Hilary's Desk

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".   Continue Reading

In the Sunday Star Times today, Judge David McNaughton delivered a swift message to Starship doctors about predictive and substandard medical care, and the presumption of guilt without good cause.  The Judge found Famaile Lino not guilty of abusing his six month old child after Starship jumped to conclusions, and robustly defended their own preconceived mindsets.  The Lino's lawyer said, " "It's a very important case. It shows how suddenly a person can be at home with their feet up looking after their children, and a nightmare commences."  Here's the rub though.  Court cases like this USUALLY only happen to people like the Linos or the Kahuis.  Starship doesn't usually go after people who know what's going on; the limitations of the medical profession; and how to defend themselves.    Starship are of course, scuttling into a "risk management" position, by defending the indefensible: Continue Reading

Mannnnny years ago (1984 - 86), I wrote an article on obstetricians dogmas on cord cutting in hospital ,which landed up in various incarnations in several journals worldwide, finally landing up in Mothering Magazine.  The thrust of this article was that obstetricians had their heads firmly located in the pavement, and that babies of any age, and condition are not born with a scissor deficiency and do not need their cords immediately clamped and cut.  Can you imagine any other mammalian species, like cats, dogs or sheep, frantically asking their peers for a cord clamp and scissors? Wouldn't you think it would occur to medical people that our bodies might have been designed correctly, to do a job efficiently and correctly?  Wouldn't you think they'd wonder what might go wrong if they "interfere"?  Of course not.  But then, I also know mothers who believe that if a clamp isn't used, all the blood will leak back out of their baby, who will then die.  Sigh.  Today, a group of fossilised medical non-thinkers, enraptured their world with the news that delaying cord clamping for babies born before 28 weeks is a good thing.  Perhaps they will get the Nobel Price for this priceless discovery?  Interestingly, they have no questions or shame about their "findings".  Indeed, they say they don't even understand the "mechanism" [choke], when it's blindingly obvious.  By their enthusiasm, you'd think they were telling the world about a new, previously un-thought-of miracle!  But note this... before they implement this, they will require many more multicenter studies to be done....!!!! - kaching.... which might take how long???? : Continue Reading

In a brilliant article called Lies, Damned Lies and Medical Science (pdf) a bright light was shone upon the reality of medical practice across the board, .... by what I thought was an almost extinct species - honest scientists.  Thank goodness that some actually exist. It gives me hope for the future!  The fact that medicine is often damned lies, is something we've been talking about for decades. But the question is, Why do people believe that medical practice is automatically the truth with halos? Continue Reading

What epidemic? "Numbers have been on the rise since June this year, but they really spiked up in August," said Dr Alison Roberts, of the Ministry of Health' ... Hiding behind the word "epidemic", as a scare tactic, Alison Roberts continues: "We have been expecting an epidemic around now. New Zealand has a whooping cough epidemic every four to five years, and the last one started in 1999." Really?  has Dr Roberts read this from the ESR? which has a graph showing this:    Continue Reading

Further to the superb piece in today's Otago Daily Times paper written by Otago Medical Schools Professor of Medical Ethics (and neurologist) Professor Grant Gillett, calling into question the ostrich attitudes of medical practitioners, Continue Reading

 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: Continue Reading

Watching TNVZ SUNDAY’s programme about the oral contraceptive pill, called “Wonder Drug”, my mind kept flitting back to the fair grounds of old. Merry go round horses, ever rising, and lowering and the ceaseless crackly potted music;  metal clown heads, swinging wide open mouths, and the croaky voiced candy floss man intoning his automated speil. This was how I perceived the surreal presentation which characterised Janet McIntyre's uncritical canonization of a British Medical Journal article published on 11 March 2010. She followed the rest of the media who described this study as “titanic”.... forgetting that the unsinkable Titanic,...  sank.   Janet was unblinkingly content to present people who thought that the Pill should be available over-the-counter, with no controls, to anyone of any age.  Caution and monitorring be damned. Let’s get with it, full speed ahead. Titanic, indeed. Which will of course, fix global warming!  Hurray.... Continue Reading

Where are the skeptics, when it comes to looking at the “responsibility” of using intravenous vitamin C in serious illness? Where you’d predict them to be. Shoring up the medical system like good little marionettes.  Continue Reading

In the wake of the TV3 documentary "Living Proof",  thoughout New Zealand, families who have members in ICU with H1N1, are being told that their near-death family members cannot be given intravenous vitamin C because it would cause renal failure. The medical literature does not support this statement. Many times we hear about vitamin C and kidney stones, but where did that "information" come from? According to Professor Hemila of Finland, it is an "urban legend". Quite why the medical profession feel it so necessary to create urban legends, is another matter altogether. Professor Hemila details the literature on this on his a page on his website called "Safety of Vitamin C: Urban Legends" (page pdf'd):  Continue Reading