Hilary's Desk

As someone who spent some years working in restaurants, I laughed when I read a recent article about how bad New Zealanders are when it comes to complaining about the quality of food in a restaurant. The article talked about how people would whinge in private, complain to their mates, or not go back to the restaurant, but rarely did they have the guts to go to the restaurant and explain what they didn’t like. It’s so true. It was true back in the 70’s and is still true today. Those who do complain are mostly business people who have learned to speak their mind, or overseas people who understand the importance of standing up for themselves. Only a few kiwis have learned that it is right to complain. Read Full Blog

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

London Time’s headline shrieks: “Leading scientist accuses doctors of increasing fear of vaccines”  When are scientists going to understand that they don’t know everything, and the world doesn’t revolve around their myopic thought patterns? Why is the primary aim of scientists to make everyone conform to their own thinking. Why do they assume that, “For most people it goes back to the primeval: ‘Well my mother had measles, I had measles, so why do I need to take the risk [of vaccinating my child]?’ What they are really saying is, ‘Can I live with myself if something went wrong?’ ” Incorrect, Prof Sir. But because Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, by virtue of his many letters, thinks he’s right, so are his solutions??! Read Full Blog

Yesterday, in the Far North, Dr Jonathan Jarman had high blood pressure because he feared that 28 cases of measles in the last two months, in pakeha homeschooling, alternative life stylers in Hokianga, could trigger measles cases and deaths left, right and centre. His advice to health workers was to bail up everyone unvaccinated, born after 1969, and shoot’em up with an MMR vaccine, and to rope in anyone who hadn’t had an MMR, and see to it that they were injected. Not in that kind of language, but given information passed on from Kerikeri, the hard word tactics have already started.  Read Full Blog

What do scientists know about the flu vaccine? Not much really, in spite of it being used for years. This particular blog is not for the faint hearted. Read Full Blog

WE mothers are not the crème de la crème of society. WE did not go to medical school. WE are mere mothers, who can’t possibly understand all medical science. And WE know this, because they infer so, in their medical articles about us. And in lay-press articles, we hear patronising messages such as vaccines being just like “hard hats”, “seat belts” and “steel-capped boots”. Strange. NONE of those things go ‘into’ a body. Neither do they have potential to train-wreck the immune system in a finely tuned biological-wonder.  Read Full Blog

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A recent abridged email provides another piece to the jigsaw puzzle: Read Full Blog

At a recent annual provaccine conference, it is reported that delegates expressed remorse at “strong arm” tactics. Could it be that the MenZB vaccination campaign, and the latest Gardasil efforts, have seriously backfired in their faces? People are sick of being emotionally blackmailed with drama-queen DVD’s about “How you will die if you don’t” or “Vaccination is the right thing to do, because everyone else does it.” And “You are irresponsible if you don’t!”  Read Full Blog

Over the last few years, there has been an unprecedented attack on anything loosely described as “alternative” medicine, by those who call themselves skeptics.  Read Full Blog