Hilary's Desk

 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

(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.  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

How much medicine is actually ‘evidence based?” Nineteen years go, in a British Medical article called “Where is the wisdom?” the opening paragraph contained this information:  Continue Reading

Amonst all the whining ricochetting around the hallowed halls of pharmaceutically driven medicine in New Zealand, a couple of points should be logged into the system's hard drive. The first is that the medical profession should stop going on about how irresponsible and dangerous vitamin C is. The second is, by extension, stop the ludicrous, continual attempts via suitably brainwashed report-ersss in the newsmedia, to demonise herbs and supplements.  It seems to me that Medsafe et al, have forgotten that in 2006, at the request of the then Minister of Health, Annette King, the coronial system did a thorough investigation into deaths from alternative medicine, which found just about zilch.  Instead, the finger came right back pointing at the medical system, not the alternative medical system, supplements or herbs.  Continue Reading

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 refused. He also asked heaps of redundant questions:   Continue Reading

In a previous blog, mention was made of North and South’s rabidly nose-in-the-air provaccine article called “The case for vaccination”. The editor, Virginia Larson stuck her personal stake in the ground, with a scathing editorial, saying, “We did not seek out the extreme anti-immunisation campaigners for “balance” because their arguments aren’t balanced.” and ..... “they’ve already done enough damage by spreading hysteria over the MMR triple jab and are now set on painting the HPV vaccine Gardasil as part of some greater plot to poison or sterilise us.” The article’s author, North and South’s deputy editor Joanna Wane, didn’t mention the questions raised over the efficacy or value of the MeNZB. You would have thought that was deserving enough to be added to the mix of bile? Or perhaps those concerns were well founded? Not according to Perry Bisman.  Continue Reading

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: Continue Reading

What other explanation is there for a comment in Truth About Gardasil's latest press release which stated: A medical source close to TAG (Truth about Gardasil) has stated: “I find it disturbing that Merck’s agreement with the FDA is based on an agreement that no adverse events will be labeled as such unless there is a TWO fold increase seen of diseases that occur at least as frequently as 1/10,000. This takes away all of the rare autoimmune demyelinating syndromes that cause blindness, paralysis and death.” ?  Maybe they are lying? Nope. I managed to obtain documentation as to the whats and why's and I'm satisfied that the comment is an accurate report. Continue Reading

Just when you think sanity might prevail, and you write a blog about one doctor with a brain, everything implodes. I decided to do a pubmed search, just to double check when stem cells were first found in cord blood. The answer to that is around 2000 if you count the lag to publish. Then I did a check on third stage cord clamping management, and came across this 2010 article, which exemplifies everything I dislike about obstetric practice in 2010. Continue Reading