Category Archives for "Lying"
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:
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!
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:
No one ever said Meryl was the sharpest pencil in the drawer, but even by her low standards this is quite a clanger:
Oops! Oh, Meryl!
Oops! Meryl muffs it again: lying to her cult members, while forgetting there's a written record from just hours earlier that catches her out!
Oh dear, Meryl!
Meryl gets little credit for her tireless work as an environmentalist, perhaps because she’s opted to forgo the popular and trendy activities of protecting animals and plants to instead focus on protecting diseases.
It’s an issue that gets little publicity, but someone has to do it and so Meryl has taken up the banner on behalf of endangered diseases everywhere. Without Meryl’s good work, innocent diseases like Polio, Measles, Rubella and Meningitis could become extinct.
All good environmentalists worry about the destruction of habitats through human activities, and the loss of Amazon rainforest as a home for all manner of animals through logging is no more important an issue than the loss of human bodies as a home for diseases through vaccination.
Who will speak for the diseases? Who will protect THEM from dying out? Meryl will!
Meryl is a friend to all diseases, advocating tirelessly on their behalf. She works to correct misconceptions that diseases can injure or kill, explaining instead that they are mild or harmless – even a “gift from a goddess” in the case of Measles. But above all else, Meryl works to protect diseases from harm and ensure they continue to have plenty of human bodies available in which to live and breed.
Vaccination destroys the habitat of Meryl’s favourite diseases, so she opposes it relentlessly. The disappearance of Smallpox was a catastrophic event for the pro-disease community, one which rocked them to the core and brought home just how much we are at risk of losing these diseases from our world forever. Sickness promoters like Meryl swung into action, determined to preserve the diversity of illnesses circulating in our world.
Without Meryl’s efforts, diseases like whooping cough would be contained to small pockets of hippies around the country and Measles would be on the verge of disappearing, like Polio is. Fortunately with Meryl’s help, diseases that were once on the brink of extinction are now coming back strongly. Numbers are growing, populations are becoming self-sustaining as increasing numbers of parents are offering up their children’s bodies as breeding grounds for Meryl’s illnesses. Yes, Meryl is doing a fine job for her cause.
Alas, Meryl gets little respect for her tireless work and we think that $280,000 per year is a grossly inadequate reward for protecting and spreading disease so effectively. So as a small gesture of appreciation, the team over at RtAVM have gifted Meryl a selection of music for her iPod. The songs have been carefully chosen to represent Meryl’s passion and good work in the service of protecting diseases from harm. Here’s her musical top 20:
Enjoy, Meryl!
Is Meryl broke or wealthy?
She certainly cries poor to soak extra cash out of her gullible followers whenever she has a bill to pay or wants a new computer. But then there is that $150,000 per year unaccounted for in the AVN’s official figures – and she is the only hands-on officer of the organisation. Hmmm…
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…
Oops! Meryl copped another spanking on national TV – even more blunt & directly than the last time.
So what’s Meryl done this time? Short summary of events:
Regional TV program WIN News Illawarra indulged in some very sloppy journalism by inviting Meryl to comment on a measles outbreak. Meryl reflexively pushed her usual line of scientifically discredited vaccine-Autism link crud and self-described as a “pro choice” advocate. Numerous people contacted WIN News to point out their error; WIN ignored most messages and acted like an antivaxxer themselves by deleting others off their Facebook page. As a consequence, national media watchdog TV show Mediawatch ran a story on the incident, describing Meryl’s organisation in perfectly-worded terms:
“But Meryl Dorey’s deceptively -named Australian Vaccination Network is in fact an obsessively anti-vaccination pressure group that’s immunised itself against the effect of scientific evidence.”
“Dorey’s claim about the medical literature linking vaccination and autism is pure, unadulterated baloney.”
“Medical practitioners – choice groups. One opinion as valid as the other. It’s a classic example of what many – especially despairing scientists – call ‘false balance’ in the media.
[…]
To put it bluntly, there’s evidence, and there’s bulldust. It’s a journalist’s job to distinguish between them, not to sit on the fence and bleat ‘balance’. Especially when people’s health is at risk.”
The video and the full story can be viewed here.
Oops, Meryl! We know you crave publicity you attention-whore, but this isn’t helping!
National negative publicity like this will ensure it’s a long time indeed before you get another credulous interviewer inviting you to say whatever you want in mainstream media. Which is a good thing, because frankly you deserve to languish in obscurity…with, say, an audience of the dozen tinfoil hat wearers who listen to Fairdinkum Radio.
In fact, why not cut out the middleman and just invite your fellow nutters over to your house to listen firsthand to your next spittle-flecked diatribe? Why not fling open the trapdoor and entertain them in the room under your kitchen floor? Macadamia toast slathered liberally with Macadamia butter and a hot cup of Macadamia tea for everyone!
Oh, 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.
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:
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.
It’s tough being Meryl…lying is easy but remembering which lies you’ve told and dodging responsibility when those lies come back to haunt you is much harder work. Even when you’re government-certified as a liar, it just doesn’t get any easier.
Meryl must be under a lot of stress at the moment, because she can’t even seem to remember what she’s lied about long enough to type a whole paragraph:
To paraphrase: “I never said that doctors are murderers….I stand by what I said – those doctors were murderers”. And also: “I never said that doctors are rapists…but when a doctor injects a vaccine into a child that’s rape with full penetration”.
Hysterical much, Meryl?