Comment and Opinion

Vaccination information links – Catherine O'Driscoll

The page has been removed from Ms O'Driscoll's site. I first became aware of it in 2003, and the link above now goes to the Internet Archive copy from April 11, 2005

The anti-vaccination people are continually telling me about their research skills. These are the skills which allow them to discover, read and understand all the medical literature about vaccination and disease. In apparent contradiction to this, several have also said that The Millenium Project has the most comprehensive list of anti-vaccination web sites on the Internet. I find it odd that people who claim such expertise in research can't find as many of their friends as I can. Another example of the contradiction between claimed and exhibited research skills is that many of the people who write to me can't seem to find out my name, despite never being more than a couple of mouse clicks away from it on this site.

The site called "Vaccination information links" gives another indication of what some people think is good research. First, the page reproduces the list of anti-vaccination sites from here, but this violation of the copyright notice on every page of my site is not the point. The fascinating thing is that, in thanking me for my work, it says: "We would like to express our thanks to Peter Bowditch for his efforts in compiling the above list of links. His motives are derogatory and his expressions of self-justification extreme, bigoted, uninformed and downright abusive. So much so that he refrains from publishing his address on the Web: we wonder why!?" The amazing thing is that it goes on immediately to tell everyone about where I live and what I do for a living, information obtained from the Web.

The quality of this investigation can be seen from the fact that the writer seems proud of cracking the veil of secrecy I have created around myself, yet all the information there can be found without any trouble within about five minutes from the page you are looking at now. Is it any wonder that they can't find out about the advantages of vaccination if they think that following five or six obvious web links constitutes a major project in research and detection.

Here's a hint for any anti-vaccinationists trying to do even more in-depth research into the mystery that is me. I am listed in the telephone book. If you go to www.whitepages.com.au, you can look me up and even get a map showing where I live. I know that this is a lot harder than finding, reading and understanding every article published on vaccination research in the Journal of the American Medical Association or the New England Journal of Medicine, but I am sure you are up to the challenge.