A spokesperson for the Australian Vaccination Network says the organisation is considering appealing yesterday’s ruling that the group must change its name.
The former president of the anti-vaccination group claims they’re being denied freedom of speech.
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“Does the government have the right to tell us what we call ourselves?”
If the name is misleading. Yes. Under the Associations Incorporation Act. That’s the whole point.
The biggest problem facing anti-vax ‘true believers’, is that they are pathologically incapable of considering that they may be wrong.
If Meryl Dorey adhered to the regulations that other similarly-structured organisations seem to stick to without constantly resisting, appealing, complaining and crying victim, she could get on with the business of fulfilling magazine subscriptions, attending university and organising ethical, peer-reviewed studies of vaxed vs unvaxed children’s health.
All we have ever asked from the AVN is to tell the truth. That truth has to be legislated and enforced by the courts says a great deal about the organisation. That they continue to resist telling the truth after all that says even more.
Meryl and the AVN are doing an enormous amount of damage to an important, life saving public health measure which has been responsible for the worldwide eradication of smallpox and the ever decreasing rates of polio; the lives of babies have been saved by vaccination. She is nothing more than a conspiracy theorist who also, as it happens, is an AIDS denialist. The AVN needs to be stopped before more lives are lost as a result of their lies and misrepresentation.
I’m so sick of this ‘government is preventing free speech’ BS that Meryl keeps spouting! At no point have the AVN been told to shut up and stop misleading the public with their anti-vax nonsense (even though they really should) – all they’ve been asked to do is make it clear in their name that they are in fact anti-vax farther than impartial and scientific as their current title might suggest. And as for that interview with Meryl trying to make out that the AVN are not anti-vax, anti-doctors and anti-science, such blatant lies! Is there no end to her grandiose delusions of self importance and persecution?
The AVN wants to be registered as an incorporated body in NSW. They chose to do this for a number of reasons: it’s the first step to obtaining a Charitable Fundraising Authority, and it allows them to put “Inc” into their title and sound like they have some kind of official imprimatur.
If they want to benefit from incorporation under NSW law, then surely they are obligied to follow NSW law. That law says in part that they must have a name that is not misleading the public as to their objectives, and does not suggest that they are an offical government body.
Being obligied to follow the same laws as everyone else does not mean they are being harrassed or denied freedom of speech.
And that Charitable Fundraising Authority? They have held it for many years, and have raised many thousands of dollars. There is no evidence that a single dollar has been spent on a genuinely charitable purpose.
Most importantly, Do Vaccinations work? No. Hype and lies from a failing vaccination program. The only people who would be misled by the AVN name, are those who are brain damaged from vaccine injuries, and Admin and members of SAVN. Well, let’s also include the NSW State of Origin team, not the sharpest tools in the shed.
The truth is that vaccines can and do harm. Evidence is clear that modern standards (water, hygiene, nutrition, cleanliness etc.) got mankind to where we are today. Let the truth be heard, rather than increasing the number of vaccines that mankind have to use to think they can only survive by. As time goes on, how many vaccines are enough? 24 now for a child is madness .. I’m not a sceptic, I’m a realist. How can 36 vaccines for a child be enough? Will mankind survive without the future 79 vaccines? And the sceptics will still have their heads buried in their test-tubes rather than vegetables and fruit. What date (year) will people override stupidness and live naturally? One day, mankind will learn to survive without man-made medication, and live in harmony with the world. Vaccines (chemicals) seem to be increasing year on year. It is time to halt this madness. Did anyone hear of the benefits of pawpaw recently? (No? then go vaccinate with all the associated foreign chemicals and then ask why the cancers and illnesses prevail). Go vaccinate.
From these responses it is easy to see that the attack on free speech, in this regard, is multifaceted, well funded and controlled. If vaccines worked and in many cases were even necessary for civilised lifestyles then they would sell themselves. This issue would be a non event. But, guess what? We have all these protectors of the establishment running around trying to fill sandbags.
What exactly is in the AVN archives that the NSW, so called ‘liberal’ government, does not want revealed?
It’s not a matter of freedom of speech neither there in Australia or here in America or anywhere the government has been given the authority to regulate trade (business) to keep the public safe. The name is misleading. It’s reasonable to believe that they chose the name on purpose, much like the “National Vaccine Information Center” in the US, an organization that is anti-vaccine and uses government-sustained databases to (in the opinion of many) misinform the public on the risks-to-benefit ratio of vaccination. AVN members and leadership can still say all they want about vaccines, but they can’t bait the unsuspecting public into thinking that they are somehow pro-vaccine.
This group of people are playing with children’s lives, forget about the name, they should be dismantled.
The AVN looks to the protection of the Law when it suits them but flouts it when it doesn’t. They have the privileges that come with incorporation. Those privileges come with conditions.
My biggest irritation is how weak the government and it’s departments and agencies are at holding AVN to the standards that everyone else complies with. Throw the book at this organisation and it’s officers.
Although recent attacks on civil liberties are rapidly making lack of choice a problem in itself, the primary problem facing parents who wish to act responsibly to exercise not just choice but *informed* choice regarding a childhood vaccine is the stranglehold on reliable information supported in the first few comments above. That the Australian Vaccination Network’s aim is to provide such information, on the basis of thorough studies rather than official hearsay, is undisputed except by those unwilling to ask questions. The assertion that its name reflects anything else to the point of being misleading is so ludicrous as to be Kafkaesque.
It’s irrelevant whether my uninformed opinion be that all vaccines are a good thing or that they all pose an unnecessary risk to somebody else’s children. The person who needs to make the choices relevant to your children’s health is you. If you wish to do so without thought, without question, without regard to your children’s or others’ prior vaccine experiences, and even without information from independent sources, that’s entirely up to you. If you wish to know for yourself the truth or otherwise of the information that the AVN provides, then that will take a little effort on your part: effort in sorting fact from fiction rather than in merely entrenching ignorant parareligious beliefs.
If the AVN’s information is wrong, you may be able to show that it is. But to draw conclusions of fact on the basis of patently ignorant moral outrage is merely to propagate your ignorance. To conclude on the basis of such farce that the AVN must be silenced reflects the lynchmob mentality that is possible only in the wilfully ignorant and the spineless.
The challenging nature of the vaccine information coming from the only sources that are independent of financial ties with vaccine manufacturers is no basis for concluding that the information must be wrong. Rather, such reasoning, or lack of it, reflects a weakness of mind curable only by exposing oneself to and becoming comfortable with a variety of viewpoints and learning to think critically about them.
@John Harvey: You’re missing the point. The factual accuracy of AVN’s information has already been independently assessed as part of this process. The fact is that it is an anti-vaccination propaganda group. Reading AVN’s material results in you being less informed than you were before, because the true adverse effects of vaccines are already public knowledge (as is their scale, which is not huge) – all AVN add to that is lies, distortions, attacks on people who dare to speak up when their kids are damaged by vaccine-preventable diseases.
Their freedom of speech is not affected by forcing them to choose a less misleading name. They are bigots, masquerading as an informational resource.
It has become obvious to me that some who are posting on this page have not read the Vaccine Manufacturer’s pamphlet stating the side effects of their product.
So our hospitals are closing down children’s wards due to lack of patients. Our health funds are dropping their rates due to the fantastic whollistic health of our society. Pharmaceutical companies are losing value, except for the vaccine manufacturers who cure all our diseases before they occur.
Teachers of children with learning disorders are being integrated back into the mainstream.
The only problem is a small group of diseased, grotty unvaccinated children.
What a wonderful world..
Shelley, you are an idiot if your really think vaccines are ok. Have you considered that YOU are in the wrong, because you so are wrong it is a joke, makes me wonder if your just a paid shill.
My biggest apolige to Shelley, it was directed at Graeme Hanigan, got the wrong name, very very sorry.