Updates made to The Millenium Project in December 2001

World AIDS day – December 1 (1/12/2001)
For reasons beyond the imagination of sane people, the anti-vaccination liars are opposed to research to find an AIDS vaccine. (Further evidence, if any was needed, of why these despicable people must be treated with contempt.) With five million new infections this year, AIDS will soon surpass TB as the single greatest killer disease in the world. The search for an answer is a test of our humanity. There is money available (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has recently pledged $100 million) but little will happen without the commitment of politicians and governments, and politicians won't act unless they think people want action. The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative is collecting signatures on a petition to be presented at a conference in 2002. Please sign.

He's baaack ... (1/12/2001)
A couple of weeks ago, Mr William P O'Neill of the Canadian Cancer Research Group rang me at home, told me that we were both the victims of some faceless, foul-mouthed stalker and offered to send me some proof of this. Not surprisingly, nothing has yet turned up (it's hard to send what you don't have) but Mr O'Neill has kept himself busy creating lying web sites about me and other people. As three of these things turned up in a week, I have updated the CCRG Statistics page to include a listing of these sites. You can see the full details on the Statistics page, but here is a summary

• 32 email addresses
• 60 announcements of impending legal action or mentions of my non-existent criminal record
• 50 announcements of the closure of The Millenium Project
• 43 announcements of my bankruptcy and unemployment
• 98 versions of my name
• 12 tribute web sites

... but he still won't take the challenge (1/12/2001)
When the Canadian Cancer Research Group had a working web site, it contained information which suggested that many thousands of people with cancer had received advice and even treatment from the organisation. Surely, with this record it would be a simple matter for Mr O'Neill to accept the Cancer 100 Challenge and win himself a Nobel Prize. There are only 61 days to go until nominations close for the 2002 Prizes, but this should be plenty of time to gather the patient records and fill in the necessary paperwork. Unless, of course, the claims of the CCRG are as worthless as Mr O'Neill's stories about my criminal record and its treatments are as effective as his attempts to close this site down. To make it easier for the CCRG, they don't have to pull the files for Sandra Schmirler or Annette Pypops. We all know that they both died shortly after abandoning medical treatment.

Get ready to puke (1/12/2001)
Someone wrote to me and said "Your picture of the girl with polio might be more convincing if she weren't from a third-world country". This attitude, that other people's children don't matter, is typical of the people opposed to vaccination. To the rest of us it is a tragedy and a scandal that any child, anywhere in the world, should suffer the effects of a crippling, deforming and life threatening disease when a safe, effective means of preventing the disease has been available for almost half a century. (You can see the picture in question here.)

Administration stuff (1/12/2001)
People often write to me to suggest the listing of sites that are already here. Part of the problem is that people are only aware of someone's name but not what their site is called. Recent examples were requests to include long-term residents mad Lenny Horowitz ("the CIA invented AIDS") and fag-hater Fred Phelps ("God hates fags"), whose web sites were called "Tetrahedron" and "Westboro Baptist Church" respectively. I have now started including the names of people in the listings so that they can be found through the search form on this page and on the Site Map page. There is also a link on the Site Map page to a list of the URLs of all the sites included here which is useful to people who want to see if a site is already listed.

And a big "thank you" (1/12/2001)
The number of visitors to this site in November was the highest monthly count ever and was more than twice the count for the same month last year. Thank you for your support. Without people to look at it, it is not worth doing.

Christmas present suggestion (1/12/2001)
It is almost unbelievable that there are still people who deny the "germ theory of disease", but they are out there. For the rest of us, there is a great range of products with pictures of these elusive creatures that you can wear on your person. Just the thing to give your favourite anti-vaccinator, chiropractor or naturopath to remind them of what has been learnt in the last century or so, or wear them yourself and make a fashion statement while you spread awareness of some important health care issues. Click here or on the logo to see the range. The Infectious Awareables people donate a proportion of their sales to medical research and I will do the same – 20% of any commission I receive from the sale of these items will be donated to The Millennium Foundation at Westmead Hospital.
(It took a few years but this site finally disappeared in 2020. Sad, that!)

Could it get any lower? (8/12/2001)
A new world record in tastelessness was attempted by a cancer quack who was offering copies of George Harrison's autopsy report for sale 48 hours after the musician's death. Get your gag reflex under control and read about it here.

More sadness (8/12/2001)
George Harrison was not the only famous person to die of cancer lately. On 19 November Thomas Navarro finally succumbed to medulloblastoma. Thomas was a five-year-old boy whose illness had been ruthlessly exploited in an advertising campaign for a fraudulent cancer curer. While this campaign was principally on behalf of one quack, many other cancer quacks were prepared to get on the bandwagon and use Thomas to try to get the law changed to allow them untrammelled access to the lives and savings of desperate people. After all, while they may all pretend to be offering different, competing cures (see below), they are really all in the same business. If they can get the law changed and remove restrictions on claiming cures then the whole market expands and everyone wins. Except people with cancer, of course, but since when have the problems of the victims worried any bunch of lying criminals? To show their compassion for Thomas, at the time this is being written (17 days after Thomas died) the people running the advertising web site have not yet updated it to tell the world of his death. They are still asking for money, though. And almost certainly looking for a replacement sick child to use in the next campaign.

The quacks agree … or do they? (8/12/2001)
The cancer curing business is a competitive world, and each curer needs to have his or her own unique product. The trouble is that they are all so unique that there seems to be no common ground. They do agree on one thing, though – there's money to be made. I have written an article comparing some of the curers, and you can read it here.

"Lawyer joke" – sometimes that's a tautology (8/12/2001)
Whatever happened to Nuremberg 2001? Here's an update of the promised, threatened and supposedly ongoing legal action being taken against web sites in the RatbagsDotCom stable.

• Mr William P O'Neill said that he had lodged claims against me in a court, but nothing has turned up in the 165 days since then. He has also made 60 announcements about legal action or my criminal record, but who's counting?
• In another place, Quintessence of the Loon upset someone who claims that he did not claim that the technology for transistors came from aliens despite claiming it several times. Pretend lawyers issued threats and demands. Equally false lawyers issued rebuttals. You can read the transcript here.
• In an even anotherer place, Full Canvas Jacket has been threatened by someone who has an astrology that works every time. It seems that he has promised legal action against others in the past but nothing has ever come of it except amusement. One of his complaints is that people call him "Peat". Someone suggested calling him "Sod" instead. See the murky details here.

Greenwich "University" (15/12/2001)
Someone wrote to me asking for details about Greenwich University on Norfolk Island. His friend had applied for a job at a real university using his Greenwich-issued PhD as qualifications and needed to know the accreditation status of Greenwich. Unfortunately, I had to disappoint him. You can read my comments here.

Harassment happens haphazardly (15/12/2001)
Mr William P O'Neill made a brief return to the fray with a couple of new aliases and a new ISP. Not a lot else has changed, and the same old nonsense about me being a broke criminal with no facts was trotted out again. As usual, everything is documented in the CCRG Correspondence File and the CCRG Statistics page.

Speaking of the Mad Hatter … (15/12/2001)
Tim Bolen, spokesmouth for not-a-medical-Dr Hulda Clark, has issued another of his epistles to the faithful. It has been added to the collection at the Tim O'Ranter page. Eventually I hope to have a complete set of Tim's works there so that we can all have something to amuse us on cold nights when there is nothing on the television. I would have thought that Tim could be using his time more productively by getting together the paperwork so that not-a-medical-Dr Clark could get nominated for a Nobel Prize. There are only 47 days to go until nominations close.

Speaking of things that make you gag … (15/12/2001)
The campaign to free child-killer Alan Yurko continues on its sordid way as assorted liars and charlatans maintain their efforts to exploit this crime as a weapon against vaccination. A recent proclamation from this cess pit (written by a public relations consultant and released over the signature of the murderer's wife) talked about publications that had mentioned the case. Most of the list consisted of the usual suspects (I was a little disappointed that the coverage in The Millenium Project was not mentioned) but three of them caught my eye as it appeared that this atrocity might have been mentioned in real scientific journals. Here is what I found.

• "The Journal of Neonatology-Perinatology 2000:13(1); 6 &66"
  According to PubMed, the only publication with the words "neonatology" and "perinatology" in its name was "Neonatal Intensive Care: a journal of perinatology and neonatology" which has nothing indexed after 1994.
• "The Journal of Degenerative Diseases 2001:3(1)"
  This is put out by a group called "The Common Cause Foundation" and appears to be totally the work of one person, Donald Scott. In one of his books, Mr Scott has conclusively proved that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, AIDS and Gulf War Syndrome all come from government chemical and biological warfare laboratories.
• "Synapse 2001:4(4); 2-8"
  There are several publications with the name "Synapse". The one put out by the Young Religious Unitarian Universalists doesn't look likely, nor does a literary magazine produced since 1933, or the Synapse section in HotWired, or the one seemingly devoted to young people's music. There is, however, a likely candidate which deals with neuroscience. Synapse has a strange system of issuing four volumes each year, with issue 4 of each coming out in the middle of a month. The volumes in 2001 were 39 to 42. All the issues numbered "4" started page numbering at about 250. The relevant articles in the issues containing the page numbers "2-8" mentioned baboons and rats but otherwise had nothing to do with Yurko.

A great mystery. Could Francine Yurko (or the PR person pretending to be her) be trying to deceive people here? Could she be hoping that the intended audience won't bother to check?

(The press release appeared in the Vaccinations list at Yahoo! Groups but you have to be a member of the list to read the messages there.)

Mailbox mysteries (15/12/2001)
The oddities keep appearing in my inbox. What could this strange mail message mean? Does this person think I run some sort of pyramid scheme around here?

Okay I have tried many, many programs and frankly just had it with paying my hard earned money have something that only work's half assed. Though a few did work in a way but not in the way I wanted or expected. If you could send me something information and a few tips about your program and if it is successful, I would love to have a few links to your site on some of my Web pages but first I would like to see for myself that this program works. Thank you for your time.

And, is this some kind of admonition?

Re: Bodyscan, it is a fabulous piece of equipment and works fantastically well. We are energy you know – bye

Pyramid spruiker shows me the plan (22/12/2001)
Regular visitors will be aware that I have little time for people running pyramid schemes, even if they call them "network marketing", "multi-level marketing" or any other euphemism designed to get around the laws against these financial and mathematical frauds. Two of the skills of a good MLMer are persistence and obdurateness – you need these to keep trying to recruit your friends in the face of indifference and hostility. I suppose this is why they keep writing to me. The latest one sent me a message with the subject "It seems you dont know anything about mlms. Your an idiot". The odd thing about it (apart from the poor grammar and punctuation) was that there was no message, just a subject line. The body of the message was as empty as a downliner's wallet after a tools sales meeting. (You can see my opinion of MLM scams here and a collection of MLM spams here.)

Hyperbola of harassment (22/12/2001)
Just as a hyperbola approaches ever closer to an axis but never quite touches it, Mr William P O'Neill has come so close to making up 99 names for me but has not quite got there. The count now stands at 98 and it would be a tidy end to the year to actually have the full 99. I hope he can rise to the occasion during the next week. I haven't heard from the Gutless Anonymous Liar recently, but perhaps it could apply its mind to the problem as well. Sorry, I forgot that it has no mind. The current score can be found at the CCRG Statistics page, with some background data at the CCRG Correspondence File. Oh, and by the way – there was another announcement this week that this site had closed down. Look around – is it still here? And someone tried to create an anonymous email account using my employer's name – see the details here.

2001 Millenium Awards (31/12/2001)
The Millenium Awards for 2001 have been announced.

• Anus Maximus Award – Australian Vaccination Network
• Quote of the Year – T. Baker
• Highly Commended
  • Hindu Unity
  • John Edward, Psychic
  • The "Free Yurko" Campaign
• Encouragement Awards
  • Raw Meaty Bones
  • Constancy of the Velocity of Light
  • Violent Christians

See the Awards Page for the winners.

Happy New Year (31/12/2001)
I would like to wish all the visitors to this site a Happy New Year, and I hope that 2002 brings you all that you need even if it can't bring all that you want. Thank you for your support and interest over the last year. The continually increasing visitor numbers and the complimentary emails I receive make it all worthwhile because they show that a lot of people appreciate what I do. Even the hate mail, threats and lawsuits are encouraging, because they tell me that I must be doing something right. I apologise again to anyone who emailed me and didn't get a reply. I try to answer all email (well, the polite ones anyway) but sometimes things get busy or real life intervenes and I miss a few. I would also like to thank the people who made donations or bought books from this site.

What happens next? (31/12/2001)
Despite the determined efforts of people with things to hide, this site will continue on next year with weekly updates (most weeks, anyway). I imagine that the threats, harassment and lawsuits will continue to come in and they will have the same effect as those in the past – none. There will be some behind-the-scenes work done on the site to improve the site search and navigation so that it is easier to find things, and some work will be done to move the site closer to the front in the major search engines. The book of the week feature has been very popular and will continue (I might even start writing reviews). Who knows, I might even get around to the long-promised t-shirts, mugs and mouse mats. The art collection will be expanded and, no, the drawing of Don Quixote is not there to suggest that I have been futilely tilting at windmills. It's just that I have pictures by Spaniards Goya and Dali around the site and I thought it was time to include a Picasso.

Harassment – Hip, Hip, Hooray! (31/12/2001)
He did it! In a late burst of creativity, Mr William P O'Neill of the Canadian Cancer Research Group exceeded all expectations and created not just the one new name for me that was necessary to bring the total to 99, but THREE new names to make the count 101. You can go here to see the complete set. Unfortunately the work left Mr O'Neill too tired to make a good effort on the last full moon of the year and he had to resort to writing some nonsense about me not having a university degree and creating another pathetic tribute site. Oh, well ...

Speaking of the number 101 … (31/12/2001)
Did you know that George Orwell wrote about alternative medicine and its true believers in the novel 1984? You can click here to read something I wrote about what it means to believe what the Leader tells you to believe.

And speaking of the full moon … (31/12/2001)
One person who did rise to the occasion and have a good howl at the last full moon of 2001 was Tim Bolen, spokeslout for not-a-medical-Dr Hulda Clark. Tim issued another of his rants to the faithful, this time managing to achieve a level of incoherence that could even make some of the other harassers around here envious. It has been added to the collection at the Tim O'Ranter page. Eventually I hope to have a complete set of Tim's works there as a resource for graduate students of postmodernism who need examples of contentless prose. I still think that Tim could be using his time more productively by getting together the paperwork so that not-a-medical-Dr Clark could get nominated for a Nobel Prize. Nominations close on February 1, 2002.

They want pictures …(31/12/2001)
During December, seven more pictures were added to the collection that I am supplying to the President of the Australian Vaccination Network, following her request on some newsgroups for pictures for pictures to remind her of how good it would be for children in a world without vaccines. You can click on each picture to see a larger view, or click here to see the full collection.