Hilary's Desk

Do you, like some other kiwis I know, roll up and get your five yearly "pneumonia shot"? You did know, of course, that it was useless, right? Of course not. I mean, if that was the case, your doctor wouldn't have given it to you, right? You did know that the Cochrane Collaboration, medical doyen of evidence based medicine, has stated that the polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccine is useless since their very first review of it right? (Latest one, 2008),  You didn't know that? Well, that's because your doctor didn't tell you. I wonder why? Just like they don't tell you that the Cochrane collaboration says the flu vaccines are also rubbish. Well guess what? The UK vaccine committee, the JVCI has just announced on 17 March 2011, that they are removing the adult pneumococcal vaccine from their schedule which they've used and persuaded people for decades that it was worth having..., because it doesn't work. Why might this be? Altruism towards their patients? Of course not. they pulled it  because on 13th March 2011Pfizer filed for use, a new PREVNAR 13 for adults. But the story doesn't end there. Read Full Blog

Further to the superb piece in today's Otago Daily Times paper written by Otago Medical Schools Professor of Medical Ethics (and neurologist) Professor Grant Gillett, calling into question the ostrich attitudes of medical practitioners, Read Full Blog

Here's how the story goes. In 2005 Glaxo Smith Kline, amongst other vaccine firms, threatened the UK Government, saying - "You've got to increase the use of ordinary annual flu vaccine in UK, or if a pandemic comes, we won't supply pandemic vaccine!  So there."  Fast forward to 2010. The UK Government wanted to back out on the 2009 H1N1 vaccine contract, but GSK refused.  And I bet they reminded them of that wee discussion in 2005. "Not gonna let you cancel", says GSK. "We'll downgrade your order of H1N1 vaccine from 130 million doses down to 34.8 million doses, but here's the deal:" Read Full Blog