Category Archives for "Callousness"

May 31, 2014

Meryl’s media makeover

A funny thing happened to Meryl over the last couple of years. She's gone from a darling of the media, regularly invited to give the "other side" in the name of "balance"... all the way down to outcast and pariah.

The majority of journalists have woken up to the fact that there is no scientific debate in terms of vaccination: the facts are settled in terms of scientific consensus. A handful of nutty & noisy science-deniers like Meryl have no bearing on the reality, however much they wish it was different.

What's more a number of Meryl's callous actions, starting with her harrassment of the grieving parents of Dana McCaffrey,​ have outraged ever-growing segments of the population.

Now Meryl stands revealed to all as she really is: lying science-denier, callous persecutor of grieving parents, promoter of practices which cause the spread of disease and resulting deaths, person who profits from paranoia and serial lawbreaker.

All of which is why today, her typical treatment by the media is like this:​

May 31, 2014

Meryl: A Guide For Journalists

After Meryl's recent outing at the Queensland Woo Festival, where she lied about all the usual vaccination topics including Shaken Baby Syndrome, decent people everywhere are again appalled at her bad behaviour and also disappointed that credulous, poorly-researched journalists continue to give her media coverage.

It's not many journalists these days, of course. Most of the industry have seen enough of her and learned their lesson. But still, every now and then she slips through and gets a story - which should never happen at this late stage.

To address the problem, the enviously talented Shelley Stocken produced this perfect and funny quick-reference guide to Meryl for the media. Enjoy and then check out her blog; there's a lot more good stuff where this came from!

Disease, False Balance and Meryl Dorey - a Guide for Media

Because her opinion isn't news.

For the benefit of media who think it's worth consulting anti-vaccine lobbyists for "their side" when writing about the serious issue of immunisation, I'd like to suggest a few points, if I may:

  1. Right now in Australia we're battling outbreaks of measles and whooping cough.​
  2. Evidence has shown that creating false balance by providing anti-vaccine speakers (who have opinions based on opinions) a platform alongside medical experts (who have opinions based on evidence), makes people give more credence to the anti-vaccine view than if it was presented in isolation.
  3. As I see it, if you include an anti-vaccine lobbyist alongside an expert in a story about vaccination, you are hindering the success of public health initiatives and contributing to the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases.
  4. This:
Who says epidemiologists know nothing of disease?
Who says having eyes to read stuff with trumps medical degrees?
Who says science texts are pharma’s agitprop depository?
Who says doctors murder babies? Yes, it’s (tut, sigh) Meryl Dorey.

Who says people who shake babies aren’t to blame for fractured ribs?
Who says Sudden Infant Death is just a garbage load of fibs?
Who says death from Whooping Cough is just some mother’s made-up story?
Who says measles is a gift? That’s right, it’s (head-desk) Meryl Dorey.

Who says AIDS might not be real because she’s not seen HIV?
Who says foetuses are sold and turned to vaccines secretly?
Who says polio’s still rife, but in a different category?
Who says vaccines cause autism? Same old (face palm) Meryl Dorey.

Who says Meryl Dorey’s incorrect? My state’s HCCC.
Who says Meryl’s claims are bulldust? People at the ABC.
Who says Meryl is misleading? Why, the Office of Fair Trading.
So don’t put her in your story, ‘less your story needs degrading.
June 28, 2013

Meryl’s mendacity mocked by MPs

Awareness of Meryl’s idiocy is at an all time high this week!

After a lengthy campaign against vaccine refusal by scientists, doctors and the media, the cherry on top was this statement in the Australian senate, by senator Richard Di Natale. And what a ripper of a statement it is!

After giving a wonderful summation of Meryl’s stupidity, conspiracy theorist mindset, ongoing propagation of misinformation after being corrected multiple times, persecution of grieving parents and overall callousness, the good senator goes on to call on the AVN to disband. Check it out:

Alas, the AVN gravy train is too lucrative for Meryl to give it up willingly – at last count over $150,000 per year in the AVN accounts without any details of what it was spent on…

Ah Meryl, you’re famous at last! Just not the way you wanted to be famous though…

September 1, 2012

Meryl demands respect

One of Meryl’s frequent complaints is that those nasty skeptics are so terribly disrespectful to her.

Now the first problem is that Meryl’s extremely thin-skinned and she considers even politely pointing out the factual errors in her claims to be disrespectful or worse. (The only polite behaviour is complete and unquestioning agreement with whatever The Dear Leader says). Identifying errors certainly warrants deletion of the post and banning the person from any forum that Meryl controls, despite her regular bleating about free speech and censorship, as hundreds of people have discovered.

But more than that, Meryl bemoans the fact that nasty skeptics call her names! Oh dear, how dreadful. Lying in order to persuade people not to vaccinate and causing the deaths of innocent children by doing so is a triviality, but insulting the cult leader herself – that’s serious!

Well, maybe Meryl has a point. Maybe name-calling does lower the tone of the debate, maybe we should be diligent about treating each other with politeness and respect at all times. I think that’s all that Meryl is asking for, is that right Meryl?

Oops! Not very respectful, Meryl.

What does Meryl do whenever she’s caught out saying something truly stupid or otherwise embarrassing? Well, it happens all the time so no need to wonder: she denies and tries to avoid responsibility for her actions. And true to form that’s what Meryl did here, too:

Ha ha, yes “words that I may or may not have said” is destined to go down as another classic Meryl quote and evasion tactic, alongside “Did I say that? I don’t believe I did“, her (failed) attempt on national television to evade responsibility for a particularly callous comment about the parents of a child who died from whooping cough.

Poor Meryl, this evasion attempt failed too because someone took the trouble to document all of her comments and spell them out in this blog post: On the convenience of forgetfulness…The Dorey Dilemma.

Wow Meryl, it turns out you really did say all those words. And no, it looks like you weren’t taken out of context at all.

Caught out telling pork pies yet again! Oh, Meryl…

August 27, 2012

More Mendacity from Meryl

Meryl does have trouble keeping her lies straight…oops, this is getting embarrassing!

Now she got herself into trouble a few years back when she called a regional Director of Public Health, based at her local hospital, and demanded the medical records of an infant who had recently died of whooping cough. Meryl didn’t believe the stated cause of death and has been referring to the “child who supposedly died of whooping cough” ever since. It’s important to Meryl that she downplay the severity of infectious diseases, otherwise her gullible followers are less likely to pay her to scare them about the evils of vaccination.

Meryl has also harassed the parents of that same infant repeatedly, claiming they’re part of an organised conspiracy to suppress the truth about vaccination, etc etc. Her callousness in harassing even grieving parents has no bounds and public disgust at her behaviour is one of the main reasons why Stop the AVN was formed.

Here is Meryl up to her old tricks again: telling her followers to contact the parents of children who recently died of SIDS and ask if they were vaccinated. Except now she knows that’s likely to get her into more trouble, so she denies doing so when called on it.

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Oops, Meryl – you incriminated yourself there. Not so smart, eh?

For an encore, Meryl got on her high horse about people opposing her even though she isn’t vilifying or attacking anyone – forgetting that she’d just done exactly that to Paul Offit a short time earlier on her Facebook page:

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Meryl, you know that every time you do this stuff you are going to be caught out, right? Too many people are watching for you to get away with it. Maybe it’s time to retire? If not from pushing antivax conspiracy theories, at least retire from being an asshole.

February 6, 2012

Meryl maintains her integrity

Meryl really dislikes personal attacks – she has said so often. She wishes that everyone would “just debate the science” rather than engaging in character attacks. It’s a good thing she has enough integrity to avoid indulging in or encouraging that sort of behaviour herself…

Oh, Meryl!

January 26, 2012

Meryl builds a lie before your eyes

Poor Meryl often claims persecution and even martyrdom in order to attract sympathy and, more importantly, cash donations from her followers. Meryl’s lies are now exposed no matter where she publishes them and her misinformation is corrected immediately by the many rational & educated observers now keeping an eye on her – but this doesn’t make for a dramatic story to bring in the big bucks. So Meryl needs to lie about the opposition to her lies in order to keep the big bucks rolling in. After all, $280,000 per year doesn’t just grow on trees you know!

Here’s a textbook example of Meryl in action:

  1. Meryl tweets a link to a truly absurd blog post written by nationally recognised idiot Judy Wilyman: http://avn.org.au/nocompulsoryvaccination/?p=1307
  2. Like many rational readers, Tracey finds the dense concentration of wacky conspiracy theories and long-debunked antivax canards to be overwhelming. She laughs out loud, via post on Twitter.
  3. Meryl decides to make hay from the ridicule she suffers, and sets up a strawman by trying to link Tracey’s amusement at a retarded blog post to poor little sick kids – a classic persecution play: “Help help, I’m being repressed!”.
  4. Then she swings for the fences by tying in her favourite enemies: Australian Skeptics and fans of the SAVN Facebook page. She generalises to claim frequent and widespread callous behaviour towards sick kids – without a single shred of evidence.

June 23, 2010

Meryl says, “We don’t need no stinkin’ autopsies”

From the AVN Facebook page:

Meryl is a longtime fan of Viera Scheibner, this post is just her latest love letter to Viera.

Clearly Meryl likes the ballsy way that Vera second-guesses the treatment of infants who contracted whooping cough and died over 10 years ago – all without ever sighting the children, without any familiarity with the cases, without seeing the medical records and indeed without any medical training whatsoever (Viera’s only qualification is from studying fossils).

Morons of a feather flock together. Oh Meryl!