Why does she do what she does?

Excerpt from the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) newsletter The Inside Edition (Issue 5), which demonstrates Meryl’s total disregard for the truth, her continued misrepresentation of statistics, and her vindictive and harassing behaviour toward the McCaffery’s after being repeatedly told to leave them alone.

Why am I sharing these stories with you? Well, it’s 1 in the morning and I have not been able to sleep nor has my husband. For 17 years, we have worked together on this organisation – a 5th and most troublesome child. We do this because we both have a very strong sense of natural justice and a belief that if you do something for the right reason, it will all come out right in the end.

This last 6 or 7 months has begun to make us question that belief.
Apart from the complaint filed with the HCCC against both the AVN and myself, stating that we were a danger to society and should be legally silenced and potentially charged as criminals, a series of actions by members and supporters of the Australian Skeptics have taken up much more of my time and energy then they should have.

A series of websites, Twitter pages and Facebook pages have been set up with the specific aim of getting the AVN to shut down.

This has all come to a head with the case of a little girl in my area who was diagnosed with pertussis at approximately 2 ½ weeks of age and who died in hospital at 4 weeks old. When she died, the fact that she lived on the North Coast, home of the ‘anti-vaccination’ AVN (for some reason, it is very important to groups like Skeptics and the media to label us as anti-vaccination) led us to being blamed for her death with a Channel 7 program speaking about the poison lurking in the air up here, due to a supposedly high number of unvaccinated children.

When this little girl’s death was announced, the media were reporting several things that made me question what this baby had actually died of. Her parents were quoted as saying that she had received blood transfusions and that her heart was enlarged. It is very rare for an enlarged heart to be caused by B. Pertussis, the bacterium that causes whooping cough. It has been linked with another bacterium in the same family however, B. Holmesii. Also, blood transfusions are a highly unusual treatment for this disease.

In addition, I know that many times when pertussis has been diagnosed by doctors without laboratory testing, the diagnosis turns out to be wrong. The test for whooping cough takes about 10 days for a result. This baby was in hospital for less than 10 days but had been diagnosed almost straight away. It didn’t make sense to me.

I contacted the head of the Public Health Unit and asked if this case of pertussis had been laboratory diagnosed. I was told that it had been by a quick test. I asked if there had also been a bacterial culture taken because I was not familiar with this test and knew that the culture was considered to be the ‘gold standard’ of pertussis testing. I was told that this was privileged information. Quite ironic when I discovered that the gentleman I had spoken with or one of his off-siders informed the child’s parents that I had called their office requesting information about their daughter’s death – I don’t know if they were told what information I had requested or not, but they were incensed that I had done this.

To my mind, while an entire community of conscientious objectors were being victimised by the government and the media and being blamed for the death of a child who was too young to be vaccinated, I had every right to ask for this information.

What I discovered afterwards was that the quick test is worse than a joke. It produces many more false positives than true diagnoses and has been responsible for declarations of epidemics of pertussis overseas which have turned out to be caused by B. Parapertussis (a related but quite different bacterium and one that is not included in the pertussis vaccination), adenovirus or even the common cold. There are many other diseases whose symptoms mimic pertussis but which are viral in nature and aggressive antibiotic treatment may prove to be counter-productive in these cases so it is a good question for anyone who has a pertussis diagnosis to determine – how was the diagnosis made?

In any case, the parents went public saying what a terrible thing I’d done in contacting the PHU and stated on the channel 7 Sunday Night program (which I was on as well) that they had received hate emails from AVN members though they did not say what the emails contained nor who they were from. I would be very disappointed if any of our members would have been callous enough to have written hate mail to newly bereaved parents, but even though I did not write these emails, I wholeheartedly apologised to both parents for the pain this would have caused them.

Since that time, this family has been in the media quite often. They have also participated in government policy meetings to try and increase pertussis vaccination rates (I guess our current 95% vaccination rate isn’t high enough any more?). They have filed complaints at least twice that I know of when I have had an interview on a radio station or in a newspaper and have made it even harder that it usually is for me to issue any statements about any vaccination issues.

The last straw I guess was two weeks ago when a totally slanderous article was published in our local newspaper, the Northern Star. I believe that most people who read this article, would have been left with the distinct impression that both myself and the AVN were responsible for a huge decline in the vaccination rates against pertussis, leading to the deaths of children.

I wrote a letter to the paper which was severly edited but even so, the editor informed me that he had received an angry phone call from the father of this little girl, asking why they would run any information from an anti-vaccination group.

I sympathise with the grief these parents have suffered. I feel for them so deeply! But they are not the only parents to have lost a child and though their child was the world to them, there are many other parents whose children were also the world to them and who have to face the rest of their lives with their world turned upside down because of vaccination. These parents are not out there telling others that they do not have a right to state their opinion about vaccination in public.

Last week, for the first time in several months, I visited the Facebook page which has been set up in honour of the short life of their daughter.

I did not see what I expected – a memorial to this poor little baby who was snatched away too early and left her grieving parents seeking support and comfort from the community. Instead, what I discovered was a discussion list which seems to have been taken over, lock stock and barrel by many of the same people who have been harassing the AVN for years. It appeared to me that this Facebook page, which had been set up to honour a baby, had instead degenerated into yet another Stop the AVN franchise.

And if not just for my son – but for the other children – all those hundreds of children whose lives have been blighted by vaccines and whose families have contacted me over the years, I got angry.

When this little girl’s death was first announced and I was interviewed about it, I said that it was tragic that she had died. But I also asked why a child who had died from whooping cough was front-page news when the many others who have died from vaccines are not only invisible – they are denied. And if their parents are very unlucky, the death is called SBS (Shaken Baby Syndrome) or MSBP (Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy) and the parents are charged and put in prison as Sally Clark and so many others have been and still are today.

It all came back to me. A child is a child. A life is a life. They are all important and they must all be recognised.

These parents have a right to their grief – but they do not have the right to provide a protected platform for others who amongst other things, call parents who have lost children to vaccines criminals. They do not have the right to provide a safe harbour for those who say that the grief of a parent who dies from whooping cough is somehow stronger or more important than the grief of a parent whose child dies from a whooping cough vaccine.

The parents of children who die from vaccines not only have to go through the grief of losing that child; they have the double burden of the communitys denial. Not for them the awards, invitations, appointments and public condolences.

No parent should ever have to go through what the parents of this baby have gone through. Or what Stephen’s parents or Milvie’s or Luke’s parents have gone through.

In my anger, I posted two items to this Facebook page. The postings were made in anger but they were not angry postings. I simply uploaded my press release about winning the Bent Spoon award (underneath the posting from the Australian Skeptics about this same award) and also, my letter to the editor of the Northern Star about the true increase in vaccination against pertussis. I also started a new post with 5 questions about vaccination which have been submitted by PhD Candidate, Judy Wilyman, to the Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon.

If I have caused this family any pain by posting these items, it was certainly not my intention.

I would like to apologise for any extra burden I have placed on them.
But I would also like to ask them to consider the other parents – across Australia and across the world – who have lost children, just as they lost their precious little girl. Parents who do not have the support and love of 34,000 Facebook fans for the simple reason that their children died from a vaccine and those deaths were not acknowledged in the way that their daughter’s was.

A tragedy that can be turned into something positive is a wonderful thing. It doesn’t make the event any less tragic, but it gives you a reason to go on – something to work towards. For me, having my son vaccine injured caused me to spend the last 17 years trying to make sure that other parents don’t go through the same thing. For this family, their inspiration is the same and I applaud their efforts and their strength.

Source: http://www.zinio.com/browse/publications/single-issues.jsp?productId=500354653
Read the full article “Why I do what I do – Why I did what I did” The Inside Edition – Issue 5