Hilary's Desk

On March 1, The Wall Street Journal ran an article on fever  which was discussing the American Academy of Pediatric’s latest policy document on fever and antipyretic use.  which is exactly the snow-job you’d expect of an organisation wedded at the hip to Big Pharma. Out of interest, I submitted an e-response to Pediatrics. In the event of it not being put up, here is a copy below: Read Full Blog

A friend of mine, has not long got out of hospital with her fully breastfed baby. She didn’t actually “want” to be in there but the doctor noted a mild fever, and instantly got “fever phobia” and insisted she go to hospital. ESPECIALLY as the baby wasn’t vaccinated. The mother had been quite content with dealing with it herself, but her mother saw the baby and wet her knickers, insisting that the slightest fever needed to be look at by a doctor! To keep her mother happy, (big mistake) she went to the doctor. She didn’t realise that he too, had conditioned fever phobia. Once she got into hospital, things started to unravel.  Read Full Blog

Not that' you'd know with what many medical articles call both medical and parental "fever-phobia"!  What other explanation can there be to the fact that not one person in the skeptics or the medical profession questions the use of drugs to squelch fever?  Or even the function of fever?  Read Full Blog

Why would any real skeptic suggest pamol as a treatment to reduce fever? It’s standard medical practice, and has been used for decades, and THEREFORE, according to skeptics, is ASSUMED to be the truth.  Read Full Blog

While the medical profession has finally caught on, that the more "educated" a parent makes themselves on the issues around vaccination, the more likely they are to chose not to vaccinate, they are utterly offended that people can chose not to vaccinate.  Furthermore, their take on the issue of "choice" is off the wall.  Their solution to parents not making the 'right' choice, is to back parents into the wall and take pot shots at them with "Refusal to vaccinate" letters (see bottom), which read like legal documents, but are not.  These "refusal to vaccinate" letters come out of such skewed thinking patterns as can be seen in this statement in May this year, from the biggest vaccine defender of them all, Dr Paul Offit: Read Full Blog

Painkiller doses boost child asthma risk, study finds Open letter to the Herald: Read Full Blog