Miri AF

Massive missives and more

An Assembly of Exigent Epistles to Assorted Eminent Officials
(or, strongly-worded letters to liars). 

(All letters can be found here, a selection are printed below)

LETTER TO THE DAILY MAIL, 02/04/19

Subject: False information in Sasha Walton vaccine article

Dear Sirs,

I read an article in your online newspaper today entitled 'Research scientist, 28, reveals her horror at discovering she had NO childhood jabs because her mother was an anti-vaxxer', link below:


I note that the author, Sasha Walton, claims to have been offered the HPV vaccine aged 13. She states that she was born in 1991, so would have been 13 in 2004. But the HPV vaccine was not introduced to the UK market until 2008.

Walton goes on to state that she wanted to receive the HPV vaccine, but her mother withheld consent, so she did not receive it. However, consent for vaccines for 13-year-olds does not reside with the parent, but with the child, due to the Gillick Competency ruling. Had Walton indicated she wished to receive this vaccine, then she would have received it, regardless of the wishes of her mother. In rare cases, a child may not be considered Gillick Competent (there would have to be a very compelling reason for this), but given Walton was actually 17 when the vaccine came out, and not 13, then she would have been in charge of her own medical decisions anyway.

Given these facts, it is clear Walton has included false information in her article for your newspaper, and intentionally misinformed and misled readers. It is your responsibility as a national publication to confirm the credibility of your journalists, and to fact-check the information they give you. As Ms. Walton has wilfully deceived her audience regarding the HPV vaccine, I am forced to doubt the veracity of her entire account, and I would also like to question the motivations behind it. Clearly there is a purpose in her promulgating false information about vaccines, and I - and no doubt many of your other readers - would like to know what it is.

Yours sincerely,

Miri Finch
Director, STRIVE

(I received no reply.)

LETTER TO ASHFIELD MEDICAL, 03/04/19

To Whom It May Concern,

It may be of interest to you to know that I sent the [enclosed] letter to the Daily Mail yesterday, regarding your employee Sasha Walton's article for them on vaccines.

It is of interest to me to learn that she is not in fact a 'research scientist' as billed in the Daily Mail, but actually a writer for a pharmaceutical PR company. I am sure many readers of the Daily Mail would have found it most useful indeed to have been furnished with this information before reading her piece. 

Yours sincerely,

Miri Finch 


Find these letters permanently at:   https://miriaf.webs.com/dailymailsashawalton
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LETTER TO THE SUNDAY TIMES, 15/04/19

Dear Shanti Das and Jonathan Leake,

I am writing to you in regards to your article of 07/04/19 regarding Professor Chris Exley. 

Professor Exley is recognised as the world's leading authority on aluminium toxicity, with a research career that spans four decades, and encompasses extensive publication in multiple top international journals. So to claim that 'experts' disagree with him is a misnomer. He is the expert, and the other scientists you quoted are not. None of them claim any proficiency in aluminium.


Your piece details that Exley's funding avenues are being terminated, with the latest attempt to raise money on GoFundMe being shut down by the funding giant because ''[c]ampaigns raising money to promote misinformation about vaccines violate GoFundMe's terms of service and we are removing them''. 


Yet the funding drive was not promoting any information about vaccines - it was attempting to fundraise to finance a study. This study would be carried out under all the proper protocols, and the findings reported accurately and appropriately in the apposite journal. GoFundMe does not know what the findings of this study would be, so by shutting down the efforts to fund independent and unbiased science, GoFundMe and the Sunday Times are confirming that independent and unbiased science is unacceptable, because there is a possibility it will find that vaccines are unsafe - and this, apparently, constitutes 'misinformation'.


This is, clearly, deeply troubling. If vaccines are indeed safe, and the aluminium adjuvants are not causing serious adverse events in a significant number of individuals, then that is what the study will find. To prevent the study from being done clearly belies that vested interests know the study will find something else, and are therefore crushing funding attempts in order to continue to retail a dangerous product.


I am sure that when you both entered journalism, it was with the best of intentions, to share important and enlightening information with as many people as possible, and not to produce propaganda to enrich the coffers of pharmaceutical companies.


Yours sincerely,


Miri Finch


(I received no reply.)


Find this letter permanently at:  https://miriaf.webs.com/exleytimes0419


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LETTER TO DR. SUE SHERMAN OF KEELE UNIVERSITY, 28/01/16


Dear Dr. Sherman,

I attended your lecture on the 27th January, 2016, regarding the HPV vaccination.

I have been working in this field myself for some time, researching and raising awareness of the adverse effects associated with this vaccine. The HPV vaccines (Gardasil and the now-discontinued Cervarix) have the worst safety profiles of any vaccine to date, with far more serious adverse events reported than any other vaccine ever produced. These facts were omitted from your lecture. 

Further, there is no evidence the HPV vaccination has or ever will prevent a single case of cancer. This fact was also omitted from your lecture; you stated that the HPV "prevents" cancer. As I stated, there is no evidence it has prevented a single case.

At the end of your lecture, a male member of the audience raised some very valid concerns about the HPV vaccination, which I have briefly laid out above. Rather than engage with him in an appropriate manner, I feel that you behaved extremely unprofessionally by beginning to "rant" about so-called "anti-vaxxers", and then stated your extraordinary (and completely irrelevant to a debate on HPV) belief that "because of anti-vaxxers, whooping cough has come back". 

As an academic psychologist, you have a responsibility to maintain professional standards, which include the ability to appropriately entertain and engage with ideas that don't match your own. Your tirade against "anti-vaxxers" was not only emotionally driven and unprofessional, it was extremely intolerant and discriminatory, and could have caused great trauma and offence to members of the audience. You do not know what their personal beliefs on vaccination are, or whether a close family member of theirs may have been injured or killed by a vaccine.

It is clear you are not well educated on the dangers of vaccines generally nor the HPV vaccine specifically (which you stated falsely has not caused any deaths), and that is your choice. But as an academic, you have a responsibility to encourage, support and respect debate, disagreement and diversity of ideas. Instead, I am of the view that your lecture was akin to indoctrination and "brainwashing", giving students none of the full facts, and aggressively attacking and mocking anyone who attempted to offer an alternative or fuller perspective.

I feel that your conduct was in breach of the university's anti-discrimination policy, whose first priority in a higher education setting should be protecting from discrimination those who have different ideas. 

A very large number of scientists, doctors, researchers and activists have expressed grave concerns about both the safety and the efficacy of the HPV vaccine, including Dr. Sin Hang Lee, MD, who recently wrote an open letter to the WHO accusing them of fraud and misconduct regarding this vaccination.


I do not know whether Dr. Lee is, as you call it, an "anti-vaxxer". He may be; he may not be. But as a medical doctor, I am sure you will agree he is an eminently qualified authority to opine on the subject.

Equally, anybody who raises concerns about the HPV vaccine may be fully in favour of every other vaccine, or they may not. These are their personal beliefs, to which they are fully entitled. These beliefs are not illegal, nor are they without considerable scientific evidence to back them up. So for you to use a public lecture as an opportunity to mock, ridicule and dismiss people who hold a different view to yours, is simply unacceptable.

I am most disappointed and concerned to have had this experience at Keele, a university with which I have warm and long-standing ties (my name may look familiar to you; my father John Sloboda lectured at the university for 34 years, and it was in his namesake laboratory that you gave your lecture). 

I would like to seek your assurance that my concerns about your conduct will be taken very seriously.

Yours sincerely,

Miri Sloboda

(Dr. Sherman passed the letter on to her Head of Department, Professor Michael Murray, who issued a brief reply.)


LETTER TO PROFESSOR MICHAEL MURRAY, 04/02/16

Dear Professor Murray,

Thank you for your letter. I am pleased to hear that both you and Dr. Sherman took my concerns seriously, and that Dr. Sherman will continue to consider them as her work progresses.

A further piece of information, of which you may both be unaware, is that the gentleman in the audience who challenged Dr. Sherman was Professor Chris Exley. I wanted to draw your attention to this to underline the fact that very highly qualified scientists have grave concerns about the HPV vaccine, even within Keele itself. I am keen to ensure that vaccine safety issues are not mischaracterised as only a concern of unqualified "anti-vaxxers", and also feel it crucially important to challenge the oft-repeated fallacy that "where it comes to vaccinations, the science is settled". It most certainly is not, as the debate between Dr. Sherman and Professor Exley illustrated.

It may be of further interest to you to know that I am in the process of putting together an information website about vaccinations, specifically targeted at college and university students. You can visit the website here:


I am currently seeking contributions for my website from experts in the field, particularly regarding the HPV vaccine. Perhaps Dr. Sherman might consider contributing something to my site?

Yours sincerely,

Miri Sloboda

CC: Dr. Sue Sherman

(I received no reply.)

Find these letters permanently athttps://miriaf.webs.com/shermanhpv

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