epidemics in South Australia have also been attributed to a loss of herd immunity as a direct result of the reduction in the take-up of childhood vaccination.

It’s been a tough year for Dorey who has received considerable mainstream criticism for her campaign of scaremongering and misinformation regarding the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Of note are her continuing false claims that vaccines contain toxic levels of elemental mercury, vaccines cause autism, shaken baby syndrome, SIDS and brain damage, and that vaccines are not responsible for a reduction in communicable disease, rather this is a product of increased sanitation and good food. In August 2009, Dorey and the AVN were the target of a national newspaper advertising campaign, financed by entrepreneur Dick Smith warning parents of Australia not to listen to the false claims of the AVN.

Now, before I leave you to be amused by the other nominees on the list (I especially like the new category of ‘noble savage woo’), I wish to dispense with one particularly pernicious AVN claim. I’m doing this because it’s one thing a non-scientist can do; I’d prefer to leave the rest of the debunking to scientists trained in the field. 

The AVN (and analogous groups) have long argued that vaccines are not responsible for a reduction in communicable disease, rather, that this is a product of increased sanitation and good food. This is wrong in a really twisted way, because it’s a half-truth, and half-truths can be harder to fight than outright, bare faced lies. See, improved sanitation and better food does increase life expectancy, and does help to prevent certain infections. It does not, however, do anything to stop viruses of the type implicated in most of the ‘childhood diseases’. How do I know this?

There are historical examples of societies that practiced good hygiene and sanitation but didn’t have vaccines, and — if we’re lucky — we can find out a great deal about what good hygiene and food can do… and what they can’t. Now having a volcano shit itself all over them was rather unfortunate for the 20,000+ people living in Pompeii and Herculaneum, but it showed us a few useful things nearly 2000 years later, and archaeologists have been able to study them and ‘report back’.

The people of Pompeii were taller on average than anyone up to the mid-20th century in the same region of Italy. That suggests they ate a varied diet with plenty of protein. Once people got past the age of 5, they tended to get to between 55-70 years of age. Not a developed-world life expectancy by any means, but a pretty decent one, and much better, once again, than anywhere on the planet until the early 20th century. They had all their teeth — even old people — which suggests both knowledge of oral hygiene and a diet without sugar. Allied to our knowledge of Pompeii is the fact that we have no records of puerperal fever from the high point of classical antiquity. It only turns up later, when people stopped washing daily. The ‘natural’ maternal mortality rate is approximately 1 in 100. Evidence suggests the Romans dragged that down to 1 in 200. So far so good. Public baths, public loos, quicklime to sanitize the baths, all good.

The Roman under-five mortality rate? 1 in 4. The Medieval under five mortality rate? 1 in 3. The Romans win by a nose, but not by much. One in four children died before the age of five. Infant mortality was so pervasive, Plutarch informs us, that the Romans forbade full funeral rights for children who died under the age of two. The dead bodies were thrown out with the household trash (something Colleen Mccullough got right in her various Rome books). Hey, at least the Romans had municipal rubbish collection… that doesn’t appear again in our records until Muslim Spain at its height.

One in four. Hold that thought.

In modern Italy (to keep the cross-country comparison consistent), the under 5 mortality rate is 5.6 in 1000. All the countries in the world are listed in a series of convenient graphs here. Only the very poorest and most war torn countries on the list are as bad or worse than the ‘best’ figures from the past. A world without vaccines but with good sanitation is almost impossible for modern westerners to imagine, but since we can’t hop in a time machine and go back to the ancient world, maybe we should send the anti-vaxxers on an all expenses paid holiday… to Sierra Leone. Even that, however, is distortionary, because NGOs sometimes manage to administer vaccines even in war zones, some parts of the country are sewered while some are not, and some of the deaths are no doubt caused by HIV.

On balance, sanitation and a decent diet will prolong your life once you get past the age of 5. They will improve maternal mortality rates in childbirth. They will make your cities smell a whole lot better. They will make you smell a whole let better. But they won’t stop smallpox, diptheria, whooping cough, polio, measles, rubella, tetanus and all the rest. Absent vaccines, these will kill many of your children. The deaths will fall unevenly, too. Some families from times past had all their children survive to adulthood; others lost the lot. It really was a death-dealer’s lottery.

One in four. Remember that.