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We didn't think it was possible for the anti-vaxxers to stoop any lower. Then they did this.

 

 

The Australian Vaccination Skeptics’ Network has been peddling misleading and dangerous anti-vaccination rhetoric to parents for years now.

But now, it’s telling Australians not to treat people suffering epilepsy.

That’s right: In a post on its Facebook page on Saturday, the group advised parents of children suffering Grand Mal seizures — which involve a loss of consciousness and violent muscle contractions across the whole body — never to take anti-epileptic drugs.

The group — which has previously been issued a public warning from the NSW Health Care Complains Commission — posted a meme that read “drugs cure disease like bullets cure war.”

As reported by blogger Reasonable Hank, it wrote: “(T)here is ALWAYS an alternative to drug-based medicines and the alternatives are most often safer and more effective”.

 

When one Facebook user commented in response that her husband needed to take anti-convulsants to to live, the network responded: “there are natural alternatives for seizures”.

It cited the high-fat, low-protein, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet, sometimes prescribed for children, as one example.

The network – which, by the way, isn’t actually legally allowed to operate under the misleading moniker “Australian Vaccination Network” any more –  has long been attacked by scientists and doctors for claiming that vaccines cause autism.

The group also erroneously claims that vaccination is a “personal choice”, despite the fact that the lives of babies too young to be vaccinated depend on herd immunity across the rest of the community.

But this new claim about epilepsy? We think this may be a new low.