How much medicine is actually ‘evidence based?” Nineteen years go, in a British Medical article called “Where is the wisdom?” the opening paragraph contained this information: Read Full Blog
Hilary's Desk
Skeptics Part Four. Fever is there for a reason
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
Skeptics Part Two: "Some suggested pamol"
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
A wake-up call: Why fighting for your family matters
It never ceases to amaze me, when people who put themselves out as scientists, display woeful researching skills, and appear not to hear what is said on programmes they criticise. Peter Griffin at Sciblogs had this to say about the 60 Minutes documentary “Living Proof”. Amongst his various ramblings, he misses the fact that experts were asked to comment.. but refused. He also asked heaps of redundant questions: Read Full Blog
"Refusal" to vaccinate
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
Big Pharma systemic corruption
Systemic rot in Pfizer has got too deep for the authorities to turn a blind eye to any more. Pfizer has paid censured experts to educate doctors, has illegal ghost-writing practices; been warned about significant violations in paediatric trials of Geodon, was found guilty of pushing Neurontin for illegal purposes: tried to force NEMJ to hand over peer review comments... , their litany of dishonesty and corruption, just goes on, and on and on. To me the one incident that really says it all about the system is what the FDA organized when Pfizer was caught illegally marketting Bextra. Read Full Blog
When in a hole, stop digging, wouldn'tya think?
Why doesn't the World Health Organisation stop making fools of themselves? As reported in the Washington Post two European reports have been very critical of the WHO's handling of the swine flu pandemic. WHO's reply? "The idea that we declared a pandemic when there wasn't a pandemic is both historically inaccurate and downright irresponsible," said WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl in a telephone interview. "There is no doubt that this was a pandemic. To insinuate that this was not a pandemic is very disrespectful to the people who died from it." Read Full Blog
Michael J Smith’s study should be withdrawn.
Following on from my previous two posts here, and here, I decided to dig just a wee bit deeper. Why? Because there was one sentence in Michael J Smith’s study which I couldn’t work out. It was this: "Finally, our analyses were limited to publicly available data from the original study. Future VSD studies without this restriction would be able to assess a wider range of outcomes. These include putative vaccine adverse effects such as neurodevelopmental delay, autism, and autoimmune disorders." Lets rephrase this. If Michael J Smith’s study wasn’t restricted to solely using the publicly available data from the original study, he would have been able to study neurodevelopmental delay? …… But hang on! Wasn’t that the WHOLE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY? To reassure parents that vaccinating on time wouldn’t cause neurodevelopmental delay? So….What exactly were these data limitations, Michael? Why didn't you specify them in your study? Read Full Blog
IMAC’s latest "find" – Phillip Matthews
On May 8th, IMAC scored a coup with this patsy plant, in the Press. This article is stunning - not for it's factual or investigative, intelligent content, but for the seeming naive gullibility of the reporter, who it would appear didn't realise that he was asked to come for a walk, like a little puppy dog. I can just see it now. Someone walks in and asks, “Who is the most provaccine reporter here?”, ... and hands them suitably predigested material on a plate. Pre-written, with the "right" slant, just as it "should" be! “What we need is a re-port-er, okay? .. No – no, not an investigative journalist! Shhhh A re-port-er, to re – port what we think, just the way we think it. No, we don't need balance - we just need the right message!” Of course they wouldn’t want an “investigative” journalist on the job, because that might involved "balance"!. And worse, in the past, investigative journalists who have taken the time and energy to do their own research have become ultra critical of IMAC pre-digested soundbites. Read Full Blog
Multiple vaccines overloading infant's immune systems?
"Not possible!" said Dr Paul Offit who believes that the medical profession can happily inject babies with up to 100,000 vaccines at any one time, and the baby's immune system will be just fine. This "dogma" is repeated by all and sundry, including GP's, IMAC and many other medics on autopilot. The theoretical "mathematical model" Dr Offit touted, has just taken it's second "hit" in two years. The first was when they added chickenpox to the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine (MMRV) which caused an increase in high fevers and seizures, and the second has been adding H1N1 into the children's seasonal flu vaccine in Australia, which has also caused an increase in fevers and seizures. Not that you'd know it, by the way CSL and other "stakeholders" are trying to say nothing, to keep this out of the news. Read Full Blog