Hilary's Desk

While the medical profession has finally caught on, that the more "educated" a parent makes themselves on the issues around vaccination, the more likely they are to chose not to vaccinate, they are utterly offended that people can chose not to vaccinate.  Furthermore, their take on the issue of "choice" is off the wall.  Their solution to parents not making the 'right' choice, is to back parents into the wall and take pot shots at them with "Refusal to vaccinate" letters (see bottom), which read like legal documents, but are not.  These "refusal to vaccinate" letters come out of such skewed thinking patterns as can be seen in this statement in May this year, from the biggest vaccine defender of them all, Dr Paul Offit: Read Full Blog

Today, Pediatrics published a retrospective study with the above title, which purportedly provides the "strongest clinical evidence to date that on-time..." and that these results offer reassuring information" etc etc... I received an alert, and downloaded the study. And started reading. Most of the tables you can't make much of, since they simply tell you end-points and you have no way of knowing whether those end points are even accurate or not. I burst out laughing in the first paragraph of the results though when I read this: "A total of 491 (47%) of 1047 children met the study definition for timely receipt. An additional 235 (23%) received all recommended vaccines during the study period but not on time. The remaining 311 (20%) did not receive all recommended vaccines during the study period." Read Full Blog

In a move worthy of a Monty Python Movie, Dr Jay Gordon has earned my hero award for the decade, for his two 2009 April fool’s press releases sent to a subscription only obscure list called Lactnet, for lactation consultants and doctor who support breastfeeding. Jay is a breastfeeding advocate and passionate about the WHO code, and ethical medicine. He and many of his colleagues are very unhappy at the way the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) lives off money, earned from ordinary people who are duped into believing that formula is fantastic, and "vaccines vanquish victims". As an April fool’s joke, Jay sent out a spoof April Fool’s press release titled “AAP severs ties with Formula Industry” which read:  Read Full Blog

In the document we mentioned yesterday,  was the comment that readers should feel free to reproduce, edit and distribute the information in any way they please.

We appreciate their transparency, and welcome the opportunity to post our own “Policy” statement on the issue. 

Over time, we will bring to readers attention, medical information and analysis which we are confident will blow a whole lot of holes into the assumptions stated in All Star’s “firm” beliefs.  Read Full Blog