Appearing on the 98.9 Queensland radio station – an Indigenous, government funded radio station – Meryl Dorey is now advising the listeners in rural and remote areas on vaccinations.
Here’s some of the transcript that I’ve made:
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Tiga Bayles: Today I have an interesting guest with an interesting topic; we’re talking about freedom of speech, the right to make free and informed decisions or give free and informed consent. We’re not talking about just black fellas today or First Nation peoples we’re talking about all Australian parents. And the topic and subject is vaccinations. You should be in a position where you can give free and informed consent to that issue, to that topic of “do you or don’t you get your child vaccinated”.
…Yes, the system doesn’t encourage us as parents and grandparents to do anything other than vaccinate, they are, uh, the propaganda is all out there, there’s so much of it, and rarely do we get the opportunity to hear somebody say “Here’s another angle on things, here’s another side to that story, here’s some more information regarding what you’re doing, regarding what vaccination means – is that the case?
Meryl Dorey: What you’ve said so true, not only doesn’t it encourage parents or other people who are trying to make a decision about vaccination to make an informed choice, they actively discourage it. We have the health minster in Queensland saying it’s nonsense to look at the other side of the vaccination issue. An the National Health and Medical Research Council which is the government body that’s involved with this, says that you have to make an informed choice. So all we’re doing is trying to support what the NHMR says and allow people to make and informed choice. If doctors and the government were doing their job, we wouldn’t have to be here… it’s all okay, because it’s very important that this information is available.
7.00 min: …what happens in Australia, only about one percent of the reactions that happen after drugs or vaccines ever get reported, so when doctors tell us “Oh, the vaccines are perfectly safe,” what they’re doing is they’re basing that statement on information that’s at least 99% incorrect. You wouldn’t make a decision on information that was so incorrect if you knew how wrong it was.
So, I think that parents need to be aware that doctors are not reporting reactions and we have a reactions database where they can report to us and we report to the government. And of course, since we’ve never had the funding to advertise this except in interviews like this, the reports we get are just the tip of the iceberg.
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– via Kylie Sturgess, Token Skeptic blog
So when doctors don’t identify many adverse reactions they are “99% incorrect”, however when the dopey-Dorey organisation doesn’t identify many adverse reactions they become “the tip of the iceberg”… isn’t that called trying to have it both ways?
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Looks like at least one more radio announcer has drunk of the Dorey Kool-aid…
The above is taken from this abstract, and the full pdf is available at that website. Now while I do comment quite frequently here, I do try to maintain some sort of ‘balance’ in acceptance that sometimes I am wrong, or biased.
But recently there was a measles outbreak in Canberra, the backwash of which involved my daughter and her ‘blended family’. The result was that the two older children by her husband’s previous marriage (unvaccinated I’m told because of their mother’s beliefs) suffered mightily, with the younger hospitalised. The older of my two grandchildren – 3 y/o and vaccinated – not a sign, the younger (1 month old) a very mild one day rash, her saving grace being her mother’s (my daughter’s) prior vaccination coverage – or so I’m informed, and so I believe.
Leaving aside the angst caused by this episode, and just looking at the facts – more specifically as contained in the abstract above – I’m inclined to invoke some sort of Godwin’s moment here, and to suggest that while there should be some sort of law against holocaust denial, there most certainly should be a law against any promoters involved in the spreading of myth and misinformation about vaccination which results in even one further child being made the helpless subject of their parents’ fear-fueled ignorance.
So DEM you have the “deadly broadcaster” arrow pointing at the wrong talking head. On this subject, I have no stomach for pun and games.
Oh, kvd, I’m willing to go one step further than that (all the while still allowing people to speak): make vaccination compulsory. Liberty, like other values, can be ranked (this is the virtue of having a largely positivist, instrumental view of values), which means when it doesn’t work, it can be trumped. Now this is rare, when it comes to liberty and autonomy. Most of the time, set against other values, liberty and autonomy will win. Not, however, when it comes to vaccination.
What SL said. Dead children have no liberty.
It’s distressing that we’ve forgotten so much – polio epidemics are within living memory, surely? Paranoid DEM wonders if there’s a “better dead than disabled” attitude going on in the background.
Personally I am not one of the Skeptics so I can appreciate some of the points people like Meryl are making. Yes ‘big pharma’ can be careless and slow to be held accountable, yes all vaccines have side effects (remember the 1970s flu shots in America that gave people Guillain-Barre, a devastating neurological condition), but even if there were a link between, for example, MMR and autism (which has not been satisfactorily proven) the diseases we vaccinate for have equivalent or WORSE side effects. Measles can kill your child, autism won’t.
I have no trouble with harm minimisation – if you’re worried about the effects of loading the vaccines then opt for the single shot option, even if that means your kid has to start school a year later to fit them all in – but the benefits to the wider community vastly outweigh the risks.
I would hesitate to compel, but state schools not accepting unvaccinated children children might be a start. It does seem the height of irresponsibility to push this agenda at an already vulnerable community. Indigenous children have not been dropping like flies with autism since immunisation has been available, they were however dropping dead with things like measles, whooping cough and polio BEFORE we had the shots. I do think Tiga Bayles was being a little disingenuous to characterise this as an ‘informed consent’ issue.
I work with an anti-vaccination guy. You can spot the logical problems in one of his papers here if you like.
DEM, yes I think people have forgotten the horror of a non-vaccinated world. If we are looking at why infant mortality is so much lower than previous generations, a big factor is vaccination. I think people forget how many children died young. My grandmother says that when she was young, every child went through a serious illness which was like a trial – a child who made it through that would likely live to adulthood, but a child who didn’t died. My grandmother made it; her younger sister didn’t.
Ahead of the curve, DEM. Dunno if this link to The Conversation will be effective, but it’s worth a read if you get there, and mentions my friend Meryl. And I do like your practical idea of refusing school admissions, particularly if it could be followed up by prosecution of the parents for failing to provide for the education needs of their children.
LE that is a very sad story.
My mother’s brother Arthur died of diptheria when he was 7, it would have been somewhere in the late 40s/early 30s (mum was born in 1935).
He was vaccinated, but had a heart defect. All the other children in the family were fine.
With herd immunity these days Arthur would probably have survived.
Grandad took Arthur to the hospital and they could do nothing. Mum said it’s the only time she saw her father cry.
late 30s early 40s, arrgh!
Full transcript (read it and weep) available here:
http://www.antivaxxers.com/?p=4294
Read and wept, and in the interests of balance, there’s this
I’m willing to go one step further than that (all the while still allowing people to speak): make vaccination compulsory.
I’m surprised it isn’t.
I was vaccinated against measles but for some reason it didn’t take and I ended up clearing my grade of about 1/3 of its pupils for a good six weeks.
Vaccines aren’t 100% effective, they just dramatically lessen the likelihood of catching the disease (and the length/severity if you do), and more importantly the ability of the disease to be transmitted.
I assume this means nobody will be enjoying Miss Dorey’s wisdom at the Woodford folk festival then?
It doesn’t sound like the healthiest of places to be, Movius…
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