Meryl Dorey on 2UE

2UE's Tracy Spicer "interviewed" Meryl Dorey, president of the Australian Vaccination Network over the British Medical Journal calling Andrew Wakefield's "research" as fraudulent. If you can't listen to the 2ue version, the audio can be found here on Youtube.

I say "interviewed" because it's probably better to describe it as a slaughter. Spicer slaughtered Dorey and that was that.

Refreshingly instead of allowing Dorey to pimp her website Spicer decided to just hang up.

If the Australian Vaccination Network sounds familiar that's because they were accused of harassment by the NSW HCCC. One of the results of this accusation was that the AVN was supposed to put up a nice big disclaimer saying, basically, everything that they write is biased as fuck and you shouldn't trust it.

Incidentally the disclaimer that they're required to have isn't on their website as of writing this post, you can check it here and if you happen to find it leave a comment.

So back to the interview.

Dorey seems to be living in some sort of parallel universe where what she thinks is correct. That, in my opinion, is the only possible way that when Spicer mentions that Wakefield's research has been discredited she responds:

No it hasn't

I can't think of any other reasons. Oh wait, I've though of a more plausible one. Meryl Dorey is some kind of moron.

Now there is a post up on Dorey's website that says some crap about something (seriously I don't really know), entitled "Andrew Wakefield - the Kangaroo Court has spoken. It mentions the interview and has a nice transcript. As a side note on the transcript the missing words that Spicer said between "...saying there is no link..." and "...misinformation" was "...and here you are on metropolitan radio spreading your...".

But when Spicer says:

Under the heading measles, mumps, rubella, she states that these are all non-threatening illnesses in early childhood.

Dorey has said:

(note from Meryl – I’m not sure what she is referring to. On the MMR page, I have a quote from Dr Peter Baratosy that says:

Measles was a common childhood disease prior to the introduction of widespread vaccination, and up until about 30 years ago was generally described as a benign illness. The difference today is that children seem to have become weaker due to drugs, pollution, vaccinations and poor nutrition” (Dr. Peter Baratosy)

Funnily enough when I went to the MMR page and clicked on the read more under "MMR" I found (albeit in magenta):

Unlike vaccination (which offers only temporary immunity), the natural occurrence of each of these diseases (all non-threatening illnesses in early childhood) generally results in lifelong immunity.

Now I added the bolding to the text there. Sure sounds like Dorey is claiming that measles, mumps and rubella are non-threatening. I guess Dorey is too disingenuous to mention that, or perhaps she's too lazy to quickly check what she wrote on her own website.

Looking over the comments on the 2UE website I'm pleased to see many comments that say that Dorey is an idiot. Hopefully the view that anti-vaxxers are unscientific fools can spread.