Hilary's Desk

Do you, like some other kiwis I know, roll up and get your five yearly "pneumonia shot"? You did know, of course, that it was useless, right? Of course not. I mean, if that was the case, your doctor wouldn't have given it to you, right? You did know that the Cochrane Collaboration, medical doyen of evidence based medicine, has stated that the polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccine is useless since their very first review of it right? (Latest one, 2008),  You didn't know that? Well, that's because your doctor didn't tell you. I wonder why? Just like they don't tell you that the Cochrane collaboration says the flu vaccines are also rubbish. Well guess what? The UK vaccine committee, the JVCI has just announced on 17 March 2011, that they are removing the adult pneumococcal vaccine from their schedule which they've used and persuaded people for decades that it was worth having..., because it doesn't work. Why might this be? Altruism towards their patients? Of course not. they pulled it  because on 13th March 2011Pfizer filed for use, a new PREVNAR 13 for adults. But the story doesn't end there. Continue Reading

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.”  Continue Reading

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: Continue Reading