Things are looking up: Vaccination saves lives

Look up, look up, look up. The massage in the sky is that "Vaccination saves lives".

The appearance of Meryl Dorey at the Woodford folk festival has been a major theme for my recent blog posts. But now it seems to be coming to an exciting climax. Meryl talks today. And the grass roots campaigners have a special surprise in store for the president of the Australian Vaccination Network. All Ms Dorey has to do is look up to the sky.

Above: Ms Dorey's write-up in the online program

At this very moment a "Vaccination Saves Lives" banner is being towed by an aircraft over the festival site. The timing coincides with Ms Dorey's talk, due to start at the blue lotus tent any moment. It should be a treat for the festival goers, while being a poke at Ms Dorey's many cries about attempts to suppress free speech.

We encourage the audience to look up to the sky to see how we used our freedom of expression.

More photos (and a great blog) at Skeptimite 

The pro-evidence, pro-science, medical community have tonnes of literature regarding the efficacy of vaccinations. And with the current rise in vaccine preventable diseases, such as whooping cough and measles, it is vital that children and adults alike are vaccinated to improve herd immunity. Most people don't realise that these diseases can result in hospitalisation, long term health concerns and even death.  This is seriously scary stuff!  There is literally a 'body count' associated with anti-vax lies. Babies dying from something this  preventable simply should not happen in this country. This is why public awareness and education is so important. This is why the Stop the AVN does what they do. This is why the "Vaccination Saves Lives" campaign has been launched.

So Woodfordians, look up to the sky.

In response to the first wave of blogs, mainstream media coverage, public out cry and ministerial condemnation, on Christmas eve the Woodford committee announced a  change to the program.  Dorey is no longer given the privilege of a solo presentation based on her lies about autism. Instead she will now be on a panel with Professor Andreas Subrbier, the head of the immunovirology Lab at Qld Institute of Medical Research. It is so nice to see a real medical mind speaking at woo-ford! Of course, we'd rather the mis-information and nonsense spouted by the Australian Vaccination Network was given no platform at all! This is because we expect Meryl Dorey to lie. Never-the-less, it has provided a wonderful opportunity to promote vaccination. Because they really do save lives.

Festival goers should look up, rather than listen to Meryl Dorey's dangerous mis-information.

Unfortunately, for the festival's PR, I feel that their program change may have been too little too late.

• Wikipedia already has a "controversies" section on the Woodford folk fest page. 
• The members of the Stop the AVN Facebook group have banned together to arrange this banner and leaflets to be passed out to those attending the forum.
• This "vaccination saves lives" message from the heavens is bound to draw even more media coverage. 
• I also happen to know that an army of tweeters and bloggers are poised computer side- right now!

I think it's time to check the barometers. There's another storm on the way!

Now we're a criminal gang of hypocrites*

Well, yesterday, Meryl Dorey blogged about the recent false DMCA's filed against the Stop the Australian Vaccination Network (SAVN).  "In two hours, I filed approximately 50 copyright claims against various Facebook members for using screenshots of my posts without my permission." (Dorey, M, 2011). I had wondered how long it would take the person responsible to own up. Only a couple of Days apparently. It is clear that Ms Dorey believes that anything she says or does is automatically copyright. "I know that my words, my images and my posts are my own and they have no right to use them for any purpose without my express permission."(Dorey M,2011) This includes the comments I highlighted, made on the ABC 4corners forum (I wonder if the ABC has Ms Dorey's express permission to archive her forum responses?). It is also apparent that she doesn't understand that concept of Fair Use (as it is known as in the US) or Fair Dealing (essentially the same in Australian). If you've been following this saga, you'll know that the reproduction of material that is copyright is allowable for the propose of criticism, and that I went to some length to ensure the screenshot was properly referenced. There was no doubt about where it had come from, are who had made the statement "Measles is NOT a serious disease" (Dorey M, 2005). 


The blog titled "Hypocrisy- thy name is 'SAVN'" Describes the extreme lengths that AVN members have had to go through to feel safe using the social networking site. I too have worried about my family being victimsed, and blocked access to photos for anyone outside a customised list of approved viewers. I have increased security has strongly as I can, I have blocked accounts of known harassers, I blog and tweet under the alias Eggrings (admittedly, it's not a particularly good alias). One can make the links between the "real" me and Eggrings, but I didn't want it to be easy. My point is, this is nasty. Both sides are feeling that insure on the internet. But, really, learning to protect yourself on the internet isn't a bad skill to have anyway.

Ms Dorey also continues to harp on about the pornographic images Personal Messaged to her, and fellow AVN members. This did happen. Ms Dorey has every right to be appalled, offended, and pursue any legal action she sees fitting. At the time that this occurred, I was still new to the SAVN, and didn't really catch everything that was unfolding. What I DO know is that this behavior was never condoned by the SAVN. In fact most members of the SAVN facebook page were appalled and offended too.  Ms Dorey only quickly mentions that this was a "member of the SAVN page (to be fair, SAVN did kick this person off after they were alerted to his abusive messages) "(Dorey M, 2011) As one Facebook member of the SAVN said "blink and you'll miss it".  From Ms Dorey's blog, one could be easily lead to believe this was common practice on our group site "Indeed, abuse and harassment is their stock in trade."(Dorey M, 2011). 


Finally, Ms Dorey has missed the fact that she my in fact be committing an illegal act by lodging these DMCA's. Without an understanding of the acceptable grounds of Fair Dealing and Fair Use of copyright material, it could be easy to see why the posting of someone else's comments may appear to be an infringement of copyright. But, for the reasons I've already outlined, I believe I was within the law when I posted the screenshot. This being the case, Ms Dorey has filed a false DMCA against me- and 50 other images on the SAVN website. This is illegal.


In closing:

The AVN has gone and spoiled all of their fun and they are not going to come out and play any more until Facebook says they are sorry and returns all of their vile posts to where they were previously.   
Nearly right Meryl. I am using the Facebook appeal process because the 'rights and responsibilities' page says that I can. They don't need to say 'sorry', just do the right thing, in accordance with their own rules. But I do want the "...vile posts [returned] to where they were.."(Dorey M,2011) Because you are the author of a great many of the comments contained in these images.    


The following is referenced is using the Chicago system, and has been carefully denoted at the bottom of my blog, for the benefit of Ms Meryl Dorey and her loyal AVN members:
Dorey. M., 2011, "Hypocrisy- thy name is SAVN" in Living Wisdom [blog], May 2, available World Wide Web URL: http://avn.org.au/nocompulsoryvaccination/?p=1015 (accessed 3 May, 2011) 


*Please note that Ms Dorey didn't coin this term. Nor did she call the SAVN 'a gang' at any point in this blog (well, no where that I saw)