Well, the long break I took from writing about the antivaccinationists is over. There is an organization in Australia known as the Australian Vaccination Network or AVN (Yes, I also find the coincidental similarity between their initials and the initials of a certain video company in the U.S. that holds annual conventions in Vegas hilarious). Now don’t let the name fool you. Australia’s AVN is an aggressive anti-vaccine group responsible for tons of misinformation about the alleged evils of vaccines.
But now a formal complaint has been filed against Meryl Dorey and the AVN. You can read the whole complaint here (PDF). Dorey was the woman who claimed that pertussis (whooping cough) didn’t kill anyone right around the time 4-week-old Dana McCaffery died of it because she was too young to receive the vaccine against it. She also has some funny ideas about the oh so popular Illuminati.
be investigated by the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission for breaches of the Public Health Act of 1993. Since Dorey and the AVN do dispense (bad, wrong, and I daresay potentially lethal) advice about health, they fall under this act.
This formal complaint against Dorey and the AVN means they’ll be investigated by the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission for breaches of the Public Health Act of 1993. Since they do indeed spread factually incorrect information that is dangerous to the public health, they are in violation of this act.