My apologies for dropping the second ‘a’ in your name earlier. Not good of me to not check before writing – sorry.

Is this useful?: Their sponsored posts are first written as an article on their website (ias.org.nz), then a short post on their Facebook page is posted linking to the article, then the Facebook post is pushed as a ‘sponsored’ post to others’ timelines. (This is “as best as I can tell”, of course.)

Excuse the belated reply – holidays intervened, with a fair chunk of them in places without internet access.

I’m a bit of a Facebook clutz. (I use it fairly naively as I haven’t the time to learn all the features and I dislike how their user-interface doesn’t lead you to the features easily. IMO. ) I’m not quite sure how I’ll test how they are doing this, but I’ll try later tonight.

All: Obviously “not able to just them” should read “not able to judge them”. (Don’t ask me how my brain does word swaps like that )

There is solid evidence that the method of making vaccinations and the method of administering vaccinations are unhealthy to lesser and greater degrees for a significant number of children. We may also find that there are ongoing health problems with children who appear to have little or no reaction to vaccinations.

Then you must provide that evidence, because this is the “Science Based Medicine” blog not the “I say stuff and you gotta believe me” blog.

Here is something you should do in your next comment: show us a verifiable way to prevent the 200000 to 300000 deaths from pertussis worldwide, along with the almost 200000 deaths from tetanus. You must provide evidence that you solution actually works.

To remind you what one of you is like please read: ‘It was hideous’ – family’s tetanus agony.

In a free and democratic world, like it or not, parents choose what their children eat, what lifestyle they leadf, when or if they go to a doctor and if and when they have vaccinations. That is as it should be.

No, what you posit is a world in which children are viewed as chattel rather as humans with innate rights that are inherently guarded more zealously than those of their temporary custodians. You may as well have written “when or if their children eat” or “if and when they have schooling.”

All groups and organisations should be held accountable including those which wave the ‘science’ flag. The effectiveness of a particular organisation, including this one, is not crucial to a worldwide movement where parents are pushing for greater accountability from science/medicine in regard to the use of vaccinations and the right for parents to make their own choices for their children.

I would agree with your first sentence. Particularly if it meant organizations like this could be held accountable for morbidity and mortality that was directly related to the inaccurate information they release. What do you think about organizations that “wave the science flag” while ignoring large swathes of actual science? Specifically I mean those organizations that pretend vaccinations do more harm than good. And what about parents whose choices place other children at risk? Ignorant choices, those informed by pseudoscience (again, those opposing vaccination on the basis of selective interpretation or outright ignorance of science) should not be a right.

There is solid evidence that the method of making vaccinations and the method of administering vaccinations are unhealthy to lesser and greater degrees for a significant number of children. We may also find that there are ongoing health problems with children who appear to have little or no reaction to vaccinations.

No, there isn’t. There’s a massive amount of literature regarding the benefits of vaccination (how much do you worry about smallpox and polio I wonder?) and very little evidence regarding harms. Legitimate evidence of harm is incorporated into the scientific discourse and valid, evidence-based changes to the vaccination schedule are made based on that evidence. For instance, seen any smallpox vaccinations recently? How ’bout whole-cell pertussis vaccines? Billions of doses of vaccines have been given, even very small signals can be detected with those sorts of numbers. In all those numbers, there is no firm evidence of the harms you are alleging. Meanwhile, diseases that are vaccinated against have recognized, serious harms including sterility, disability and death (not to mention the simple suffering of being sick).

In a free and democratic world, like it or not, parents choose what their children eat, what lifestyle they leadf, when or if they go to a doctor and if and when they have vaccinations. That is as it should be.

Ah, health freedom! The freedom to spread diseases to other people, unimpaired by any sense of responsibility. The freedom to make choices based on rhetoric and instinct rather than evidence. The freedom to die of preventable disease. I personally wouldn’t mind a little less freedom, just like I don’t think people should be free to drive while drunk. Ignorant, selfish choices that impact other people’s health are not valid arguments to support “freedom”.

I see IAS already has a red WOT ranking – which is curious because Dorey says she is no longer allowed to advertise on FB for this reason. Do IAS ads go to their FB page then get diverted to their site? I guess this might be a way of getting around the FB ban on red WOT sites, but I would have thought they were onto this.

Can you confirm?

As an aside, regarding the AVN WOT ranking, it was already in the red when SAVN were made aware of the site – by Dorey herself – but despite this she blames us for her bad ranking. Simply not true (although SAVN peeps have visited since and added their votes).

IAS (ias.org.nz) by contrast has parents with no formal training writing articles as if they were ‘researching’ the topics and their ‘findings’ were meaningful – i.e. deceptive to those not able to just them.

The IAS authors also insist on avoiding saying what they are, that the are anti-vaccine by insisting they are ‘pro-choice’ when what they clearly mean by that is to have the choice to present an anti-vaccine page, a different thing to being pro-choice in the sense of offering ‘an informed choice’ (their motto/byline). (i.e. the general same issue as with AVN described in Rachael’s article above.)

IAS have earlier this year lost their charitable status, courtesy of work by fellow blogger Darcy Cowan. They have now taken to paying Facebook to advertise their Facebook posts that link to their articles. (A society advertising false “health” information/advice is a dubious state of affairs if you ask me – it may be worth checking the legal status of that.)

Erwin Alber (who hosts VINE) also has a ‘My child’s vaccine reaction’ Facebook page. I used to occasionally try reply to questions on these pages* (IAS, VINE, VFFNZ [Vaccine-free families New Zealand], ‘My child’s vaccine reaction’) but they uniformly seem unable to accept polite on-topic replies to their members questions — most of the time they accept a person for a short period then at some point one of the admins seems to have a “moment” and delete them. (A few ‘opposing’ comments are left standing.)

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* I developed a policy on insisting on being polite and only answered questions as to be on-topic. The all block people from writing even if they do this. In Erwin’s case the mere mention of IMAC — the University of Auckland Immunisation Advisory Centre — was justification for blocking my replies. For others it may be because I have written a few times at sciblogs.co.nz pointing out issues with IAS.

[i] Improper motion or position of the moving bones of the spine (called a SUBLUXATION) can interfere with this vital exchange by irritating nerves and compromising the function of affected organs and tissues. Specific spinal adjustments can help improve mind/body communications. Health often returns with improved nervous system control of the body.
How do I know if I have a subluxation?

You can have subluxations present and not even know it. Like the early stages of tooth decay or cancer, SUBLUXATIONS can be present before any warning signs appear. The results of a thorough examination can show the location and severity of SUBLUXATIONS your body may have.

It is more likely that an adjacent spinal bone irritates, stretches, rubs or chafes a nerve. These SUBLUXATIONS distort the nerve message sent between the brain and the body. This can produce unhealthy alterations to the organs and tissues connected by the affected nerves.
How do you get subluxations?

There are three basic causes of SUBLUXATIONS.
Physical causes could include slips, falls, vehicle accidents, repetitive actions and improper lifting. Emotions such as grief, anger and fear can cause subluxations. Chemical causes could include alcohol, drugs, pollution and poor diet.[/i]

http://www.mooroolbarkchiro.com.au/index.php/links

(Yes, tongue in cheek)