Showing posts from: June 2017
You take your boy to the doctor—in the hopes that he’s seen this rash before and knows what to do about it. You commiserate with your women’s group about your daughter—thinking they will know what you’re going through, at least give you sympathy and perhaps even some things they’ve tried.
You talk to your pediatrician about growth, development and parenting during the “rough ages”—correctly knowing that they’ve seen thousands of parents who’ve already gone through exactly what you’re going through.
That’s what we do. That’s all we do. So we have seen thousands of parents go airborne as they hit the speed bumps of their kids lives in various stages… there are FOUR of them— you knew that, right?
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It may surprise you, but spiders use their venom when they’ve decided they want to eat—not to scare you off your “tuffet” [whatever that is… do you still have one of those anyway, those are sooo yesterday!]
If a spider rushes out of its hole when their web jiggles to only find something the size of a horse’s head stuck in it, almost none of them (in North America) are going to waste the effort. On the other hand, if something tries to poke it with a stick… all bets are off!
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The Immunization Strategy
HIV and Influenza What The Vaccine Haters Don’t Want You To Know
Malaria, smallpox, Polio and some other 30 odd diseases have been controlled by substantial immunization programs — which, it seems, the vaccine-haters didn’t want to happen.
Sitting here in the 21st century, most of us really don’t have a clue how much real suffering humanity has endured in all aspects of their lives since the beginning of time, from malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia, diarrhea, influenza… and the list goes on.
Historical evidence reveals that even less than 100 years ago parents were so demoralized by the amount of uncontrollable disease that they were reluctant to even give their newborn infants a name until they had “proven” that they would make it through life for a couple of year! Can we comprehend what that must have been like?
Then there was the spark of hope when Smallpox seemed to be controllable—Polio, Diptheria, Tetanus… all through immunization efforts.
Seth Berkley is an epidemiologist and the CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the global health organization protecting lives by improving access to vaccines in developing countries. [No, they are not pharmaceutical salesmen—they don’t make money from production or sale of immunizations.]
With more than half a billion children immunized, he is leading Gavi’s efforts to reach a further 300 million children in the next five years and build sustainability into country immunization programs.
Prior to Gavi, he spearheaded the development of vaccines for HIV as founder and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.
Our number 40, of the top 50 most influential doctors in history, is Dr. Lawrence Einhorn who has less written about him on the internet than any of previous 10 we’ve mentioned—even those dating back to nearly the dawn of medicine!
However, he is deserving of at least as many words on the internet as any of the others—he did invent an (almost) cure for testicular cancer after all!
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A little girl gives coins to an older and smartly dressed street musician and surprisingly learns about joy in return. The kids these days call this a “flash mob” but what a way to give back to the community.
Additionally, it’s obvious what effect Beethoven’s Ode To Joy gives to the hearer—and makes one wonder why we don’t fill our children’s lives with the opportunity to grow up with such masterpieces more than we do.
Watch the looks on the kids faces and see the definition of joy. I wish I would have been there.
Here we are, in our discussion about immunization, at the ten reasons parents don’t immunize their children as described by a colleague, Greg Barrett at Ohio State University School of Medicine.
He did something that very few pediatricians these days are willing to do: immerse himself in the wasteful false rhetoric in order to understand the dilemma the patients he cared about were in. This article is for those who are truly looking for answers (Vaccine-haters, this is not for you).
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