Hilary's Desk

Further to yesterday’s blog, the latest Lancet once again, misses the point. Something inevitable with Mr Fog-Optics in his Ivory Tower. In his latest contribution to the debate, called The Vaccine Paradox,  a two pronged attack-approach is taken. First, those who dare criticise or question vaccines are vilified by implication. Second, Bill Gates’ Foundation is fingered for silence about what Horton considers is really important.

In order to define what is "important", Horton quotes the “2010 Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health”, saying;

“Ban Ki-moon’s 2010 Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health sets out a comprehensive approach to reaching Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 for the world’s poorest countries. The strategy is broad, inclusive, and ambitious.”

Have a read of the 2010 Global Strategy. Frankly, it’s not broad enough - and certainly doesn’t include the really important political and social needs for a stable, healthy society.

But Horton goes further. He says;

“While civil-society movements demand access to new interventions—from antiretrovirals to emergency obstetric care—there is not the same fervour about access to vaccines. The notion, expressed elsewhere in global health, of the right to the highest attainable standard of health is rarely expressed in the field of vaccines. For these attitudes to change, the vaccine community, together with its partners, has an opportunity to rewrite the terms of engagement between vaccines (as part of a larger package of services) and communities threatened with vaccine-preventable diseases. While the past has much to teach us, it is the future of vaccines that must command our priority today.”

This has to be the biggest load of blinded drivel I’ve ever seen written on paper, but it’s what you expect from medical journals whose editors walk in lockstep with, and who are joined at the hip to vaccine manufacturers. Vaccine manufacturers can never “get enough”. It’s not enough, that vaccines are rammed down all parents “throats” from the moment a doctor opens his mouth. It's not enough that families in Africa have no choice about vaccines, and they are administered pretty much at gun point.  Read Full Blog

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

The Lancet has retracted the 1998 paper (1). Now, all the pillorying and slandering of Andrew Wakefield will start in earnest. The question is, "How does Richard Horton manage to go to sleep each night?". And here's why.  In 2004, the Lancet "partially" retracted the paper, on the basis that Andrew Wakefield never declared to the Lancet, financial conflicts of interest. When confronted in front of the GMC, with 1997 faxes , and proof of receipt, showing that that required information had indeed been received by the Lancet, Richard Horton said that he had never seen it. Read Full Blog