AVN Response to Sydney Morning Herald Article - 27/7/10
I guess I should not be surprised when the media gets something wrong. It's just that when they get SO MANY things wrong in one article, it's difficult not to read that as anything but intentional bias and deliberate misstatements.
Below is a critique of the article that appeared in today's Sydney Morning Herald, written by Kate Benson, entitled , Vaccine activists labelled a threat.
WHEN their four-week-old baby daughter Dana died from whooping cough Toni and David McCaffery sought love and healing to ease their grief.
Instead, they say they were subjected to a campaign of harassment and abuse at the hands of anti-vaccination campaigners, a group who were yesterday labelled a serious threat to the public’s health and safety.
In July 2009, the HCCC forwarded a complaint that had been made by Ken McLeod, one of the members of the hate group, Stop the AVN. We gave a full and complete response to this complaint in September, 2009. The McCaffery's filed their own complaint against the AVN in December, 2009 and we were not informed of this until their names were added on to the original complaint in February, 2010.
Despite the fact that accusations like the ones above and below were made against both myself and the AVN by the McCaffery's, the HCCC would not allow me to see these accusations. Instead, I was expected to respond to the complaint without having access to it. Anyone can see that this is a denial of the AVN's and my right to natural justice.
As for this supposed campaign of harassment, neither I nor anyone else on our committee has ever contacted the McCaffery's by any means whatsoever - emails, telephone, letter or in person. So this supposed harassment by AVN members is an unsubstantiated claim which, despite requesting further information from the HCCC on this issue, has never been verified by either the McCaffery's or any other officials involved in this investitation.
I can easily say that Julia Gillard calls me up every Saturday night at 9 PM to have a yarn about the kids, but this would be a lie. Likewise, unless proof is provided by the McCaffery's that I or any other AVN member has harassed them, this claim is simply untrue.
For instance, the McCaffery's have regularly said that I have been found to have provided incorrect and misleading information to the ABC radio after an interview last year. They say this despite the fact that they KNOW that it was, in fact, the ABC presenter who was found to have given incorrect information and not me. Please read the following correspondence:
From: ABC Corporate_Affairs11 <CORPORATE_AFFAIRS11.ABC@abc.net.au> Date: 5 February 2010 4:26:39 PM AEDT To: "'meryl@avn.org.au'" <meryl@avn.org.au> Subject: RE: ABC Investigation of vaccination information
Dear Ms Dorey
I refer to your emails of 28 and 29 January to ABC presenter Katya Quigley. In line with ABC complaints procedures, your correspondence has been forwarded to Audience and Consumer Affairs.
As previously advised in a number of my emails to you, the findings of the Audience and Consumer Affairs review did not relate to your contribution to the program or to how the AVN presents statistics. Consistent with ABC complaints procedures, our review related to whether the statements about the statistics made by an ABC presenter complied with the ABC’s editorial standards for accuracy in factual content. Our finding was that the ABC presenter’s statement did not meet the standard, which requires that “Every reasonable effort must be made to ensure that factual content is accurate and in context”.
In addition, the Herald journalist's use of the words "serious threat to the public's health and safety" is something that was made up by the journalist. These words do not appear anywhere in the HCCC announcement and one has to wonder who is in fact running the Sydney Morning Herald when they can make such obviously slanderous comments without any proof or reason?
The Health Care Complaints Commission issued a public warning against the Australian Vaccination Network after it refused to display a disclaimer on its website to inform readers its information should not be taken as medical advice.
For many years, the AVN has had a disclaimer on its website. The HCCC was informed of this back in September 2009, yet like so much of the information provided to this organisation by the AVN, they either chose to ignore it or were incapable of understanding it.
Our disclaimer states that, "If medical advice is required the services of a competent professional should be sought."
What the AVN objects to and has objected to since the beginning of this process over a year ago is the following:
The HCCC has no jurisdiction to investigate the AVN. Both our lawyers and our barrister have pointed this out to this government body several times with references to the Act under which the HCCC was formed. Despite this, the HCCC has refused to address our concerns over lack of jurisdiction in any meaningful way, simply stating that they disagree with our reading of the relevant legislation. If the HCCC has jurisdiction over the AVN and myself, then there would be very few members of either the media or the general public who would not likewise be considered - from time to time - to be 'health educators' under the HCC Act - including the complainants, Ken McLeod and Toni and David McCaffery - all three of whom are self-proclaimed activists for mass vaccination.
Requiring a vaccine safety and health watchdog group such as the AVN to use specific wording on their website or in print or at any time at all makes a mockery of the right to freedom of communication as upheld by the High Court of Australia and by convention in this great democracy we live in. The laws of Australia do not allow censorship of websites unless the content is deemed to incite violence against others or to include racial vilification or child pornography. The AVN website does none of these things and therefore, the HCCC is acting outside the law and is discriminating against not only our organisation, but the thousands of parents across Australia whose children have been killed or injured by vaccines.
Earlier this month the commission investigated the network, run out of Bangalow on the north coast by Meryl Dorey, and found its website presented incorrect and misleading information that was solely anti-vaccination and quoted selectively from research suggesting that vaccination may be dangerous.
The HCCC's 'investigation' consisted of a review of our website and in particular - one single page of our website which currently contains hundreds of pages of information including links to the manufacturer's package inserts for all currently licensed vaccines - information which should be freely available to all but which the health department chooses to exclude.
In addition, I would like to use the following quote from my last response to the HCCC (all correspondence between the AVN and the HCCC can be accessed by clicking here)
"In the most general of terms, I Meryl Dorey will define my identity for the purposes of this response. I consider myself to be a health activist struggling against environmental causes of ill health. I would consider these struggles to be political in nature and any attempt to censor me or the AVN would be seen as an attempt to censor my political views.
"In my opinion, the whole of the 'investigation' findings from the HCCC, are a crude attempt to stifle contrary political opinions about public health that emanate, in this circumstance from those who consider that vaccinations can have no adverse reactions and that groups who raise questions about their safety and effectiveness must be censored to support government policy.
"This opinion is based upon my dealings with the HCCC and the apparent bias which was most evident in the statement made to me by your investigator, Leanne Evans on the 26th of May, 2010.
"When questioned about how either the AVN or myself could get a fair hearing from the HCCC when the Commission seemed to ignore so much of the referenced information I had provided in previous responses, Ms Evans stated that, "The HCCC is a government department and as such, we can't go against government policy which is pro-vaccination."
Our organisation has been running for 17 years. In that time, we have distributed information packs, magazines, newsletters and flyers. Our website contains a very tiny portion of the information we have published and yet, our website was the only thing the HCCC 'investigated' and that investigation concentrated on one single page.
The HCCC requested references to the information on this page - references which the AVN provided. These references were ignored by the investigation with the same questions being asked over and over again until the HCCC made their decision to state that our information is misleading. It is the feeling of the AVN that the bias shown by the HCCC since the beginning of this process required that regardless of the evidence we were able to provide them with, the conclusion was predetermined. The HCCC was required to uphold government policy on this issue which is pro-vaccination and anti-informed choice.
His group now wants the state government to apply for a court injunction against the network and have it closed down. The group’s website says Ms Dorey believes ‘‘vaccines are part of a global conspiracy to implant mind control chips into every man, woman and child and that the ‘illuminati’ plan a mass cull of humans’’.
Evidence yet again that the Sydney Morning Herald is either intentionally ignoring all of the rules of investigative journalism or else, they don't understand how to do research.
Mr McLeod and the others associated with his hate group have continually stated that I believe these outrageous and ridiculous statements. The reason they make this statement is because last year, I posted an article about the Swine Flu vaccine that was printed in the Pakistan Daily to my blog. According to them (and the page is no longer up so it is impossible for me to check the proof of this statement), there was a link to a website owned by a David Icke who believes the statements Mr McLeod attributes to me.
Mr McLeod's contention is that since I posted the article, I am personally responsible for and supportive of not only every word in the article, but every link including sponsored links that appear on the page.
As anyone who has ever used the internet would be aware, this is a fallacious assumption. Pages often have links to other websites that are not under the control of the page owner. If you have Google ads or any other sponsored links, you will almost always see links on your own page that you do not approve of. It does not mean that you support or agree with those links and for Mr McLeod to make these outrageous claims or the Sydney Morning Herald to print them is slanderous at best - deceitful at worst.
Ms Dorey did not return calls yesterday but issued a statement on her website which said the HCCC’s recommendation was ‘‘laughable’’ and she was seeking legal advice.
It is true that the Herald called yesterday but I was out of the office and did not return until too late to respond.
Next, to put things into context, the word "laughable" referred to in the quote above is the only word the reporter actually got right in her entire article. This comes from a press release that the AVN issued yesterday. If the reporter was privy to the information in that press release, one has to wonder why only one word was used - and that out of context with the actual release?
For the edification of those who care about the truth, here is the paragraph that was quoted:
"The HCCC states that our information is misleading because we do not include data on the benefits of vaccination," says Meryl Dorey, Media Spokesperson for the AVN. "Yet this is a laughable assertion when you consider that nobody would expect nuclear safety advocates to issue statements on the benefits of nuclear power; Greenpeace to make films on the pleasures of killing and eating whales; or those who argue against fluoridation of the water supply to write reports about the benefits of mass medication without individual consent.
"Why then should we be expected to make statements we don't believe are factual and that are not supported by the medical literature? If the AVN is expected to show both sides of this issue, why aren't the medical community and the government likewise cited for their lack of disclosure on the risks and ineffectiveness of vaccines?"
I'm sure that any thinking person - though not necessarily any journalist - would realise that the use of the word laughable in this case, was intended to reflect the fact that the HCCC's investigation was incomplete, biased and of grave concern to anyone who believes that Australians have the right to access all available information about any medical procedures before making a choice,