Hilary's Desk

.... the editor of the Waikato Times.  Seriously, there isn't one, but if there was one, I'd award it to him for unethically butchered a letter of mine, to make it read the opposite of what I meant.  Perhaps this is the new trend to dissuade thinkers from voicing opinions!  I mean, if you KNOW something you write will be completely butchered and made unrecognizably, you'll definitely hesitate to write another one in the future, wouldn't you?  So here's what happened.  In the Waikato Times, on 11 May, was this letter: Read Full Blog

The Guardian today, produced a scrappy piece of journalism here, under the heading "Herbal remedies banned as EU rule takes effect." Whatever the actualities of what herbals will survive, and what is banned, is a much deeper  issue. The voices of the skeptical comments supporting only big pharma, fall into two categories.  The intolerant, who wouldn't know a fact if they saw one, and the "same old" spanish inquisitors, who are employed by someone to bully, snarl at, and smear anyone who is not a big pharma worshipper.  Their mantra is that "only" science understands what is good for you.  "Only" science is reliable.  "Only" science can cure you.  It's astonishing the depths of ignorance they reveal, yet... they have no idea.  Like" rebecca rabbit" who scoffed, "When was the last time a doctor told you to ... starve a fever and feed a cold?" Read Full Blog

A few days ago, I set my husband a task. To read Paul Offit’s book called, “Deadly Choices How the anti-vaccine movement threatens us all” By half way through he was unamused. Beguiled by his sighs of discontent, I decided to stop my current track of writing. and start reading. Naturally I started with the Prologue, where the first sentence read; “There’s a war going on out there – a quiet, deadly war.”  Read Full Blog

In the Sunday Star Times today, Judge David McNaughton delivered a swift message to Starship doctors about predictive and substandard medical care, and the presumption of guilt without good cause.  The Judge found Famaile Lino not guilty of abusing his six month old child after Starship jumped to conclusions, and robustly defended their own preconceived mindsets.  The Lino's lawyer said, " "It's a very important case. It shows how suddenly a person can be at home with their feet up looking after their children, and a nightmare commences."  Here's the rub though.  Court cases like this USUALLY only happen to people like the Linos or the Kahuis.  Starship doesn't usually go after people who know what's going on; the limitations of the medical profession; and how to defend themselves.    Starship are of course, scuttling into a "risk management" position, by defending the indefensible: Read Full Blog

What epidemic? "Numbers have been on the rise since June this year, but they really spiked up in August," said Dr Alison Roberts, of the Ministry of Health' ... Hiding behind the word "epidemic", as a scare tactic, Alison Roberts continues: "We have been expecting an epidemic around now. New Zealand has a whooping cough epidemic every four to five years, and the last one started in 1999." Really?  has Dr Roberts read this from the ESR? which has a graph showing this:    Read Full Blog

I was a gutless wonder once. For the last 21 years of my first 28 years, I was a coward. How is that, you might ask?  Read Full Blog

Watching TNVZ SUNDAY’s programme about the oral contraceptive pill, called “Wonder Drug”, my mind kept flitting back to the fair grounds of old. Merry go round horses, ever rising, and lowering and the ceaseless crackly potted music;  metal clown heads, swinging wide open mouths, and the croaky voiced candy floss man intoning his automated speil. This was how I perceived the surreal presentation which characterised Janet McIntyre's uncritical canonization of a British Medical Journal article published on 11 March 2010. She followed the rest of the media who described this study as “titanic”.... forgetting that the unsinkable Titanic,...  sank.   Janet was unblinkingly content to present people who thought that the Pill should be available over-the-counter, with no controls, to anyone of any age.  Caution and monitorring be damned. Let’s get with it, full speed ahead. Titanic, indeed. Which will of course, fix global warming!  Hurray.... Read Full Blog

Like many of my friends, there was once a time when I trusted the system; was ignorant about the actual lack of “evidence base”; and assumed that what I was told was right. Because of this naivety, I learned the hard way that the system can be wrong. Since then, I’ve done my best to keep myself out of this system, but when neded, I have never hesitated to confront the system  in order to get the best for my family or friends, and protect them from the worst. I’ve only been able to do that, with a backbone honed from years of research into all sorts of diagnostic scenarios, so that I know what is supposedly gold standard treatments, what evidence (or lack of) that’s based on, and the flaws.  Read Full Blog