New blog post - when 'science' becomes your religion

[Guest guest]

When ‘Science’ Becomes Your Religion « No Compulsory

VaccinationWith the latest push by the Skeptics and their

supporters to silence the message of the AVN, I thought it might be a

good time to share the Editorial I wrote for the latest edition of

Living Wisdom magazine (just out).

It is important to look at not only what they say, but the manner in

which they say it; the actions they take to stifle debate on this issue.

While we welcome debate – ask for it openly – those who oppose free

choice and freedom of speech do so by personal attacks and

vilification.

As a child, I was told that I had an ‘inquiring mind’. I think that

was a polite way of saying that I drove everyone around me nuts with

constant questions.

My mother tried to get away with answering by saying things like,

“Because I said so!” but that just didn’t work with me. “Why?” was my

mantra and I wouldn’t stop asking until the answer made sense. It’s just

the way I was – and still am.

In school, science was my first love. I went to a specialised school for

maths and science and science was always simple for me – at least life

sciences. Science just made sense and the beauty of how the world was

made – how life was constructed – the underlying genius of biology,

captured my imagination in a way that nothing else ever had

before.

My teachers drummed the scientific method into my head. And just as there

are certain constants in this world of ours:

• The sun will always rise in the East and set in the West;

• Gravity will always hold us to the Earth;

• All life on Earth is carbon based, and so on.

The main rule of science I was taught in school was that everything we

accept as true today will need to be tested, retested and verified over

and over again. Because science is fluid; it is liquid and malleable and

it changes constantly.

To me, that is part of the excitement! The constant inquiry into how and

why things work; the tweaking of our knowledge to take into account all

the new information we have discovered – fitting that knowledge into our

scientific base so we are always growing and always testing and retesting

to find out whether what we have based our theorems upon is proven or

disproven.

This is why, when I first started to look into the vaccination issue

after my first son’s reaction over 20 years ago now, the thing that took

me so much by surprise was how little science actually went into the

development of this medical procedure which we have been ‘worshiping’ for

over 200 years.

From its earliest days at the time of Jenner in the mid to late

1700s to today – vaccination has been treated as if it were handed down

to us from the hands of God – infallible, unquestionable and proven to be

both safe and effective.

And Jenner’s ‘scientific breakthrough’ of vaccination was nothing like

what we call vaccination today. This is because the science evolved and

moved on.

To illustrate this change, here is a description of vaccination from the

time of Jenner until the beginning of the last century:

“The technology used to control smallpox in the nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries was neither a painless nor a minor intervention.

n public vaccinators used a lancet (a surgical instrument) to cut

lines into the flesh in a scored pattern. Vaccine matter, also called

lymph, would then be smeared into the cuts. While some private

practitioners preferred to use calf lymph supplied by the National

Vaccine Establishment, the government urged public vaccinators to

vaccinate from arm to arm to keep the supply of vaccine flowing in the

community. This meant that vaccinators required infants to return eight

days after the procedure to allow lymph to be harvested from their

blisters, or ‘vesicles’. This matter was then inserted directly into the

arms of waiting infants.”1

Nowadays, this would rightly be considered an absolutely barbaric and

horrific process to put anyone through – let alone helpless infants – yet

in Jenner’s day, this was the pinnacle of ‘science’ and anyone who

opposed it was called anti-vaccine and anti-science. Sound

familiar?

Scientific Method

In science, there are laws and there are theories. The laws are

givens – things which have stood the test of time and as of today at

least, unless proven otherwise, they are built on bedrock. Isaac Newton’s

three laws of motion are an example of this. For hundreds of years, these

laws have governed how we work with, see and interact with the world

around us.

Apart from the laws (which are only laws until they are broken –

remember, science needs to constantly be tried and tested), there are the

theories.

Now theories, as you can imagine, are not proven. They are a way of

explaining why something behaves the way it does. They are AN explanation

– but not necessarily the ONLY explanation.

The problem emerges when a theory is used as the basis for an entire

branch of science. In medicine, the theory of vaccination states that if

we inject a modified or attenuated (chemically weakened) strain of a

virus or bacteria into a person’s body to induce the development of

antibodies, they will be immune to that virus or bacteria.

We are taught to believe this in spite of the fact that ‘science’ knows

this theory to be incorrect. Still, it clings to it for dear life and

brands anyone who even questions the basis of this belief as a medical

heretic.

We have known since the 1940s that, though antibodies are part of the

immune system, their existence in the bloodstream does not indicate

immunity. Instead, it indicates exposure. The following obituary from

2004 describes one of many scientists who disproved the theory that the

existence of antibodies mean that you are immune.

“Dr. Merrill W. Chase, an immunologist whose research on white blood

cells helped undermine the longstanding belief that antibodies alone

protected the body from disease and micro-organisms, died on Jan. 5 at

his home in New York City.

“…Dr. Chase made his landmark discovery in the early 1940’s while working

with Dr. Karl Landsteiner, a Nobel laureate recognized for his work

identifying the human blood groups. At the time, experts believed that

the body mounted its attacks against pathogens primarily through

antibodies circulating in the blood stream, known as humoral

immunity.

“But Dr. Chase, working in his laboratory, stumbled upon something that

appeared to shatter that widespread tenet. As he tried to immunize a

guinea pig against a disease using antibodies he had extracted from a

second pig, he found that blood serum did not work as the transfer agent.

Not until he used white blood cells did the immunity carry over to the

other guinea pig, providing solid evidence that it could not be

antibodies alone orchestrating the body’s immune response. Dr. Chase had

uncovered the second arm of the immune system, or cell-mediated

immunity”. 2

And even the numerous instances where fully vaccinated individuals

who have been tested and shown to have very high, supposedly protective

levels of serum antibodies to diseases they then contracted, have not

been enough to shake the religious fervour of Western medicine in

defending the scientifically indefensible.

Measles outbreak in a fully immunized secondary-school

population3

An outbreak of measles occurred among adolescents in Corpus Christi,

Texas, in the spring of 1985, even though vaccination requirements for

school attendance had been thoroughly enforced. Serum samples from 1806

students at two secondary schools were obtained eight days after the

onset of the first case. Only 4.1 percent of these students (74 of 1806)

lacked detectable antibody to measles according to enzyme-linked

immunosorbent assay, and more than 99 percent had records of vaccination

with live measles vaccine. Stratified analysis showed that the number of

doses of vaccine received was the most important predictor of antibody

response. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals of seronegative rates

were 0 to 3.3 percent for students who had received two prior doses of

vaccine, as compared with 3.6 to 6.8 percent for students who had

received only a single dose. After the survey, none of the 1732

seropositive students contracted measles. Fourteen of 74 seronegative

students, all of whom had been vaccinated, contracted measles. In

addition, three seronegative students seroconverted without experiencing

any symptoms. We conclude that outbreaks of measles can occur in

secondary schools, even when more than 99 percent of the students have

been vaccinated and more than 95 percent are immune.

This fervour is understandable because when one realises that the

theory of antibodies equalling immunity is found to be incorrect, many

other Western medical practices will also come under question. When you

build an entire industry on a house of cards, anything that threatens the

foundation has the ability to make the entire structure fall down. When

that structure is worth trillions of dollars – quite literally – it’s no

wonder anything that threatens it must be stopped.

This is where the laws of scientific method should come in. These laws

should control medical science but, thanks to the countless billions of

dollars, enormous drug empires, medical reputations and corrupted

government regulators, medical researchers have become nothing more than

the prostitutes of science.

The Skeptics

If Western medicine is a church, the so-called Skeptics are its

Jesuits. And just like the priests of the dark ages, the Skeptics go into

the community, brand those who are ‘non-believers’ as fit for execution

(figuratively, of course) and do whatever they feel is needed to preserve

the power and influence of the ‘science’ they so slavishly follow. To the

Jesuits, it was perfectly fine to destroy a person in this life in order

to save them in the next. After all, converting the non-believers was a

worthwhile goal and would, in the end, be for the greater good of

all.

Like the Jesuits, the Skeptics look down on those who don’t worship

science in the same way they do as barbarians and somehow less than

human. Perhaps it is this attitude to others – as lesser beings – that

enables them to act in the cold, calculating and often immoral way they

do?

But what I find really interesting about this group of individuals (an

oxymoron, I know – but they don’t actually BELONG to anything since the

Skeptics don’t really have a membership per se – they just support the

practices of this organisation) is that when it comes down to it, they

aren’t skeptical (or, to use the proper spelling, sceptical) at

all.

Scepticism involves having a reasoning mind, questioning everything,

never taking facts at face value and treating accepted wisdom with

distrust until being shown the proof to your own satisfaction.

These skeptics do none of that. Rather, they seem to spend all their time

and vast amounts of energy trying to prevent true scepticism in

others.

Why go on about it?

So what?, you may ask yourself. Why even worry about a group that

behaves in this way? Just ignore them and get on with what we’re here for

– gathering information and research, supporting others who are trying to

make an informed choice and protecting our rights.

Well, for 17 years we ignored the skeptics and I for one was quite happy

to do so. They sent abusive emails to many of us in the pro-choice

movement but we were all quite happy to just delete them as the ravings

of dreadfully unhinged minds.

Perhaps they didn’t like being ignored; or perhaps they decided that

direct action would get them to where they wanted to be (wherever that

is?) quicker.

Whatever the case may be, 12 months ago, almost to the day, the attacks

on the AVN and on other organisations started to become vicious.

I will share some of what they have done but to tell you everything would

take a book. I am telling you this so that you understand what our

position is, how we got here and what the likely outcome will be. For

those who subscribe to our email newsletter, you will have seen some of

this before.

Let’s make a list

1. A supporter of the skeptics filed a complaint with the HCCC

(Health Care Complaints Commission of NSW) against both myself and the

AVN, making some very outrageous claims. They claimed that ‘denying’ the

safety or effectiveness of vaccines should be considered a crime against

humanity and they asked that I be legally silenced with a prohibition

order so I can no longer speak about health issues.

Since that time, the skeptics have urged their supporters to file

complaints against me and other AVN members with the HCCC. From what I

understand, dozens of separate complaints have been received – one of the

most upsetting was from the parents of Dana McCaffery – the little girl

who died last year in NSW from whooping cough.

Dana’s parents have charged me with harassing them. They also said that I

had invaded their privacy, perhaps because when their daughter’s death

was reported in the newspaper, I rang the public health unit to ask if

there had been a laboratory diagnosis of whooping cough.

Despite the fact that I had already replied to the initial complaint made

against the AVN and myself with over 30 pages of information and

references, the HCCC chose to tack on the McCaffery’s complaint to the

‘charges’ against us and has not allowed me to see what we are accused

of.

2. The same person who filed the initial complaint against

the AVN and myself with the HCCC, has also filed spurious complaints with

the Office of Liquor Gaming and Racing (OLGR), the Department of Fair

Trading and various other government departments. Though these complaints

are baseless, they have eaten up precious time and resources.

3. A group was set up on Facebook and Twitter called Stop

the AVN. Though our organisation is acting within the law, these skeptics

feel that they have the right to use any and every means within their

power to shut us down. The implications of such an effort are shocking

and one has to wonder why there apparently is no legal recourse when such

anti-competitive, anti-democratic actions are taken?

4. Members of this group contacted all of our advertisers

and asked them to pull their ads from our publication. One of our

advertisers, someone who had taken out a full years’ worth of advertising

in both the magazine and on our website / enewsletter, pulled her ad out.

Her husband said that she had been so terrified by the calls she

received, she was unable to sleep for 2 weeks!

5. Another supporter who had made a very generous donation

to our recent fund-raising efforts, had his website hacked, received

calls from supporters of this group late and night and on the weekends

and was threatened with further action if he did not withdraw his support

of the AVN.

6. They discovered that another volunteer-run group in

Australia, VAIS – the Vaccination Awareness and Information Service, a

support group which has been running in Brisbane since 1994, hadn’t

registered their business name. These immoral individuals registered that

organisation’s name and started a website whose sole purpose was to

attack VAIS and the AVN as well as any other organisation which supports

vaccination choice.

On this website, they have established something called the Hall of Shame

where they have listed the names of people who support free and informed

health choice and have asked people not to support their

businesses.

They have listed the business details for everyone who is involved in

these organisations – even our partner’s private businesses – without any

explanation but perhaps so that the harassment can continue with those

who love us and support what we do.

7. They have tried to get venues where I am scheduled to

present vaccination seminars to cancel and have harassed those who

sponsor such events.

8. They continually attribute things I haven’t said to me.

Saying that I believe in the Illuminati and Reptilian Aliens are just

some of the most blatant examples of this. There are so many more it’s

not even funny. They have even gone so far as to follow links on articles

I’ve sent to our email list and say that I support what is at that link

even when I have sent an article – the links on that page are not under

my control.

9. They have sent death threats to me via Facebook and

publicly accused me of being a child killer because I advise people to

look at both sides before making a decision about vaccination.

10. The McCafferys contacted the ABC to complain about a

program I was on regarding the current whooping cough epidemic. Even

though I quoted the government’s own statistics and had the information I

was discussing peer-reviewed by a doctor who works as a reviewer for such

prestigious publications are the Journal of the American Medical

Association and the New England Journal of Medicine, the ABC made a

finding that the information was not correct. They didn’t say that my

statements were incorrect but that the interviewer had mixed up the years

we were talking about, quoting 2001 instead of 1991. The McCafferys have

taken this information and used it in many public places to state that I

had provided the ABC with incorrect information – a statement that is

verifiably untrue.

Is this a defence of science?

All of this is supposed to be a way of defending science. But the

thing is, science does not need defenders – if science is true and

evidence-based – it can easily defend itself.

The science of the skeptics needs defending however because it is not

true science – it is a faith-based conglomeration of twisted facts, lies

and anger which form an evil perversion of the study of life and the

world around us.

The HCCC

In the last week of May, I received a preliminary finding from

the HCCC. I have 28 days to respond to this and I will be making a full

and scientifically-referenced response to this organisation. (ed note:

I have sent my response back to the HCCC – over 60 pages of my writing

plus another 50 or so pages of references and further

information)

I cannot even begin to guess what the final outcome will be because

to my mind, the accusations against myself and the AVN were worse than

just spurious. They were hysterical, unscientific and obviously lacking

in any facts.

My responses, on the other hand, have been fully referenced, calm and

complete in answering every single charge that had been laid against

either myself or the AVN.

In a fair world where decisions are made based on justice and truth, this

complaint would have been considered no more than a joke and would never

have gone any further than the HCCC’s circular filing cabinet. But in the

world we live in – the outcome is still quite up in the air.

It has been a long year since this abuse has started, but it has steeled

me for the fights to come and given me hope for the future.

Hope?

I know it sounds strange to say that these attacks have given me

hope. And it almost feels strange too though I have been tossing this

idea around for some months.

It’s all due to the many supportive letters I have received from our AVN

members. Not one, not 10 but hundreds of you have written in to say that

this reactionary activity is a sign of our success.

For almost 17 years, these people mainly ignored us – only sending the

occasional abusive email or rabid web page comment. But as the

consciousness of Australian parents about this subject started to rise to

the point where more and more people were questioning vaccination, it

obviously became harder to ignore the AVN.

Perhaps you can say that we are the victims of our own success – and

though I never have felt like a victim – the point is that we have been

more successful than the government or the medical community ever could

have imagined.

Through grass-roots activism (the media certainly cannot take any credit

for this!), we have slowly, over the years, gained the trust and respect

of a small but growing portion of the Australian population.

The AVN doesn’t take all the credit for this change. There are many other

groups and individuals across Australia who have also worked tirelessly

to achieve the goal of free and informed vaccination choice.

But the medical community and the government have done so much to advance

our cause – without even trying!

How the government and medical community have helped

us:

• They have added one of the most dangerous vaccines ever produced –

Gardasil – to the vaccination schedule. Even a sleeping population has

been shocked awake by the enormous number of serious reactions and deaths

caused by this shot.

• They used some pretty serious disease mongering to try and convince us

that if we didn’t take the ‘swine flu’ AH1N1 shot, we would all die

horrible deaths from this ‘pandemic’. When less than 30% of us complied

and we had the mildest flu season in living memory – people started to

ask why the government wasted $100 million of our taxpayer dollars on a

campaign that was totally unnecessary.

• The WA government in conjunction with the Telethon Institute and two

vaccine manufacturers, began an experiment on Western Australian children

aged between 6 months and 5 years of age. The experiment was to see how

safe and effective the seasonal flu vaccine would be in this age group –

a group that had never before been targeted by this shot. The government

knew it was an experiment; the Telethon Institute knew it was an

experiment; the drug companies certainly knew it was an experiment. The

problem was – nobody bothered to tell the parents!

And in a very short time, hundreds of children were hospitalised with

serious reactions to this shot. The medical community sat on this

information until they were forced – kicking and screaming – to release

it.

By the time it became public knowledge, a 2 year old girl in QLD and a 19

year old man in NSW had died shortly after being vaccinated.

Even now, the propaganda machines are working overtime to try and deny

that the vaccines had anything to do with these reactions. But wonder of

wonders – people are no longer buying that!

• The government learned that the recently introduced rotavirus vaccines

were contaminated with 2 pig viruses – one of which was linked with a

wasting disease in swine. The US government withdrew one of these shots

as a precaution (later re-releasing it even though it was still

contaminated) but Australian authorities did not release this information

and refused to withdraw the shots – even as a precaution until they were

shown to be safe.

Parents who were 100% in favour of vaccinations – who never even

questioned whether they worked or were safe and who treated the AVN’s

information the same way the skeptics did – with disdain and distrust –

are now coming to us in large numbers to become better informed.

We had a sell-out seminar in Western Australia and close to 80% of those

attending were not AVN members – they were parents who have been shocked

by recent events into looking further at this issue

The AVN IS dangerous

Professor Fiona Stanley, Australian of the Year and Director of the

Telethon Institute, has stated on Channel 7 Perth, that the AVN is a

dangerous organisation.

And you know what? She is right!

If you are a scientific Jesuit; if you have based your career and your

income on maintaining the status quo in regards to Western Medicine; if

you will benefit from the sale of drugs and vaccines, the AVN is a very

dangerous organisation indeed.

If however you are a caring parent who wants to make the best choice for

your child – whatever that choice may be – and who would like to be fully

informed on both sides of this issue, then the AVN is here for

you.

While ‘science’ would have you believing that though everything else

in the world has both negatives and positives, when it comes to

vaccination, there is only one side, the AVN will be here to provide the

balance to the government’s information. Though in general, our

information is more concerned with the risks and ineffectiveness of

vaccines, we exist solely to give you the side of this very important

debate that the government and medical community have failed to

provide.

And while the attack against us goes on unremittingly, we will hold the

course and continue because the harder they fight back, the closer to

victory we come.

Victory?

What is victory for the AVN? Will we win when all vaccinations are

stopped? No!

Much as the skeptics would like to have you believe that is the case, for

us, victory will be when every man, woman and child in Australia and

around the world knows all the facts about vaccines and also knows that

the choice is for them to make freely and without fear.

Meryl Dorey

meryl@...

Australian Vaccination Network

Living Wisdom magazine

Investigate before you vaccinate

02 6687 1699 - Work

02 6687 2032 - FAX

WHAT PART OF " PRO INFORMATION - PRO

CHOICE " DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?

The AVN is a Charity Authority Holder (CFN11694).

We rely on the help and support of our members and subscribers to

continue offering our services freely and without prejudice.

Please consider helping us by subscribing to Living Wisdom and joining as

an AVN member. Go to

http://www.avn.org.au to

subscribe

We also sell books and information packs. Go to

http://avn.org.au/catalog/ for

more details.

The information contained in

this email communication may be confidential. You should only read,

disclose, re-transmit, copy, distribute, or act in reliance on this

information if you are authorised to do so. If you are not the intended

recipient, please notify us by return email and destroy any

electronic or paper copy of this message. Any views expressed in

this email communication are those of the individual sender,

except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of this

organisation or its representative. The Australian Vaccination

Network (AVN) and Living Wisdom magazine do not

represent, warrant or guarantee that the integrity of this

communication has been maintained nor that the communication is

free of errors, virus or interference. The AVN and Living

Wisdom magazine are not responsible for the results of any actions

taken on the basis of information in this email, nor for any error or

omission and they expressly disclaim all and any liability to any person

in respect of anything done or omitted to be done by any person in whole

or partial reliance upon the whole or any part of the contents of this

email. If medical advice is required the services of a competent

professional should be sought.

Remember - vaccination is not compulsory in Australia - the decision

about whether to vaccinate is yours and yours alone.