Thank You, American Airlines, For Refusing to Air Meryl Dorey's Anti-Vaccine Rant

I finished my critique of Meryl Dorey's interview about 9:30 pm, PDST on 4/21/2012. Close to 11 pm, the online petition went up.  I was in the first handful to sign.  I didn't keep track of the signatories per hour.  This morning, Phil Plait published a request that the interview be pulled, and even more people signed the petition.  Right now the count is about 2,540 signatories

At 3:01 pm today, I received the following tweet:

Phil Plait clarified that the print version wouldn't run either.

Thanks, American Airlines.  You did the right thing, in a darned speedy manner.

 More thank you notes: 

Peter Bowditch

Advodiaboli American Airlines Grounds AVN

Australian Skeptics, Anti-Vaccination off the Air (Line)

Australian Doctor US Airline Pulls Anti-Vax Interview

AVN Responds

The Australian Vaccination Network has mounted their own poll  (I made a mistake by not tracking the "don't air" poll; won't repeat it.  As of GMT 4/24/2012 at 5:00 pm, this petition had 59 signatories)

Meryl Dorey's Hilarious Anti-vaccine Idiocy, Meryl Fights Censorship

Comments

[Michael Simpson]

Good job Liz. This reminds me of the attempt a couple of years ago where Age of Autism (I could be wrong that, but a big group) tried to put a PSA about how bad vaccines were on movie screens. We have a small chain of "art" movie theaters out here in Los Angeles called Arclight. Well, I and a few others wrote them not to do it (using the form letter that worked with a couple of other chains), and they wrote me back that "there are opinions on both sides of the issue of vaccines, and the "science" of how vaccines might be dangerous should be shared so everyone can make an informed opinion." Obviously, you did a better job than I did. :)

Hopefully, her comments don't show up someplace else.

[Chris]

So the petitions that asked American Airlines to not post the AVN propaganda received over 2500 signatures in about two to three days before it closed. (By the way, if you click on the "Petition Updates" tab there, you will see Paul Gallagher's updates.)

The AVN petition linked to above has only 145 signatures after at least three days.