Medical Vilification and Bigotry in Australia

Society likes to think that it's come a long way. We no longer call black people 'niggers', gay people 'poofters' or Asian people 'slit eyes'. We've gotten beyond all that now. We're so proud of how advanced we've become. But scratch the surface of many people and you can expose their inner bigot. And when it comes to medical bigotry, this behaviour is not only openly accepted by the media and most mainstream institutions - it's government approved!

Quick explanation for those who have always thought the word 'bigotry' was synonymous with 'racism', in actuality, a bigot is anyone who is intolerant of those who hold differing opinions. So you could say that everyone who is a member of Stop the AVN - by definition - is a bigot. As are the media, the government and most mainstream medical organisations.

Just look at how the Minister For Health's office has acted to withhold information on parent's rights to become conscientious or medical objectors to vaccination in order to claim all of their entitlements? Or how representatives of mainstream medical organisations and government bodies continually try to blame outbreaks of infectious diseases on the healthy unvaccinated members of society when most of those contracting the illnesses are fully vaccinated but not protected. It's bad enough that they are pointing the finger of blame directly away from the obvious culprit - vaccines that are not working as promised - but they are also vilifying innocent families who have made a conscious informed choice not to vaccinate or those who have already suffered due to vaccine reactions.

Bad behaviour continues

Yesterday, I wrote a blog post about Pseudo-Skeptics Behaving Badly and as expected, most of the people who support freedom of health choice were appalled and disgusted by the sort of behaviour evidenced by Peter Bowditch who has had a long connection with both the Australian Skeptics (acting as their President at one time) and the splinter group that was set up with the express purpose of annihilating our organisation - Stop the AVN. I didn't expect him to cop a lot of criticism from those groups. No, I thought they would just ignore my blog and pretend it had never happened.

What occurred has shocked even me - and I thought I was past being shocked!

Not only did these groups and the individuals supporting them not criticise Bowditch's abusive bullying behaviour - they applauded it!

And last night and today, Bowditch compounded his shocking assaults against innocent supporters of the AVN as you can see below:

So once again, he implies - to the mother of a vaccine-injured child - that she gets sexual pleasure from dead babies! As if that were not bad enough, he then sends a graphic and violent message to this same mother:

Just to make sure that parents of vaccine-injured children know where his heart is on this issue however - so there can be no doubt or confusion - he posts this juvenile image under the heading of - a message for all anti-vaccination liars - to express his feelings about the people he has hurt:

Civil society works because there are certain lines that we don't normally cross. Bowditch crosses those lines on a regular basis and the fact that Mia Freedman and members of Stop the AVN and the Australian Skeptics cannot seem to see that is a disturbing insight into their worldview and bears examination. If people from the Australian Skeptics and SAVN can look up to or admire a man like Bowditch, how low do they have to be? I feel that people who cannot see what is inherently vile and disturbing about Bowditch's rhetoric could be capable of anything.

Let me repeat - this man has a regular blog on Mia Freedman's Mamamia page; he writes on various news websites and makes himself out to be an expert on many health issues which, by all available evidence, he knows nothing about. And he regularly abuses, assaults and bullies those who disagree with him!

Should this be allowed to continue? Should this person be allowed to keep his position with organisations like the Australian Skeptics, Stop the AVN, Mamamia, etc?

I say no. And I say that these groups should immediately and publicly come out to distance themselves from him and repudiate his brutal way of dealing with those whose opinions he disagrees with. Vilification and bigotry have no place in Australia.