Hilary's Desk

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 thos...

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What’s the difference between climate change and the provaccine zealots ? Nothing. As many of you will have noticed the climate change people have their tits in a tangle. Some charmer hacked into a data base and uploaded emails sent hither and yon. Naturally, the blistering attacks on the “climate change deniers” were the bits that were talked about most. If you want to read the best dis...

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Over the last few years, there has been an unprecedented attack on anything loosely described as “alternative” medicine, by those who call themselves skeptics. A recent event amused me. An acquaintance of mine, who in the same breath says he’s a greenie who believes in science, also revealed he had cancer. He props up the pharma companies handsomely, but he can afford to. Taking him at his w...

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Did you see this gem of a programme?. The worried well are killing themselves by shelling out lots of money on vitamins. Vitamins cause more deaths than second hand smoking. Never mind that the data is pure bunk. What did you think? Scared witless now? The “truth” of this matter couldn’t be funnier. Or sicker, depending on what meaning you put to the term “sick joke”. But how many people woul...

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Medicine has it’s own share of “indulgences” too, which most people don’t think about. Wouldn’t you think that modern medicine in all it’s TV swept up glory could have found a “cure” for the common cold by 2009? After all, it “knows” so much. It knows that a cure for a cold would make redundant billions of dollars in sales for the useless over the counter drugs alleged to ease the agony of a co...

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History Buffs will know all about “indulgences”. To put it colloquially, this is where the Roman Catholic church said, “if you don’t give us money to pray for your dead relatives they will languish in purgatory for long periods before they get to Heaven’s gate.” I see, that the Roman Catholic church is revitalizing the “indulgences” doctrine. Except of course, there is no such place as purgat...

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You know, I have no problem with scientific principles but I sure have problems when science has no principles. It beggars belief when you read the headlines in a newspaper which says, "More than half million (USA) kids get bad drug reactions". Okay, okay... maybe that's true. Read further, and you'll see it is. But these drug reactions are elective drugs like penicilin, paracetamol, and 'stuff...

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Is the whole of New Zealand gormless? No, but Dr Darren Hunt's face peers out from a box on page three of the Sunday Star Times today, telling us that the problem with swine flu is that no-one in the community has any immunity to it, therefore it will infect far more people than normal flu, and we can't have 20 - 50% of people sick with swine flu, as well as ordinary flu, can we? "That's why we...

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Everywhere we look, we see nothing but pictures of coloured surgical masks as if these have some paranormal ability to “protect” the wearer. These, we presume, work. Right? After all, they are part of the “national plan” to stop the spread of flu viruses right? We’ve been told that the two main means of infection are contact: as in shake someone’s hand, put hand in mouth; picking up droplets fr...

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One of the societal tools used against those who chose not to vaccinate is the “don’t come crying” line. This is best exemplified by Dunedin’s Dr Paul Trotman in his Sunday Star Times column (in the days when he was just ‘Dr Paul’ and no-one knew who he was) in which he said: The Sunday Star Times printed a sanitised version of my reply, but naturally, I prefer the one I sent direct to ...

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The title of our first book came at 1.30 a.m in the morning. I’d been watching a recorded TV programme on the MenZB showing a nurse about to jab a child. She said, “little prick…” The child exploded vocally out of the blocks, and was inconsolable. I thought back to my last phlebotomist’s visit, when the ubiquitous “just a little prick” came out. And the day when she speared a twisted vein and t...

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As the UK medical gestapo proclaim 1,000 measles cases a national disaster, and go after parents who have refused to vaccinate their children against measles, there is an interesting "discussion" at the BMJ website. Peter Flegg, an infectious disease specialist has made some extraordinary claims. That's nothing new. He's done that at the BMJ for years. For those who want are keenly following th...

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"Ah yes. Strange title. In fact, Hilary, you have altered it somewhat...." That I have.  This stunner of an article in the Herald from Reuters had me shaking my head. We shouldn't be talking about mice: lets talk about mothers! The article says: "Mice forced to swim endlessly until they surrendered and just floated, waiting to drown, could be conditioned to regain their will to live when a ton...

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“Orgasmic Birth” is an awesome film, in the true sense of the word, talking to the deepest needs of women, at the gut, emotional, and intellectual level. In one sense, words fail me. The film follows home birthing parents growing and being reborn as different people, fulfilling their full potential of parenthood, and in particular womanhood. Interwoven are scenes of emotionally...

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" Bonding stronger if birth is natural". So read the heading on page A17 of the New Zealand Herald today. The article isn't available on the website because it originally came from the Independent. Way back, even before some readers of this column were born, the majority of labouring mothers were falling under the "spell" of the medical profession which held what looked like a 'progressive' ne...

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Vaccination law in New South Wales, Australia is very clear.  If a mother is hepatitis B surface antigen positive, the parents can be offered immunoglobulin and the vaccine for the baby, and if the parents say, "No", the paper work is completed and that's it. But that's not what happened in Australia this week. Dr David Isaacs, who was not even involved in the case to begin with, decided it was...

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Funny how “debate” about the MENZB vaccine, becomes acceptable to the Herald, when it comes from the mouths of IMAC, rather than “anti-immunisation extremists”. But here’s the puzzle. The so-called “anti-immunisation extremists” sounding off in 2004 was primarily pro vaccine Ron Law, whose primary quibble was the hiding of just this sort of information. Funny too. He provided that information t...

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About now, your local doctor and nurses will have been provided with the Ministry of Health’s July 2008 latest propaganda DVD called “Immunise your Children”.  This DVD will come as no surprise to those who have listened to the increasingly dictatorial and strident messages behind the closed doors of the annual IMAC immunisation conferences, or who saw the writing on the wall with IMAC’s 1...

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