WA seminar a great success!

I got back late on Friday from what I consider to be an incredibly successful seminar in WA. We had over 200 people at this sold-out event and everyone who was there (with the exception of the 3 Skeptics in the audience who spent the entire time sending out tweets and obviously had no time left to listen or learn), was very thankful that the AVN had persisted against all opposition to bring this information to them.

Judy Wilyman's talk was incredible and some of the information she provided about the history of smallpox was brand new to me. I will be asking her to allow us to post her slides to our website and I will also be doing the same with my slides.

We also recorded (audio only - sorry) the entire event including question time and I will be posting this to Youtube within the next day or two so if you are upset that you were not able to attend due to distance or the fact that the event was sold out, have no fear! You will still be able to see the slides and follow-along with the audio - almost as good as being there.

Of course, there was a great deal of opposition to our talk - mostly from the usual suspects. The WA skeptics purchased tickets to the seminar and sat in as I stated above, but they were adamant in their assertion that our info was incorrect and that somehow, credulous parents who are unable to distinguish right from wrong and who therefore need to be spoon-fed the garbage spewed out by their organisation, would be led to making the wrong vaccination decision through attendance at our seminar.

The WA Shadow Minister for the Arts, John Hyde, issued a statement to say that allowing the AVN to use a State Library as a venue was tantamount to State endorsement of vaccination choice (as if that would be a problem since this is a legal choice anyway) and that our organisation was like a bikie gang or the Ku Klux Klan. After we had both been interviewed for Channel 7 news, I asked Mr Hyde for his card so I could send him some information about what the AVN does.

He then told me that he knew what we did and that we provide misinformation. I asked him to give me an example of some misinformation we had provided and he stated that even though he was not of the same party, Michael Wooldridge, the former Minister for Health, had said that we were misinforming the Australian public.

I had to laugh and say that if he were going to criticise the AVN, could he please choose someone with some credibility to use as an example? Michael Wooldridge's period as Health Minister was defined by his strong pro-vaccine stance. He introduced the Immunise Australia program; brought in the GPII to bribe doctors to push vaccines and to punish those who did not; he introduced the carrot and stick approach linking vaccination compliance with government financial entitlements.

This is the same Michael Wooldridge who went straight from his ministerial position to a high-paid consultancy job for Big Pharma. As a result, the government was forced to pass legislation (named after him) to ensure that this never happens again. Wooldridge's criticism could be considered an endorsement as far as I am concerned. And here is this person who, because he is an opposition front-bencher - is able to make such inflammatory and ill-informed statements in the media without any basis in fact.

Professor Fiona Stanley whose Telethon Institute oversaw this recent flu vaccine experiment, stated that the AVN was a dangerous organisation and that parents who listened to what we said would see their children die. Well, she is entitled to her opinion but it is my experience that parents who do not make informed vaccination and health choices are much more likely to have their children become ill or die than those who have researched their decisions and taken responsibility for their actions.

I had invited Professor Stanley and several representatives of WA Health to our seminar and had reserved seats right up at the front of the auditorium for them. Unfortunately, none of them were in attendance which is a shame. They may have learned something - at the very least, a bit of respect for the rights of others to use science to make medical decisions - even if the science these parents use is in opposition to their beliefs.

Despite all the to-ing and fro-ing and the accusations and threats, the seminar went off without a hitch. We hired 2 security guards who were lovely men. They helped women in with their prams and assisted with the setting up and they listened very carefully to the seminar and even took the free information flyers that were on offer. Hopefully, they will spread the information amongst their family and friends.

The library also had 2 security guards that we had to pay for due to the threats from the Skeptic supporters. What a shocking situation when people representing children and families need to be in fear of their safety due to a small group of fanatics who oppose freedom of information and freedom of speech.

Luckily though, all of this was not necessary and the evening went off without a hitch. I have spoken with larger groups in the past (more than 500 at the Nexus conference several years ago and close to that number at a chiropractic function before that), but this group was so interested in everything that was said and asked some very insightful and intelligent questions during question time too. There were many blooming bellies in the audience and lots of young bubs too and best of all - the majority of those in attendance were not AVN members - they were people who were just starting to question whether vaccination was in their child's best interest or not.

Apart from the seminar itself, I had a very busy time in WA.

Through the assistance of one of our long-time professional members, a meeting was set up between myself and a gentleman who has been investigating the effects of both sexual / physical abuse and illegal medical experimentation with both drugs and vaccines on children in orphanages and other state-run and religious institutions. This man has been collecting data from the government under freedom of information for over 16 years and he has a very strong case to make against these practices.

Whilst most people think that this sort of experimentation only took place decades ago, as the recent flu vaccine campaign in WA proves, experimentation on children is ongoing - with or without the knowledge of their parents.

I also met with the mother of a 1-year-old child who has been in Princess Margaret Hospital for over 7 weeks after a shocking reaction to her seasonal flu shot - the shot that has recently been withdrawn for children under the age of 5. The family has asked that I not release any information about their child and I respect their right to privacy. I do want to say however that there are many other children like her out there who we do not know about and that all of these situations are very tragic because they were just so preventable.

The Cochrane Collaboration's 40-year retrospective study on the flu vaccine showed that in children under the age of 2, the vaccine was completely ineffective. This study came out well before the ill-conceived WA government experiment on the state's most vulnerable citizens. Despite the knowledge that the vaccine would not prevent illness in these kids, the vaccine went ahead with the expected results - more sickness and deaths and no benefit at all. I hope that those families whose children were affected by this shot will come together in a class action against those who put their children's health at risk for no good reason.

If anyone reading this has any contact with these families, please ask them to contact the AVN as we will do everything in our power to help get the ball rolling and to bring this legal action to court. We have contacts with medical experts around the world and can help with obtaining expert opinions. It is vital that legal action proceeds as it may be the only way to apply the brakes to the vaccine runaway engine that is looking at introducing so many new and untested vaccines into our population in the near future - vaccines against such things as cigarette smoking, breast cancer, RSV (the common cold) and more.

The government, the drug companies and all those involved in using our children as guinea pigs must be held accountable when these experiments go wrong and legal action may be the only way to do that.

In closing, I would like to thank everyone in WA who was so helpful and kind to me during my stay. I look forward to getting back there in July to continue the work we've started.