Anti-vax movement in Australia is spreading fear and making money

The pandemic may have shattered lives, economies and businesses across the globe, but one industry is booming off the back of COVID-19 – the anti-vax business.

An analysis of the world’s major anti-vaccination players reveals there is big money in selling fear and mistrust and the COVID-19 pandemic has been “a perfect storm” for monetising the cause despite big tech crackdowns.

Australian anti-vaxxers celebrity chef Pete Evans and rugby league WAG Taylor Winterstein now have their views on vaccination and COVID up for sale via subscriptions, while Australia’s original anti-vax outfit, the Australian Vaccination-risks Network (AVN) has used the pandemic as a launch pad to travel up and down the Australian east coast in a purpose-built bus with the Vaxxed brand emblazoned on the side.

Vaxxed was the controversial anti-vaccination propaganda documentary released in 2016, with a second documentary Vaxxed II: The People’s Truth released in late 2019.

The AVN’s bus, estimated to have cost about $135,000, was funded by donations after a plea went out in February 2020, just as the pandemic hit, calling for donations of $50.

“We need money for an actual bus … we also need money for insurance, registration, fuel, accommodation and meals,” the AVN said in its appeal.

The Australian Vaccination-risks Network (AVN) bus cost $135,000.

The group’s mission was to “interview families of the vaccine-killed” (an incidence which has no scientific evidence according to extensive records kept on vaccine side effects).

By March the AVN had its bus, and thanked those who donated as well as the global operators behind the Vaxxed brand.

“We also want to take this opportunity to sincerely thank … Dr Andrew Wakefield, Del Bigtree and the entire US Vaxxed team whose dedication and energy has birthed a worldwide movement of informed vaccination choice for all,” the group posted.

US-based anti-vaxxer Wakefield, a former physician who was struck off the medical register, and his TV producer offsider Bigtree released Vaxxed: From Cover-up To Catastrophe in 2016 amid a blaze of controversy because Hollywood heavyweight Robert De Niro wanted to premier it at his Tribeca Film Festival.

AVN sells Vaxxed merchandise. Source: Supplied

The film alleges a cover-up by the US Centre Of Disease Control and Prevention regarding a small study of autistic children in Atlanta Georgia.

A taped phone conversation with CDC scientist William Thompson, the father of an autistic child, is the basis of the film. Thompson did not know he was being taped, but bemoaned that his colleagues had left out of the study a subset of African American boys who appeared to have a higher rate of autism.

But as American paediatrician and professor of vaccinology Dr Paul Offit explained, the children were left out for a very good reason.

“That subset of children, the African-American children, were less likely to be vaccinated than their caucasian counterparts. And so when they were diagnosed with autism, they couldn’t qualify for special services unless they got vaccinated. So it wasn’t that the MMR vaccine had caused autism, it was that the diagnosis of autism had caused them to get a MMR vaccine as was clearly explained in that paper,” Dr Offit said.

Andrew Wakefield, left and Del Bigtree produced Vaxxed. Instagram

In 1998 Wakefield had been struck off the UK medical register for an elaborate scientific fraud that linked the MMR vaccine to autism in a paper published that year.

The General Medical Council found he had falsified data, moved dates of children’s immunisations, taken out a patent on his own vaccine, and secretly accepted the equivalent of $800,000 in legal fees from a lawyer trying to get a class action against the MMR vaccine.

“He wasn’t going to say, ‘I’m sorry’, ” Brian Deer, the UK journalist that uncovered the original fraud, said.

“He basically set about campaigning in the United States to make exactly the same case, and to start a vaccine scare there, which is what he succeeded to do.”

Wakefield’s work is a continual problem for vaccine advocates such as Associate Professor Margie Danchin, a Melbourne paediatrician who specialises in vaccine hesitancy.

AVN call for donations for the bus. Source: Supplied

“From our research we know that still roughly around 10 per of parents have that worry that maybe there is a link between MMR and autism even though it’s been conclusively disproved in multiple studies over about a 20-year period now,” she said.

Video sales for Vaxxed in 2016 were an estimated $1.63 million*, but the propaganda film has continued to grow the anti-vax business for all involved despite being dumped from Amazon.

Vaxxed was funded by the not-for-profit AMC Foundation which had revenue of $1,530,628 in 2016. The foundation, in which Wakefield is one of three directors, has now pulled in $3.06 million in three years.

Vaxxed co-producer Bigtree runs the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), a not-for-profit that does not pay tax and therefore has to lodge its financials.

In 2016, the year the Vaxxed movie came out, $157,586 was donated to ICAN. The following year that grew 12-fold, to $1.84 million, of which $625,816 was paid in salaries for the four people listed as employees.

In 2019, contributions had grown to $4.5 million with $1.4 million in wages.

ICAN president Lisa Selz is the wife of wealthy New York Hedge fund manager Bernard Selz. Tax documents from 2017 show the Selz Foundation donated just over $1.3 million to ICAN, the very group Lisa Selz heads up.

In 2018, the Selz Foundation donated $2.34 million to ICAN. The Selz foundation also donated over $357,021 to Vaxxed producers the AMC Foundation in 2016.

Imran Ahmed, CEO for the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said anti-vax misinformation was predominantly being generated from the US.

“It’s an American disease affecting the rest of the world. They are raking in money fast and we know they see COVID-19 as a major opportunity to grow their market, to take advantage of the fears people have in crisis. We know the bulk of the BS is being manufactured in America,” Ahmed said.

Pete Evans is an anti-vaxxer. Pic Nathan Edwards

Taylor Winterstein is also an anti-vaxxer. Picture: Supplied

Which brings us back to Australia.

The top anti-vaxxers in Australia all publicise or sell Vaxxed and Wakefield’s anti-vax message.

Since Amazon removed sales of the DVD, Pete Evans now sells it on his Evolve Network TV channel which charges $10 a month for subscriptions. He also features chats with Wakefield, Bigtree and a host of other anti-vaxxers on his network.

Winterstein, the face of the US Vaxxed bus when it toured Australia in 2017, actively raises money for the Vaxxed bus as well as charging $88 a month to subscribe to a 12-month program on health which includes “making informed choices” about vaccination.

The AVN is also selling memberships as well as Vaxxed merchandise and DVDs.

“There is no question (Wakefield) having a dramatic effect on vaccination rates and parents’ confidence in vaccines,” journalist Brian Deer said.

Meryl Dorey claims Andrew Wakefield is a “fantastic hero”.

When AVN founder Meryl Dorey was questioned on Wakefield’s proven fraud during the filming of the upcoming Sky documentary Big Shots she proclaimed him “a fantastic hero.”

Pete Evans has proclaimed Wakefield a hero as well.

Wakefield’s latest anti-vax film, 1986: The Act, released in the middle of the pandemic last year, thanks not-for-profit foundation Crystal Clear Film Foundation for funding the film.

The foundation has one principal officer – Wakefield. CCFF pulled in $378,342 in 2017 and $289,465 in donations in 2018.

In November 2019, Vaxxed II: The People’s Truth was released.

Its executive producer was Robert F Kennedy Jr, the nephew of former US president John F. Kennedy, who heads up America’s largest anti-vaccine outfit Children’s Health Defense.

Children’s Health Defense has total assets of more than $39 million, with contributions and donations totally over $13 million in 2019. Over $22.2 million was spent on “advocacy and media campaigns”.

Scaring people is big business.

*All figures are in Australian dollars

BIG SHOTS: ANTI-VAXXERS EXPOSED, Sky News, premieres 8pm, Tuesday, February 23

Originally published as Anti-vax movement in Australia is spreading fear and making money