Today was yet another embarrassing day for the "love a quick fix" medical system. The Sunday Independant in the UK revealed that secret documents marked "closed until 2014", showed that in 1982, the Medical Research Council was warned that benzodiazepines, which were marketted as "completely harmless", could cause brain shrinkage, and brain damage. The Department of Health, very conveniently, has "no record" of that meeting. A Professor Malcolm Lader, asked to set up a unit to research benzos, but was refused permission or funding to do so. He didn't push the issue, because even back then, he knew what happens to people who come up against "competing interests", and he assumed that prescription of benzos would "peter out". Read Full Blog
Hilary's Desk
Twenty-five years plus is quite a long time....
(By Peter Butler) Especially when it's been spent dealing with issues and systems governed by engrained mindsets, and heavily influenced by huge vested interests more interested in profits, than making available all of the facts ...without restriction; or providing customized care to unique individuals, rather than trying to fit everyone into their "one-size-fits-all" moulds.
Voices and choices by Peter Butler
When I wrote our home education curriculum it incorporated what I consider an essential foundation stone. A lifestyle must surely include the integration of every aspect of daily living. You cannot put different issues into little boxes with an appropriate label, and then apply differing standards and values to their implementation. To do so will produce inconsistencies, double standards and hypocrisy. The societal attitudes of the present day however, would suggest that this need not be too much of a concern. After all, absolutes seem to have little impact on many people’s lives because the “Absolute” Himself has been dethroned, relegated to a back seat, completely ignored or completely forgotten, leaving the “marvels” of secular humanism to solve the world’s problems. I believe that all of life issues have their answers in the one and only Creator and Saviour God. I respect anyone’s right to disagree with this, but if so, with what will it be replaced?
Professor Hemila shocks Sciblogs into silence.
Professor Hemila quite rightly asks sciblogs why they blethered on about mice and cancer instead of actually DOING a literature review on vitamin C and Pneumonia.... Did Sciblogs... actually put their brains into gear? Professor Hemila's Finnish website is the BEST place on internet to find early and more recent published medical information on Vitamin C. I'd like to think that Sciblogs might learn something from this airhead episode, but seriously, ... I very much doubt it. Here is Professor Hemila's post, for anyone interested: Read Full Blog
On the matter of Dr Anthony J Morris.
On the matter of Dr Anthony J Morris, my verdict on the research skills of the non-skeptics is quite simple. Read Full Blog
Non-Evidence based medicine, Part one.
A friend of mine, has not long got out of hospital with her fully breastfed baby. She didn’t actually “want” to be in there but the doctor noted a mild fever, and instantly got “fever phobia” and insisted she go to hospital. ESPECIALLY as the baby wasn’t vaccinated. The mother had been quite content with dealing with it herself, but her mother saw the baby and wet her knickers, insisting that the slightest fever needed to be look at by a doctor! To keep her mother happy, (big mistake) she went to the doctor. She didn’t realise that he too, had conditioned fever phobia. Once she got into hospital, things started to unravel. Read Full Blog
"Refusal" to vaccinate
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
Swine flu white elephant makes GSK a healthy profit.
A few days ago, I talked about GSK smacking the UK Minister of Health's hand, and how GSK been done out of lots of money by the UK Government wanting out of the Swine Flu vaccine contract. Worse news has arrived. GSK, according to the UK telegraph only made £698 million pounds from the Swine Flu vaccine that no-one wanted, which sits in the cupboard while people try to get rid of the white elephant. Okay, I whine, after all the headline said, "GlaxoSmithKline profits climb on health sales of swine flu vaccine." Read Full Blog
Flu vaccines and real prevention
The medical system knows that the flu data is misleading, but that doesn’t matter. They will do each other a good turn at every possible opportunity. So Professor Robert Scragg, who co-authored this paper which shows that vitamin D deficiency is the driver as to whether or not anyone gets influenza at all, isn’t going to stand up and say, “Don’t worry about the flu vaccine. Just make sure your doctor prescribes 12 wee vitamin D tablets, which will cost you $3.20 at the pharmacy, and you take one a month. This will stop you getting the flu.” But no. See, Dr Scragg is immovably pro-vaccine. Though I’d be surprised if he takes the annual flu vaccine. Read Full Blog
Collateral Damage; The vulnerable pay the price
People with any brains, can see, when they are told that ordinary flu kills 400 New Zealanders every year, that 20 deaths from swine flu is chickenfeed. They also wonder why it was only last year, that steps were taken in medical practices to stop people with "influenza like illnesses", from infecting everyone else, while they sit in the waiting room. Some even asked the question as to whether there were ONLY 20 deaths because doctors, for once, applied common sense in waiting rooms! Perhaps the other 280 deaths were caused by medical neglect. Which isn’t too far fetched given the number of medical papers I have which show that doctors waiting rooms and hospitals is where you want to go if you feel the need to pick up something which you didn’t have before, but need, to get sick, so that you can legitimize a few days off work. Read Full Blog

