Letters to Copeland Publishing – Please keep them coming in

Less than an hour ago, I requested that people write to Marion Day at Copeland Publishing and/or the Editor, Sean  Mooney at this website to let them know how you felt about Copeland rejecting our advertisment sight unseen (please click here to read more about this situation). I am absolutely gob-smacked about the response and felt that I should share your letters with others to hopefully not only inspire them, but to also give them some ideas about what you can say in their own letters. Please don’t forget to send a copy of your letter to me at meryl@avn.org.au. I will continue to post these letters onto my blog so keep on checking back – our readers are the most articulate and brilliant in the entire Western world, I reckon!

Freedom of expression

Hi Marion,

Thank you for taking the time to read my email… I have just been informed by Meryl Dorey that your company has refused to accept advertising from the AVN.

Being a small town, Port Vila relies on the transfer of information and literature within its community and previously I had organised several copies of your magazines to be sent over to Vanuatu for distribution via the XXXXXX Network as I felt it was a worthy source of information for people stuck so far from civilisation. I now must revise this opinion as obviously you do not present an unbiased opinion on matters that are VERY important for every parent to decide on and as such I will no longer be reading your publication and I will make it very well known in this country that your magazine does not present the best information available to parents.

The AVN allowed me to know that mercury was used in vaccines as a preservative so that I could ask the local doctor here for my daughter’s shots without this adjuvant. The AVN provide information that is not readily available and as such is a very important resource to ALL parents wishing to make informed choices with regards to their child’s health care.

It may mean very little to you Marion, but you have just lost readership in an entire country.

Kind regards,

RB

An emotional issue

Dear Marion,

No doubt about vaccination as an emotive issue!  No doubt about the need for both sides of the issue to be debated too!

Meryl Dorey of AVN has a wealth of balanced information and compelling statistics that counter the dogma delivered by the medical profession (including the Skeptics). One of the questions to which parents deserve an answer … to what do we attribute the EPIDEMIC of metabolic, immunologic, neurologic, and digestive disorders that now afflict our children?

I am a pharmacist with an honours degree, I have a diploma in clinical nutrition and am the author of a best-selling series of books on improving the health of the next generation by natural means (including non-vaccination). During my 40 years in health care (orthodox and complementary) and in two decades of lecturing to health professionals around Australia, NZ and the US, it’s been my privilege to meet many others who are against vaccination.

Sadly – and this applies largely to orthodox medicos, taking a stand against vaccination requires courage when such a stand often puts them at risk of professional condemnation.

That courage is required by the media as well – otherwise I say “why bother!?!?”

Having been a reader of your magazines since my children were small, I was disheartened to learn of your rejection of AVN’s advertisement. Parents AND CHILDREN deserve better! I certainly won’t be reading your magazines in the future, nor will I suggest them as a useful resource to the many families who cross my path.

JR, B.Pharm (Hons) Dip. Clinical Nutrition

A loyal reader from Melbourne

Dear Marion,

It has just come to my attention that your ‘Child’ magazines distributed around Australia have elected to not publish paid advertising that the AVN were to have published in the group of ‘Child’ magazine.  As a long time regular and LOYAL reader of Melbourne’s Child I’m absolutely gobsmacked and disgusted that this stance has been taken and that the company that you work for has decided to take censorship into its own hands.  It leaves me feeling that I’m being fed ONLY what your company wants me to see, believe and profit most from.

Regardless of mine or anyone else’s beliefs about childhood immunisation, I would have thought that an ethical approach would have been the only approach available to the company you work for considering their magazines have a vested interest in the health and well being of Australia’s children.

Yours sincerely,

JM

Mystified by this move

After spending many years reading your publications aimed at parents with children it is with much disappointment that I need to write this.

I felt that you were an honest mob helping parents get an idea on subjects from all angles. Why this should be different when the AVN try to advertise mystifies me, and I will certainly be letting all parents in the various groups and organisation that I am associated with know about this discrepancy. I feel it would be in your interest to run this ad to maintain your integrity in the eyes of parents who read your paper. Or are editors so much under the influence of the dollar that you no longer have any moral standing of your own?

Regards HZ

To the Editor

Dear Mike

I am extremely disappointed to learn of your Company’s decision not to publish the advertisements of the AVN in your Child magazines.

I am a reader of your magazine. It is clear to me that your magazines are influential with many families and have the potential to help thousands of Children. Your refusal to even look at the AVN add let alone to run it is a professional and ethical disgrace.

I will never look at your magazine the same way again – it is clear to me that you pander to vested interests and accordingly your stories are so tainted. I will most certainly be passing on this information to those I know who read your magazine.

I will also cease to support any of your advertisers products. That is, unless they cease to support any organisation that behaves as unethically and recklessly as yours.

Yours Sincerely

LB

A free society?

Dear Mr Mooney,

As a parent living in a free democratic society that is Australia, I am very disappointed that economic interests rather than moral and ethical judgment and fairness, have led you to make the decision to reject advertisements from AVN without even looking at their content or understanding the facts that this organization stands for.

I hope that as an editor of this magazine, you will review your decision and accept the AVN ads as not only legitimate but also extremely important. Parents need to be aware of the other voice which is not one of the economic interests of multinationals and the big PHARMA (whose concern is the millions they can make from the vaccination push whether or not they are putting the lives and health of millions of children, teenagers and adults) rather than than a genuine concern towards the health of the population.

We all need to be informed of the truth in order to make an informed decision to vaccinate  and your position is critical in giving millions of parents the opportunity to know this TRUTH.

Thank you, Yours sincerely, AC

It’s all about choice!

Hi Marion,

As a mother of 3 children and reader of Melbourne’s Child and also a past advertiser I was horrified to read that you are not prepared to allow AVN to advertise.  It is a sell out of parents right to be informed and choose whether to vaccinate their children in the traditional way.

I for one thought that you tried to be objective in your magazine but the advertising dollars of the pharmaceutical companies and the government must mean more to you and as an editor that must make you feel pretty bad.

There is a valid reason Meryl and her organisation represent a threat to the medical profession regarding vaccination as they inform parents of the risks of vaccination.  Parents can still choose to vaccinate.

As a parent who was faced with a very sick baby as a result of vaccinations I was given no answers and no where to turn by the medical profession. Meryl’s organsiation is at least treating parents with the respect that they have a right to be informed what is being injected into their children’s bodies.

Your decision leaves me no doubt in my view that the media do not care about truth or childrens health or the democratic right of the parents to be informed. You have compromised your magazine’s integrity completely from my perspective.

Regards

TR

Reader for 5 years To Whom it May Concern,

I have just become aware of your decision to not allow the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) to advertise in your publication.  As a regular reader of Sydney’s Child Magazine (the advertisements as well as the articles) I would like to express my surprise and disappointment at your decision to not allow the AVN to advertise.  It is a little bewildering to me that your would consider the AVN too controversial or potentially damaging to your image as a highly regarded magazine.

I have always enjoyed the generally balanced stance your magazine tends to take on all matters relating to children and parenting.   It is great to read about things from many different perspectives and while not always agreeing with the viewpoints expressed, I especially enjoy reading the letters to the editor.

Let me just say that I have no affiliation with the AVN, I occasionally check their website for recent articles or studies about vaccination that have been published out of my own curiosity and I have never donated money to their cause.  I do however feel that they offer parents (and medical professionals) a useful source of information regarding ALL aspects of vaccination, even the ones unliked by parts of the pharmaceutical industry or the mainstream health industry.  Having such information only empowers parents so that they can make decisions being fully informed.  (By the way, my own children are partially vaccinated).

It seems to me a shame that you would make the decision to censor an advertisement by an organisation comprised of volunteers, whose aim is simply to inform.  I suspect that most readers of your publication would be surprised to learn that you feel it necessary to take censorship out of their hands.  We can make our own minds up thanks.

Sincerely,

LY Sydney’s child reader for 5 years.

Please keep your letters going in to Sydney’s Child – forward this information to others and also, send copies of your responses to me at the email address above.