Friday, September 03, 2010

Dorey Pleads: Give Children The Chance To Die

Meryl Dorey and the Australian Vaccination Network Charity, as we all know, is a lover of statistics and rigourous scientific analysis. Perhaps she isn't aware of EUVac which provides a wealth of statistical information on vaccination in Europe, such as this page on Measles. Figures 4 and 5 are particularly interesting. Figure 5, 'showing Percentage of reported measles cases by vaccination status in the 27 EU countries, 2005-2008' is reproduced below.

Figure 5

[Edit: The percentages of] measles cases are increasing amongst the unvaccinated, but decreasing amongst the vaccinated. How can this be if, as Meryl Dorey claims, vaccines don't work? More pertinently, who really cares, since measles is a harmless disease? Perhaps Ms Dorey would like to go on a speaking tour to Bulgaria to promote her personal fantasy world view, since 24 people have died since April 2009 in the current measles outbreak in that country. That's out of 23,791 cases of infection reported, or a 1 in 990 death rate. Could someone remind EoR again what the fatality rate from vaccination is?

There are also currently deaths from measles outbreaks in Malawi (where the death rate is around 1 in 60):

"About 77,000 people have been infected and 197, mostly children have died in the last seven months," Dr Storn Kabuluzi, director of preventive health services at the department of health, told Reuters.

(...)

More than 1,100 deaths from measles have been reported among 64,000 known cases in Africa the last year, it said. Chad, Nigeria and Zimbabwe have had the largest outbreaks.


and Zambia (where the death rate is around 1 in 50):

An outbreak of measles in Zambia has affected over 6,200 people and claimed at least 110 lives, the Zambian health ministry has said.
Currently, the total number of people affected by the disease in the country stands at 6,252, ministry of health spokesperson Kamoto Mbewe was quoted as saying by the Zanis news agency Thursday.

Mbewe said the capital city of Lusaka was the most hit with 106 deaths recorded out of 4,928 cases, Xinhua reported.


Meanwhile, Ms Dorey's only acceptable form of vaccination, homeopathy is under fire in Japan where, like recent cases in Australia, reliance on a therapy that does nothing in life threatening cases results in unnecessary deaths.

The Japanese government is investigating numerous deaths that occurred over the past year resulting from the practice of homeopathy, which has been growing in popularity, particularly among midwives. Several lawsuits are pending.

Deaths include a 2-month-old baby girl born with a vitamin K deficiency, whose mother's midwife administered a homeopathic treatment instead of the much-needed vitamin K injection, well-known to prevent hemorrhaging. The infant died from bleeding in the skull.

As more cases surface, the nation's top science group, the Science Council of Japan, has weighed in, with its president, Ichiro Kanazawa, stating at a press conference on Aug. 24 that "homeopathy's therapeutic value has been scientifically and utterly disproved." Homeopathy treatments are nothing more than sugar pills, he said.

Japan may soon join Switzerland and Germany, where governments have concluded that homeopathy is ineffective; national health insurance no longer reimburses for homeopathic treatments there. (Ironically, homeopathy originated in Germany 200 years ago.)


What is Meryl Dorey's vision?

I would love to see us go back to the time, about 80-90 years ago, when homoepathy was an accepted practice, was used in hospitals and was looked upon as a front-line treatment for many dieseases.


Yes, Meryl Dorey wants us to "go back" to a fantasy alternative reality that never existed, and where children will be given the freedom to die in order to maintain her distorted worldview.

8 comments:

  1. Great post, but one slight quibble. Measles cases aren't increasing in unvaccinated and decreasing in vaccinated, that's only the percentages. As your link shows, both vaccinated and unvaccinated cases go up and down depending on the total measles incidence. However that doesn't detract from your point - the overwhelming majority of measles is occurring in unvaccinated people. Vaccines work.

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  2. @Deb: Thanks, yes, that is what EoR intended to say, but was not clear about. The post has been amended to clarify the point.

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  3. The "vital force" idea seems to be to let the weak die and the strong survive.

    And the say sceptics are Darwinian!

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  4. Real is scientific homeopathy. It cures even when Conventional Allopathic Medicine (CAM) fails. Nano doses of evidence-based modern homeopathy medicine brings big results for everyone

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  5. "Scientific homeopathy" is an oxymoron.

    Tell Penelope Dingle how homeopathy cures when CAM fails. Or Gloria Sam. Or the children in Japan.

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  6. Is Dr. Nancy a bot? Her link takes me to a Knol article. My estimation of Knol slips yet again.

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  7. According to her Knol bio, "She is a popular name among the Homeopathic Fraternity mainly due to the impossible and challenging cases she treats." Though it seems somewhat pointless treating impossible cases.

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  8. Ahhh, but if you treat impossible cases with impossible treatments...?

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