Vaccination advice t-shirt

I felt the old "Love them, Protect them, Never inject them" t-shirt sold by the AVN as part of their dissemination of balanced vaccine information (not advice, despite how it might read) was getting a bit tired so I've designed a new one for them...

Some important selling points for the avid pro-info supporter:

1. Comic Sans main font
2. Scary red letters
3. Spelling and grammar errors
4. Random capitalisation and odd formatting

The perfect gift for your best anti-vax pro-choice pro-info friend.

 UPDATE:

As always happens with such things, I've just had a better idea. Hint, it might involve a lizard. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

Cancer cure, fear, germ theory & AVN

Cure cancer with diet and exercise?

A Queensland man who claims he can cure cancer with diet and exercise is facing court action questioning the credibility of his treatment regime.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) alleges Darryl Peter Jones' medical treatment claims are misleading or deceptive under the Trade Practices Act.

Before it was shut down, the Darryl Jones Health Resolution Centre's website, advertised a cancer treatment program involving an exercise regime, the consumption of vitamin B17 and restriction of glucose in the diet.

The Federal Court in Brisbane heard on Monday that Mr Jones sold an e-book on his website entitled "The Truth about Overcoming Cancer".

"Vitamin B17, otherwise known as Laetrile or Apricot Kernels is neither a vitamin nor a cure for cancer...

Since the early 1950s, a modified form of amygdalin has been promoted under the names laetrile and "Vitamin B17" as a cancer cure, but studies have found it to be ineffective and potentially toxic. It is also not a vitamin, and can cause cyanide poisoning.

I know, it's difficult to imagine that any natural substance could possibly be toxic, but there you go. Not so surprisingly, the people who bang on and on about the minute amount of so-called "toxins" in vaccines and real medicines will often have no hesitation whatsoever in promoting these "cyanide pills" as a cure for cancer.

Laetrile is just one of possibly hundreds of "natural miracle cancer cures" that are all based on entirely different theories of what cancer is or what causes it. All are usually supported by people who despise science-based medicine.

(UPDATE: He's been banned from making cancer cure claims)

On that matter, SMH also has the rather depressing story of a woman who died due to a fear of doctors. It's sad that such fear exists and sadder still that people who should know better spend their lives propagating such fear and putting other people's lives at risk.

Interestingly, I found both these stories after following an unrelated link posted by Meryl Dorey on the AVN Facebook page. That link was to part of a story about pertussis being spread by hospital staff - the rest of the story is behind a wall.

Now, this is hard to get my head around because this story (the bit we can see) lends strong support to the germ theory - the idea that disease is spread by pathogens - yet Meryl often supports people like Punter on her AVN blog. Punter is a germ-theory denialist who apparently believes, if I understand correctly, that bacteria are part of some sort of clean-up crew and that rather than cause disease, they respond to it.

I guess that should Meryl ever be pressed about germ theory denialism, she'll deny supporting it just as she denies ever promoting Illuminati mind-control conspiracies. It appears to me that any theory which amounts to a denigration of vaccination is good enough for the AVN and its diverse supporters to spread as "information" to worried parents.

Big Alt-Pharma

While the anti-vaccination lobby love to accuse the medical industry of being in the pocket of "Big Pharma", I've lost count of the number of times Meryl Dorey has advised people on her Facebook page that they can get information by buying something from the AVN.

Though I'm sure it's not about the money.

Alternative Mechanical

Thanks Meryl

Meryl Dorey from the Australian Vaccination Network apparently felt people should be made aware of the Dr Amy, the Skeptical Obstetrician so posted a link to Dr Amy's site on the AVN Facebook page. I can't thank Meryl enough for bringing this blog to my attention. One more voice of reason out there in the world. It gives me hope.

Of course, Meryl doesn't exactly share my view of Dr Amy but that's good. When we do share views I'll have to make an appointment at the local shrink to see if I'm losing my faculties.

The SkepticalOB is commenting on the implication that Gardasil, a vaccine given to young adult girls, must be bad because it causes more miscarriages than all the vaccines that are given to little kids. This reminds me of my oft-repeated contention that driving a car causes rapid growth of facial hair in males. Think about it - how many guys do you know who have substantial facial hair before they get their driver's licence? Now maybe that's something Meryl should investigate because it's clear to me that the issuing of driver's licences is a plot sponsored by Gillette.

Bil Gates: Vaccination Saves Lives

Loretta Marron

I must confess, Loretta Marron is not a name I recognised when I saw it mentioned in a blog comment yesterday.

I probably should recognise her name as she was Australian Skeptic of the Year 2007 and 2008 and might well be described as a health crusader.

When I read her name, mentioned in this complaining comment written by a naturopath at the Sceptics' Book of Pooh-Pooh...

Skepticism occurs when only the logic brain is functioning. Half a brain = halfwit. There are many people like Loretta Marron the 2007 Skeptic of the Year who is so proud of the stress she creates by being the anonymous complainant to the TGA and CRP that she requests that her name is not given out to the people she makes complaints about...

...I had to Google it. Who was this woman who the naturopath asserted used only half her brain and who, he went on to imply, wasted oxygen? What had this apparently shy and anonymous person done to earn the wrath of one of the "love and light" brigade?

Well, among other things, she did this...



"Natural therapist" Jill Newlands looks quite the cancer expert as she checks the label on the bottle before recalling it's "...chloride, ...chloride" while the other bottle apparently contains something called "this one". This follows her advice that she wouldn't consider chemotherapy - in a hospital!! It would be funny if the whole situation wasn't so potentially tragic, as Peneolpe Dingle discovered when she decided to forgo real cancer treatment and follow the advice of a Perth homeopath instead.

I think I like Loretta Marron and you can read a lot more about her at Podblack's blog, but I really must give thanks to Trevor Savage, ND who brought her to my attention. Keep spreading the word Trevor, people need to be made more aware of this sort of thing. Thanks.

Meryl Dorey, AVN & Seeing the Light!

I rarely visit the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) Facebook page. I avoid it partly because it's so tightly moderated that there's often little worth reading since anyone who doesn't toe the anti-vaccination-cult line will usually find their comments deleted and themselves banned - and partly because what's left is often depressing.

But today was one of those times when I did drop by and today my jaw dropped. Someone posting as "Australian Vaccination Network" was promoting a product that contains aluminium and arsenic! There are a few admins over there and sometimes they sign with initials like SB or MD and sometimes codes like B52 and sometimes they use their names - like Meryl Dorey and sometimes, as in this case, nothing. I have no idea why they do this and it does not help to ease my general distrust of the AVN as a useful source of information.

For the sake of this post, I'm going to assume that it was Meryl Dorey making this product recommendation as one respondent to the comment thanked Meryl for the information and no one's corrected her.

 The interesting bit is "If you are concerned about the mercury issue and want to save energy, LED lightbulbs are a fantastic option..."

This advice followed concerns expressed about the mercury content of compact fluorescent globes that are replacing the old incandescent types around the world. But here's the thing... LED (Light Emitting Diode) semiconductors contain things like...

Aluminium gallium arsenide (AlGaAs)
Gallium arsenide phosphide (GaAsP)
Aluminium gallium indium phosphide (AlGaInP)
Gallium(III) phosphide (GaP)

Wow! Aluminium AND arsenic - together! Surely no self-respecting anti-vaccinationist could ever support the sale of these things? Surely it's a plot by Big Illumina (as in "Illuminati") to trick us into buying something they tell us is for our own good but which will actually poison us EVERY time we flick a switch!

I didn't want to assume too much here so I did some selective research and found the following information...

The toxicology of AlGaAs [Aluminium gallium arsenide] has not been fully investigated. The dust is an irritant to skin, eyes and lungs. 

I think we can conclude from this that anything that contains arsenide is going to be dangerous to our health! And Aluminium phosphide is used as a fungicide and is a probable carcinogen! Imagine that hanging over your dinner table. Aluminium gallium indium phosphide would be exactly the same thing because it's got two of the same things in it.

No one seems to know if Gallium is toxic or not - they just put it in stuff and wait to see how many people die. It's the new Vioxx.

Okay, of course I don't believe there's a conspiracy to poison us with minute amounts of substances which might be considered toxic in certain circumstances. But then, I don't go on about infinitesimally small amounts of so-called "TOXINS!!!" in vaccines either - and I genuinely don't understand how anyone who supports the AVN can promote products that contain compounds of aluminium or arsenic - unless they haven't done the research.

I was also going to write about Meryl Dorey's comment on an article published at CNN but it's just more of the same old "if vaccines work, why are you worried?" nonsense coupled with a notion that better-educated people are never wrong - which is why all educated people are Catholic... and Buddhist and Hindu and Muslim and Protestant... yes, they're all right because they're educated and educated people are never wrong.

But Dorey has got me thinking... if seat belts work, why can't we drink and drive and speed? I guess seat belts don't really work and it's all just a big con to impose authoritarian control and deliver profits to multinational vehicle manufacturers. It's government-ordered stabbing of drivers, with full penetration.*

*I'm using "stabbing" in an historic way, the way litterate people use it, not in the way people use it today.

Psychic Detectives in Oz

This story appeared a couple of weeks ago in the Sydney Morning Herald...

Supernatural sleuths and the search for truth 

The Australian Institute of Criminology advises the families of missing people to avoid psychics, saying: ''Desperation can force people to consider options they would never entertain in more stable times.''

It's something Don Spiers knows all too well. Since his daughter, Sarah, disappeared in 1996 - a suspected victim of Perth's Claremont serial killer - he has been ''hounded'' by up to 400 psychics and clairvoyants offering cryptic clues to her whereabouts.

''They had my emotions on a roller-coaster,'' Spiers told The West Australian in 2008. ''You'd be full of hope … and there'd be nothing. Why would they want to make it worse for me?'

The article offers a detailed analysis of when and why the police might sometimes use self-professed "psychics" to assist with investigations and why families of missing people or murder victims should probably avoid seeking or accepting "assistance" from such people.

Critics ask why she [Debbie Malone] cannot immediately zero in on crucial information, such as the location of a body or the address of a killer.

Malone says it's an unrealistic expectation and if it was that easy, ''every psychic in Australia would be solving the case''.

Whereas, in reality, none ever do. Not one.

So how to explain the discovery of Kristi McDougall's body by Cheryl Carroll-Lagerwey, who dreamed she would find Kiesha Abrahams at the spot?

A Queensland research psychologist, Kathryn Gow, has analysed psychic readings for 20 years and is convinced a small number of psychics have a genuine ability. She suggests that as an Aboriginal elder, Carroll-Lagerwey was ''in contact with the basic elements of life and therefore can probably sense what has happened in an environment''.

The president of the Australian Psychics Association, Simon Turnbull, thinks it likely that ''at that particular event, where a body was waiting to be found, there was an obvious case of confusion to do with the psychic identifying the body''.

Mendham says it may be ''a strange coincidence''.

''Unfortunately bodies do get found in the bush,'' he says. ''She found a body - that's all we know for sure.''

Exactly. People claiming no psychic powers whatsoever have been known to find bodies whilst the vast, vast, vast majority of people claiming such powers never do. Picking one hit out of millions of misses and claiming significance is just silly. It's like those times when you have a song in your head and then it comes on the radio, it happens and we notice it when it does and it seems surprising or amazing. But we usually fail to notice the millions of times when we have songs in our head that don't come on the radio soon after.

If I spend half an hour looking for my car keys in places where I "feel" I've left them, is the moment that I do find them of paranormal significance? I suspect it's more than counteracted by all the previous "moments" in which I didn't find them. Self-professed psychics and their believers never seem to notice all the misses.

Meryl Dorey, AVN & Research

After PZ Myers posted about it on his Pharyngula blog, there's little doubt that the majority of the sceptical blogosphere will very soon be aware of a radio interview between host Tracey Spicer and Australian anti-vaccinationist, Meryl Dorey.

Spicer gave no ground and refused to allow Dorey to tout the AVN website.

Dorey has of course responded to the interview with a post on the AVN blog. I'm going to ignore most of it because it's just a rehash of the same old "if vaccination worked, vaccinated people wouldn't get sick" nonsense. I am intrigued, however, by Dorey's apparent inability to transcribe Spicer's very clear commentary. For example, when Spicer says...

T: It absolutely is news Meryl. It is discrediting...
M: (No it hasn't)
T: ...and disputing the entire research upon...

Dorey transcribes it as...

T: The fact is Meryl, it has been discredited.

M: No, it hasn’t.

T: And it’s confusing (?) the entire research upon

It's not even difficult to hear (except for Dorey's "no it hasn't"). Later in the transcript Dorey writes that she couldn't make out every word of Spicer's comments but those comments are incredibly clear on the online audio. Perhaps Dorey recorded the interview herself rather than relying on the official audio from the radio station? I don't know but it does suggest that the remainder of the transcription might not be a reliable review of the interview. (Update: I see someone else has noticed the discrepancies - a lot of them)

After the interview was terminated, Spicer mentioned some of what's on the AVN website:

Under the heading measles, mumps, rubella, she states that these are all non-threatening illnesses in early childhood.

Meryl responds in her blog:

note from Meryl – I’m not sure what she is referring to... 

It took me five minutes on Google to find one page on the AVN/Living Wisdom website that meets the criteria here.

Unlike vaccination (which offers only temporary immunity), the natural occurrence of each of these diseases (all non-threatening illnesses in early childhood) generally results in lifelong immunity.

She has even highlighted that paragraph in purple, suggesting that she thinks it's an important point.

The webpage is titled "Australian Vaccination Network - General Vaccines & Information - MMR" while the story carries the general heading "MMR" then in large, bold, purple text "Measles, Mumps, Rubella". It looks vaguely like the sort of thing Spicer was referring to. So, as we've come to expect, Spicer was right and Dorey was, apparently, incapable.

I have to wonder about Dorey's research abilities when she can't even find information she presumably posted on her own website.

Given her repeated apparent inability to get even the easy stuff right, I find it difficult to see how Dorey or the AVN can be considered a reliable source of information on something as important as your child's life.

MORE:

Brian Deer's BMJ article about Andrew Wakefield

How does homeopathy work?

Many people have asked this question and the answer is, to say the least, complex. The following video clip explains the basis of homeopathy in a clear and concise fashion and includes comments from Zofia Dymitr, chair of the Society of Homeopaths.



I just saw the clip at Podblack's blog and had to post it here too. It deserves all the publicity it can get.

While Dymitr looks a little shell shocked, Simon Singh shows no signs of bruising from last year's dust up with the British Chiropractic Association.

If nothing else, Dymitr's commentary provides an excellent lesson in obfuscation, obtuseness, circumlocution, passing the buck , discombobulation and weasel wordery.

In summary... how does homeopathy work?


MORE:

Comment from the Quackometer