Hilary's Desk

Have you ever been told by a medical professional looking at your five week old baby, that you can’t take you baby out into that big bad world until the first shots have been given, because otherwise your child might die? Read Full Blog

Funny how “debate” about the MENZB vaccine, becomes acceptable to the Herald, when it comes from the mouths of IMAC, rather than “anti-immunisation extremists”. But here’s the puzzle. The so-called “anti-immunisation extremists” sounding off in 2004 was primarily pro vaccine Ron Law, whose primary quibble was the hiding of just this sort of information. Funny too. He provided that information to journalists pointing to exactly that debate, but where did it get him? Jane O’Hallahan called him an “anti-immunisation menace”. We all rolled around laughing.  Read Full Blog

Have you noticed a subtle shift away from defining a vaccine by initials which stand for the number of vaccine components being given in the one needle? When you see GARDASIL, do you mentally realise that GARDASIL stands for Quadrivalent HPV vaccine, i.e. four different viruses in one needle?  When you see the title PREVENAR, do you realise that that is seven vaccines in one? Read Full Blog

This morning the editor of the Herald came out of his myopic little hole, and whined about the fact that the New Zealand Ministry of Health had got away with blue murder, and not told parents everything they needed to know. Read Full Blog