Hilary's Desk

History Buffs will know all about “indulgences”. To put it colloquially, this is where the Roman Catholic church said, “if you don’t give us money to pray for your dead relatives they will languish in purgatory for long periods before they get to Heaven’s gate.” I see, that the Roman Catholic church is revitalizing the “indulgences” doctrine.  Read Full Blog

Vaccines protect. Vaccines are safe. Vaccines never cause harm. Vaccines save lives. Got that? You stupid people who think that vaccines are to blame for everything under the sun, need to get a life. When are you going to get it through your heads that the cervical cancer vaccine did NOT kill that UK girl??!   Vaccines can’t do that!   The autopsy was quite clear. This girl had a malignant tumour in the chest, which was a serious underlying condition. That’s what killed her. The Cervarix shot, given two hours before she died, had nothing to do with it - quite coincidental.... Got that? Read Full Blog

You know, I have no problem with scientific principles but I sure have problems when science has no principles. It beggars belief when you read the headlines in a newspaper which says, "More than half million (USA) kids get bad drug reactions". Okay, okay... maybe that's true. Read further, and you'll see it is. But these drug reactions are elective drugs like penicilin, paracetamol, and 'stuff'. Then further down, we read, "similar numbers of hospitalized children - about 540,000 yearly, also have bad reactions to drugs including side effects, medicine mix-ups and accidental overdoses." Okay? Parents are admonished to pay close attention when their children are started on medicines, since "first-time" medication exposures may reveal an allergic reaction." Fine. But. There's a very big BUT here. Read Full Blog

Is the whole of New Zealand gormless? No, but Dr Darren Hunt's face peers out from a box on page three of the Sunday Star Times today, telling us that the problem with swine flu is that no-one in the community has any immunity to it, therefore it will infect far more people than normal flu, and we can't have 20 - 50% of people sick with swine flu, as well as ordinary flu, can we? "That's why we have to slow it down."  Hang on a minute??!!!  Read Full Blog

Making vaccines compulsory, isn't something you hear much about in New Zealand media, BUT... if we aren't careful, mandatory vaccination will become law in this country. While those who tweak the strings around the wrists of politicians have kept very quiet in public, in private, there have been, and are, far more intense discussions going on about making vaccines mandatory, than ever before. How do I know? Read Full Blog

Everywhere we look, we see nothing but pictures of coloured surgical masks as if these have some paranormal ability to “protect” the wearer. These, we presume, work. Right? After all, they are part of the “national plan” to stop the spread of flu viruses right? We’ve been told that the two main means of infection are contact: as in shake someone’s hand, put hand in mouth; picking up droplets from furniture (fomites), or being directly coughed or sneezed over. Right? Masks supposedly are to contain what the infectious people cough out, to protect others, so wearers also assume that masks protect them from the “environment” around them. Why else would people on the streets of Mexico, and doctors, be wearing them? Right? Wrong, actually, on both counts.  Read Full Blog

Two weeks ago, when CDC, po-faced told us, that this “new” virus, never seen before in pigs…, was a combo of Eurasian/America swine flu/avian/human viruses, you believed them, right? Now, they are back tracking, saying, “No no,no.. only pig. Not human or bird.” Shhh…..  Read Full Blog

Here we go again. Another media beat up. Make a huge story out of... what??? An influenza virus which has caused thousands of cases, which in that horribly polluted smoggy lung coughing place called Mexico City, has caused serious pneumonia in some of them, which killed just over 100 of them.  Some thousands of cases you say?  Maybe.  Cruising all the medical reports, it's pretty obvious that there are far more cases than we're being told. More importantly, why call this the "Swine flu pandemic"?  Where did the media get that idea from?  Maybe some medic whose repeatedly cried wolf, and really needs to justify their job?  They made a cash cow out of the non-existent bird flu, so why not bolster Wall street yet again.  What a sound-bite to get the adrenalin running! "Swine Flu epidemic here to kill us all"!  It's time the media got real, and started doing some real journalism; real reading; and asking some real questions. Like... who called this particular strain a swine flu virus? Why has there been absolutely NO contact with pigs in even ONE case, anywhere in the world? Unlike the media, a professional medical organisation called PROMED has questioned the name "swine flu". They say it's a human flu.  But just what sort of human flu? Where did it come from? This is what PROMED has to say: Read Full Blog

In a move worthy of a Monty Python Movie, Dr Jay Gordon has earned my hero award for the decade, for his two 2009 April fool’s press releases sent to a subscription only obscure list called Lactnet, for lactation consultants and doctor who support breastfeeding. Jay is a breastfeeding advocate and passionate about the WHO code, and ethical medicine. He and many of his colleagues are very unhappy at the way the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) lives off money, earned from ordinary people who are duped into believing that formula is fantastic, and "vaccines vanquish victims". As an April fool’s joke, Jay sent out a spoof April Fool’s press release titled “AAP severs ties with Formula Industry” which read:  Read Full Blog

According to IMAC “In New Zealand cervical cancer is the third most common cause of cancer in women aged 25 - 44 years.” As usual, no reference. (pdf of IMAC page uplifted here, see page one)  Really. That’s very interesting, because the Auckland District Health Board’s March 2009 4 mb “Nova” Newsletter  says differently. (1st 4 pages uplifted here, because they remove it when the next one comes out.) It says, “for Maori women cervical cancer is the third most common cancer and it is often only caught in the later stages. For New Zealand women overall, it is the ninth most common cancer.” Read Full Blog