“Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within...”
Romans 12:2

Hilary's Desk

Starship Doctors slammed

Hilary Butler - Sunday, October 31, 2010
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 L...

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Don't do something, stand there!

Hilary Butler - Thursday, October 28, 2010
 "Surprise: Scientists discover that inflammation helps to heal wounds".  Interesting headline, huh? Remind you of anything?  Like "Fever helps the body successfully fight disease, and using drugs to reduce fever, gives the infection the advantage." ??  So why did the medical mantra of treating sprains with RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation), become so popula...

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How doctors don't think.

Hilary Butler - Tuesday, October 26, 2010
In his book, "How Doctor's Think", Dr Jerome Groopman describes an ultrasound doctor, who detects in a baby, inside a woman 5 weeks from giving birth, a strange shaped space inside the baby's brain which should look like a tear-drop with sharp edges, but just doesn't look quite right.  Not badly wrong, but just not quite right. Because the shape is pretty near...

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How Doctors Think.

Hilary Butler - Sunday, October 24, 2010
You don't think you need to know?  Well, according to Dr Jerome Groopman, you do.  Dr Groopman belongs to a rare species in medicine who tell it as it is - perhaps because he's been at the butt end of a few medical bum deals in his day. He knows what it feels like to be run over by his own medical system, and has the clout to write about it.His writing is vitally important, and utterl...

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When will they ever learn?

Hilary Butler - Friday, October 22, 2010
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 d...

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Corrupt process results in corrupt practice.

Hilary Butler - Thursday, October 21, 2010
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 b...

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Twenty-five years plus is quite a long time....

Hilary Butler - Saturday, October 02, 2010
(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. Health and...

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Voices and choices

by Peter Butler

Hilary Butler - Wednesday, September 22, 2010
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 hy...

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The hidebound Ostrich that is Auckland District Health Board.

Hilary Butler - Thursday, September 16, 2010
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, it needs to be said that Ascor L 500, which is what is used in intravenous vitamin C, cannot be considered "alternative".  Ascor L...

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Sciblogs: more blind leading the blind

Hilary Butler - Wednesday, September 08, 2010
In another piece of cherrypicking nonsense called “Clash of the anecdotes”, Peter Griffin seems to think no-one else reads newspapers. He says: If you read today’s letters to the Sunday Star Times you’ll see the flip side of anecdotal evidence on the use of intravenous vitamin C to treat serious illness. The letter below … illustrates well why it is potentially v...

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Facts many people prefer to ignore.

Hilary Butler - Tuesday, September 07, 2010
(Written by Peter) How easy it is to fail to heed the significance of essential facts. The seriousness of this causes me to return once against to a statement I have made on many occasions especially when I have been talking to people. Setting aside all the complexities that seem to permeate the screeds of material dealing with this theme, let me identify it in a very simple straightforward st...

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Never bite the hand that feeds you.

Hilary Butler - Monday, September 06, 2010
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 ...

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On the matter of Dr Anthony J Morris.

Hilary Butler - Saturday, September 04, 2010
On the matter of Dr Anthony J Morris, my verdict on the research skills of the non-skeptics is quite simple. I have known Dr Morris personally since 1984, so can say straight up, that PALMD, the practicising internist from the Great Lakes region of the USA, (PALMD's vitriole, pdf'd and uploaded here - just in case he tries to ever deny he said this) has research skills as useless as a mate o...

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Skeptics Part Four. Fever is there for a reason

Hilary Butler - Thursday, September 02, 2010
Not that' you'd know with what many medical articles call both medical and parental "fever-phobia"!  What other explanation can there be to the fact that not one person in the skeptics or the medical profession questions the use of drugs to squelch fever?  Or even the function of fever? Oh yeah. There could be another explanation. You know, the one which SKEPTICS normally suggest is ...

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Skeptics Part Three: Living Proof.

Hilary Butler - Wednesday, September 01, 2010
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. My thoughts on IV vitamin C in serious illness are here. For anyone wanting to know more about the science in terms of recently published books, I&rsquo...

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Skeptics Part Two: "Some suggested pamol"

Hilary Butler - Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Why would any real skeptic suggest pamol as a treatment to reduce fever? It’s standard medical practice, and has been used for decades, and THEREFORE, according to skeptics, is ASSUMED to be the truth. There is no doubt paracetamol “works” by reducing fever. But does the word “proven” solely relate to whether a product does what the label says it will do? What abo...

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Skeptics or flat earthers, Part one.

Hilary Butler - Monday, August 30, 2010
Adam Dudding of the Sunday Star times, wrote and article on 15 August, 2010, called “The exasperation-filed: they want to believe”  On 22nd, August, Scott Sharpe from Nelson replied: To which Michael Edmonds from Somerfield, Christchurch replied on the 29th August 2010:   So, skeptics are “just as likely to challenge unproven medical treatments as we all….&...

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A wake-up call: Why fighting for your family matters

Hilary Butler - Sunday, August 22, 2010
It never ceases to amaze me, when people who put themselves out as scientists, display woeful researching skills, and appear not to hear what is said on programmes they criticise. Peter Griffin at Sciblogs had this to say about the 60 Minutes documentary “Living Proof”. Amongst his various ramblings, he misses the fact that experts were asked to comment.. but ref...

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H1N1 deaths: Auckland and Waikato ICU criminally negligent?

Hilary Butler - Friday, August 20, 2010
Are doctor prepared to their patients to die, rather than take note of either Allan Smith, or the known medical literature? Hence, this open letter to New Zealand Herald. Dear Sir, Your "in brief" report on page 5, in the NZH 20th August reporting the H1N1 death of a 53 year old man in Waikato hospital, (who had no pre-existing health conditions), and two Auckland men, 29 and 57.  These de...

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