Hilary's Desk

(Anonymous)  Just recently our daughter had her B4 school check. I was told that this was a comprehensive check where I would be able to discuss my concerns. Not that I had any, but we still went. On that day, our daughter wasn’t feeling great at all. She was running a temperature which later that day went up to 39.8 and she also had quite a nasty cough. As we had stopped vaccinating her after her second shot four years ago I wasn’t concerned because I knew that she wouldn’t be receiving any vaccines. In the waiting room we filled in the forms and were soon called into the nurse’s office. On entering I told the nurse that our daughter was quite sick, she just replied “that’s ok”. She talked to her for about 30 seconds, weighed and measured her and told us that she had beautiful teeth. Well… I knew that already.  Read Full Blog

That about sums up the last week really. Meanwhile, Brian Deer shafts the parents in the 1998 Lancet study calling them worse words than being “nuts”; Dr Paul Offit calls Wakefield a fanatic; vaccine defending bloggers infer that Jenny McArthy is a slut, and the sun shines out of Dr Offit’s little pet Amanda Peet’s long legs... and Gregory Poland considers anyone who is anti vaccine has, "low cognitive complexity in thinking patterns, reasoning flaws, and a habit of substituting emotional anecdotes for data”. And we think Parliament is childish?

The current medical and media parrotage on Deer-gate is worse than in the past, but even so, history is very instructive. Medical systems have for centuries, made dog-piling, and character assassination into versatile art forms with all the spontaneity of well practiced professional wrestling.  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

Have you noticed a subtle shift away from defining a vaccine by initials which stand for the number of vaccine components being given in the one needle? When you see GARDASIL, do you mentally realise that GARDASIL stands for Quadrivalent HPV vaccine, i.e. four different viruses in one needle?  When you see the title PREVENAR, do you realise that that is seven vaccines in one? Read Full Blog