In the IAS response, they say:
It really amazes me how much spare time some people have on their hands to waste on useless activities. I’m a wife, a mother, a full-time student from home, I have a household to run and I’m the Chairperson of the Immunisation Awareness Society. My goal in life is to help families to make an informed choice on vaccination. The little spare time I have left in my day, I spend helping families whose children have been harmed by vaccinations, as well as attending to other IAS-related things.
We all have differing opinions on what is a useless and a useful activity, but they are as I said, just opinions. The respondent seems to be very busy, but my experience with this individual is that they spend a lot of their day on facebook. Certainly, the Chairperson on an anti-vaccination organisation is not helping families make an informed choice on vaccination, they are trying to ensure that people do not vaccinate. The New Zealand Government has determined that this is the goal of the organisation, and my experience shows this to be true.
Informed choice infers accurate and unbiased information, and the IAS offers neither of those things, so in my opinion that is a useless activity that people would waste their time pursuing.
They go on to say:
So when I saw the 20 page document (http://www.mediafire.com/view/?hgzev62g9n947xq) that Darcy Cowan sent to the Charities Commission on 25 July 2011 attempted to get us de-registered, I was not angry or resentful, but rather jealous. Where does anyone these days find the time to write a 20 page document about a harmless organisation whose only mission is to help families in New Zealand during one of the toughest decisions they will ever make?
Given we are still focused on opinions, I have four children, a husband, an acreage and a full time job, run a business from home and I can still find the time to pursue my other interests, but then I've done a time management course. Perhaps the writer should consider the same if they are struggling to find enough time to do everything they wants. Alternatively, if they closed facebook down for a little while, they'd find a lot more spare time. Seriously, if you're going to pursue an issue you have to put in sufficient information to make your point, submitting rubbish like "we should all be able to use the seaside" when submitting an objection to potential legislation you're never going to be taken seriously.
I would suggest an answer to their question. Perhaps they did not agree with her opinion that the organisation is harmless and it's mission to help families, certainly in hindsight we can see that the Government doesn't believe that it is. In fact, the end result of the submission was to remove the charity status of the organisation which would suggest that their submission was treated seriously and the information contained with it, justified.
They then say:
So yes, I’m slightly jealous of all Darcy’s spare time. I certainly know what I would be doing if it were me that had that much spare time. I would spend it watching my incredibly beautiful (un-vaccinated) son digging in the dirt and playing on the beach, instead of having to sit in front of the computer and comment on a letter sent to the Charities Commission by someone with too much time on his hands.
See, I call shenanigans here because i've watched this writer on facebook the last couple of days so they are clearly not watching her son digging in the dirt and playing on the beach when they could be, they are sitting in front of their PC getting 'gobsmacked' by the comments that they are reading, and banning posts who ask reasonable (but potentially pro-vaccination) questions and posting offensive rubbish on other anti-vaccination facebook pages.
Time management is a matter of priorities, if they are lamenting the loss of time that they could be spending with their son then they should simply spend the time with him. They are, by their own admission, a stay at home mother with no obligations other than the ones they chooses to take on. I can't see the logic of being jealous of people for having better time management and more focus on priorities than they do.
They then say:
You see, the IAS is run by a handful of volunteers who all believe that vaccination should never be forced on any person. Everyone on the committee has a combination of part/full time jobs/families/children to look after/studies/life in general which take up a lot of our time. Despite this, each of us still manages to find time to volunteer for this amazing organisation because we are so passionate about our freedom to be allowed to choose what we put in our bodies.
I understand that there is no mandatory vaccination in New Zealand and isn't likely to be. Seems to me, that if a person were time poor to the point of complaining about it, surely they wouldn't be wasting their time focusing on the irrelevant? It sounds to me like they're inventing work to give themselves something to do, which is direct contradiction to the claims of being time poor. Don't despair IAS, a solution is at hand, if you didn't waste your time on the irrelevant, you'd have the time to play with your son.
It might be worth noting here that there are plenty of people out there who juggle far more than the writer does with more children, without complaint.
They then say:
I suspect they'd see it quite differently, I suspect they'd see it as exercising their right to legally protest about something they disagree with. But then, their document seems to be well put together and factual, and this response seems to be a bit of an unjustified whinging meme to me.
Again, given the Government decision, i'd suggest that not everyone agrees that this organisation helps families all over New Zealand. Certainly nothing in this response addresses any of the actions that they take, what they are and how they're taken. Nothing at all, but an attempted ad hominem attack on the complainants, without addressing the issues raised in the complaint.
They then say:
This document is well worth the read. It's decision is well set out and it's a bit of a shame that the IAS would prefer to attack the complainants than learn from the findings as they are quite clear and easy to understand.
They then say.
Perhaps Darcy thinks that this means he “won” (http://sciblogs.co.nz/skepticon/2012/11/07/anti-vaccine-charity-no-more) and Ben sent the IAS an email to say “I’m glad I wrote in about you – ’twas for great justice.” Little do they know that they have actually done the IAS a huge favour, because we are no longer constrained by the rules imposed on us by the Charities Commission. As Darcy writes himself “There are innumerable groups out there that I don’t agree with but you get that in a wide and varied world. In the case of the IAS though the speech they engage in is effectively publicly subsidised via the tax exemption, this should mean that they are constrained in what they can say.” Thank you, Darcy, for freeing us of the constraints in what we can say.
How wonderful that they can invent a positive out of a negative. What this means is their ability to raise money via donation is gone, and they have lost a large portion of their credibility. It also means that the government has determined within their findings that the name of the IAS is deceptive and the lobbyists in New Zealand can now pursue the issue of changing the organisations name. The loss of the charity status is only the first step, and while they say they're happy with it, it's clear by the content and tone of this response that they are not.
They then say:
What Darcie does not realise, however, is that we actually share a common goal. On his website, he states that “I’m not interested in telling people what they should think, merely to show them that there is another side to things that they may have, until now, not really thought about and taken at face value.” Well Darcy, at least the IAS agrees with you 100% on this one thing – our sole mission is to provide people with information which they may not have thought about and for them to make up their own minds on the topic of vaccination. At least we are honest in our mission, whereas you only pay lip service to not being interested in telling people what they should think. If this was truly your mission, then you would not have spent countless hours writing letters to the Charities Commission to get us de-registered. It seems you DO want to tell people what to think, because if you didn’t, you would not find us a threat. As it stands, we’re obviously a threat to your way of seeing things, hence you felt the need to try to silence us.
Unfortunately, it is clear that the writer did not understand the findings of the government. The government very clearly found that the organisation was anti-vaccination and they did not offer advice and assistance to New Zealand families. A quick look at their facebook pages shows exactly that as well. Families cannot ask questions on their page, they can only read and contribute comments to the information that the IAS puts up, and personal experience shows that if you question the validity of that information in any way, your comments are removed and your ability to comment are removed. The IAS clearly tells people what to think and if you don't' agree, they ensure you can no longer partake in any discussion on the subject. Additionally, as noted today, they also launch personal attacks on individuals who do not agree with them.
They then say:
In case you didn’t know, the IAS will be celebrating its 25th birthday next year. There have been many people like Darcy, Ben and Grant over this past quarter of a century who have tried to silence the IAS. Fortunately, truth will always prevail and it will take a bit more than some so-called “science” bloggers – with too much time on their hands – to stop the IAS from helping families to make an informed choice on vaccination.
Yes, fortunately the truth did prevail, and the charity status was removed. That was merely the first of what will most likely be many legal hurdles this organisation will face.
In fact, someone setup a facebook page called "The Real Immunisation Awareness Society" which counters the misinformation of the IAS and within a couple of weeks they are getting almost as much interest in the page as the 25 year old IAS is getting on theirs. Indeed, there has been no new information posted on there in the last week, you can hear the crickets chirping happily.
