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Vaccination Saves Lives: Stop The Australian Vaccination Network


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The Story



OPERATION NUTCRACKER - WOODFORD OVERFLIGHT

Welcome visitors from Bad Astronomy! If you're looking for the plane flight wiki, you'll find it here. The rest of this page is devoted to the leadup.

Vaccination Saves Lives flyover wiki

STOP PRESS

Change of programme is announced on the Woodford Facebook page (posted 9:30pm 24 Dec 2011 - woodford post ~7:30pm)

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http://news.woodfordia.com/index.php?id=147

Meryl Dorey is attempting to spin this as "it's what I wanted all along". #stopAVN has news for her. You don't want this, Meryl. You've turned the PR environment around Woodford's Annual festival into a toxic sludge and now you're going to get called out on every lie you make. Have fun.



Meryl Dorey of the Australian Vaccination Network is back on the bill at the Woodford Folk Festival. Meryl Dorey has repeatedly and wilfully demonstrated herself incapable of providing accurate information on vaccination, even when corrected. Her appearance at Woodford, then, is a clear and present danger to public health.

Up to 130,000 people - many of them impressionable young families - will be attending the festival, so this is a potential disaster for public health in the region, as well as a PR nightmare for the sponsors and the festival as an ongoing concern.

The background on the story can be found over at the blog, but there's plenty of other coverage

UPDATE: Organiser Bill Hauritz has responded to Mama Mia - and he's entirely unapologetic, as well as being quite a long way down the rabbit hole. Read the fail here

Note: This is not a free speech issue. Meryl Dorey has a right to her opinions (if not her own facts). However for her to be presented, inaccurately, as an "expert" and then given a privileged platform and a microphone is a major problem. Her information is debunked, repeatedly and thoroughly. She is known to be disastrously wrong about vaccination. She should not be presented as an expert.

Now that it's hit the mainstream media, Do you think perhaps the Woodford Wikipedia page needs a "2011 Antivaccine controversy" section? UPDATE: The festival's Wikipedia page now has a "controversy" section outlining this scandal

You need this link: Imunisation myths and realities

A change.org petition has been started, addressed to incoming federal health minister Tanya Plibersek. Please sign

GetUp has a campaign to stop Dorey being billed as an expert You know what to do

LINKING TO THIS PAGE? use http://bit.ly/WoodfordFF



The Reactions

Blogs, News Stories and letters


A Letter to Councillor Bob Millar by Amy Ives

Email from Doctor LT to Woodford Organisers and Moreton Bay Council

Email to QLD Health Minister Geoff Wilson

I just followed up my own letter to Woodford organisers (at 12:15pm 13 Dec) with:

Just a quick note to let you know I'm still waiting for a response. The outcry on the web and in social media is growing, and Tracey Spicer has just taken the story to radio. You need to make a good and firm PR response as soon as possible, because all the indications are that this will grow.

Jason I have still not received an email response from the Woodford organisers as of 21 Dec 2011

In a lighter vein, Meryl Dorey graces The Wank Report

A dissenting opinion from Croakey: Why Meryl Dorey Should Stay On The Woodford Festival Program

Dorey's Response
Waaaaah! Free Speech! Where are my flying monkeys? FLY, MY PRETTIES! FLY!

Search results

The mama Mia article is running top of page 2 bottom half of Page one on a Google search for "Woodford Folk Festival" at the time of update - https://www.google.com/search?aq=f&gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=woodford+folk+festival&safe=active

12:19pm 13 Dec: BitBucket's results reported as running 3 and 4 for "Woodford Folk Festival" - confirming now.

Linking to the story with the text "Woodford Folk Festival" will inevitably drive these results upwards.

As Wotnews shows, coverage of the festival has been dominated by the anti-vaccine scandal.

Social Media

The current Twitter buzz can be seen here and at The Wall. There are tweets going to sponsors, as with this example from @eggrings

"celebrity skeptic" Phil Plait has tweeted the story today (13 Dec 2011), so increased international traffic is expected.

Woodford's Twitter account is @woodfordff and their facebook page is here (currently locked to public posts). They can be emailed: qff@woodfordfolkfestival.com

It has been suggested that we contact QLD Premier Anna Bligh for a statement. She tweets via @TheQLDPremier (STATEMENT LINKED HERE)

More, as always, can be found at Stop The AVN and #stopAVN, this story is developing.

Lead story on dwinter's Paper.li

Tweets mentioning 'woodfordff' are now being archived by Skepticator.com for later analysis and citation.

Current Twitter search for "Meryl Dorey"

What's with the weird Woodford Tweets?

Other

Woodford appear to have already attracted public criticism this year

Tracey Spicer has tweeted that she'll be talking about this on Radio 2UE shortly

UPDATE: AUDIO of the Tracey Spicer piece can be found here.

Chrys Stevenson reports she'll be appearing on WIN TV 14/12/11 MIDDAY video to follow, we hope-- Video here

UPDATE: Mike Stuchbery Reports that the Sydney Morning Herald may be picking up the story, and approaches have been made to the Courier Mail and the Sunshine Coast Daily.

UPDATE: Steve Cannane reports that ABC's The Drum will be covering the scandal VIDEO HERE

QLD Premier Anna Bligh has a response here - correspondents are letting her know that Hauritz is wilfully ignoring pleas for sanity, and that it's time some muscle was flexed.

Trending in Melbourne

15/12/2011 4pm Looks like JJJ and ABC Radio have been removed from the Woodford Sponsors page http://t.co/8k5MrNIb









More Info

Here's how Dorey has been billed:

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With regard to the 1 in 38 statistic, this is cherry-picked from a South Korean study and can probably be considered a statistical outlier, or a study artifact, since it's only a single study which leaps from previous estimates quite dramatically (reputable analysis here). The Actual Australian rate is around 1 in 160, as determined by Swinburne University. (Thanks Paul Gallagher for digging this up).

Prediction 1: Dorey will "confuse" parts per million and parts per billion - a difference factor of 1000 - when she mentions mercury in her talk. You can take that one to the bank, since she's done it before, been corrected, then done it again shortly afterwards

Prediction 2: Dorey will "defend" the discredited (for fraud) former Doctor Andrew Wakefield, and repeat the canard that MMR a) causes autism and b) contains mercury. It doesn't and it never did

Here's a link to the Immunisation Handbook in case you encounter an antivaxer that needs schooling

PRESS: If you'd like to contact someone about this story, please feel free to use the social media links on the left, and I can either assist personally or refer you through #stopAVN



Sponsors List

(thanks @reasonablehank for the screenie)

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Note: ABC/TripleJ are not financial supporters, and offer only editorial assistance.

Clarke Kann Lawyers can be found here http://www.clarkekann.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=220&Itemid=218

Midell Water are here http://www.midellwater.com.au/index.php?id=13 (incidentally, to annoy the natural nuts, Midell are involved with CSG mining)

Skill Centred Queensland are here http://training.gov.au/Organisation/Details/39308cca-bbe9-46e5-a538-acbb1959b01a?tabIndex=2

Brisbane Marketing are her http://www.brisbanemarketing.com.au/About-Us/Contact-us.aspx

Moreton Bay Regional Council http://www.moretonbay.qld.gov.au/general.aspx?id=72496 OFFICIAL STATEMENT HERE

QLD State Government http://www.qld.gov.au/contact-us/



... more to follow

Background on Dorey

Meryl Dorey is easily Australia's most debunked woman

Here's a search page of my blog on the topic of Meryl Dorey, if you need to see how idiotic she really is.

You can also try out MerylDorey.org and StopMerylDorey.com.

Reasonable Hank's blog is an excellent source of information on Meryl Dorey's equivocation, errors, misrepresentations and outright lies

Peter Bowditch has been following Meryl Dorey's idiocy for many years

She, through the organisation she runs as her own personal fiefdom, is subject to an unprecedented NSW HCCC public warning

NSW OLGR removed her group's charitable status due to serious irregularities, some of which were referred to law enforcement. Her group's finances are under severe scrutiny, especially as the group's bi-monthly magazine has fallen woefully short of its advertised six issues per year for the last few years.

THAT MAKES SENSE ALF



Forward Planning

Assuming Woodford refuses to pull Dorey's talk, some suggestions for forward planning.

Supporters of this campaign booked to attend Woodford should consider one of two options:

  1. Decline to attend
  2. Attend and participate in action

I'm of the opinion that attending and participating in action is the way to go. We will need boots on the ground to monitor Dorey's talk for the inevitable lies and deception, and to report them back to the appropriate authorities

It may also be useful for well-enough informed attendees to challenge Meryl in Q & A - but be aware you do need to be well informed

We also need volunteer monitors to keep an eye on appeals for funding. Dorey is banned from making public appeals for funding by the NSW OLGR. This event is in QLD, however QLD authorities would be most interested to hear NSW orders being breached across state borders. We need volunteers to retain any flyers handed out by Dorey, and to capture any public appeals on film (if legally possible - do not breach any laws to obtain footage). If we cannot stop Dorey disseminating her nonsense, we can challenge it, and make it difficult for her to get away with it unscathed.

At all times, stay civil, stay factual, be considered, and be better than the other guy. And if you can, have fun and be friendly to the public. People at protests with too much serious face end up looking like deranged cultists.

For those in the area who do not have tickets, @skeptimite has expressed an interest in some action at or around the site, which I'm hoping to have more information on soon.



And Lastly...

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