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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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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We’re (by that I mean I and I’m dragging you along with me) trying to make sense of and understand this mess we’re in about immunization; and I’m telling you of how a colleague decided to deliberately immerse himself in the vaccine-hater cottage industry to try and understand how otherwise seemingly rational parents make decisions which are clearly not in the best interest of their children.
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If you’re like me, all this hysteria about immunizations is a bit hard to comprehend let alone understand. My very early memories concerning health were about friends and classmates becoming crippled and dying of polio and mumps and measles and whooping cough!
I remember taking cans around to collect “pennies by the inch” and news stories about children all over the nation sending dimes to the president and the “children’s March of Dimes.” Why were we so fearful, so troubled, so united, so focused? Were we all stupid? Deluded? Conned? Was it all a myth?
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One of several “most interesting” aspects of medical school for my graduating class was had in the psychiatry department when they taught us the science behind and techniques for hypnosis; or, as I’ve heard others refer to it: selective relaxation or meditation. This article is not about yoga per-se but about its usefulness in aiding meditation or relaxation.
I’ve been asked about and used clinical hypnosis (markedly different than “stage hypnosis”) on a few selective patients with uniformly favorable results; I’ve taught a whole lot more patients the techniques of selective relaxation.
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I had a friend post an article on his blog about how to cope with tinnitus. He’s not a medical person but has intimate knowledge of the problem from the standpoint of what actually works, and he discussed how meditation helps him.
I communicated with him a little about it and told him that I’d been working on a post about meditation for this blog for about two years. Actually, it’s been sitting in the “possibles” pen for that long, awaiting a bump into production.
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Of the thousands of diseases we’ve got to contend with there are only about 24 which are immunization-preventable. Perhaps it seems like more when you’ve got your kids to the doctor for well child care but it’s not.
The CDC and WHO keeps track of these things and that’s all we’ve got. They also keep track of how well we’re fighting them off and guess what—THEY’RE COMING BACK! We seem to be loosing the fight!
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Get Involved/Learn More: The International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (MDS) ; also Team Fox (Michael J)
A ton of great information, right? I enjoyed the talk, even if he seemed a bit didactic and condescending in his delivery. None-the-less, the information that he DID give us is eye-opening and should cause us to pause in our analysis of how we’re going about protecting our kids. Completely being naïve to what we are doing doesn’t do anybody any good and may delay or prevent us from doing what really will protect them.
I completely understand the difference between concussion and skull fracture. And I understand completely why everyone’s first attempts at keeping kids safe was to protect against skull fracture. Obviously everyone makes the assumption, as I do, that decreasing skull fracture is a laudable goal because it intuitively must be related to concussion. But it’s interesting to realize that helmets are only designed and developed against fracture. However, we haven’t needed Camarillo to tell us that our former beliefs weren’t completely accurate. Most of us have come to believe that for several years; but, I’m glad that he and his group are trying to put some real dimension to the study and for that he should take credit.
If I find a disappointment with his talk it would be his appearing to want to take the credit for the discoveries of others in the field; and, his carefully worded dancing around the question regarding what we do now? Did you notice that he posed the question himself, then gave a non-answer… several times. He asked “what do I recommend to parents?” then skated to something like: “I don’t need to answer for me because I’ve got a couple years before my daughter actually rides a bike.”
So really, what DO we DO?! The honest answer is that there is nothing we can do, EXCEPT to do what we can—BUT not delude ourselves that what we are doing actually protects us from concussions. We’ve got helmets that don’t protect against concussion only fracture. We use what we can and look for other things we can do. We all have to decide for our own kids whether or not to let them participate in any activity, situation by situation. At the same time, to actually protect our kids we need to DEMAND MORE of our equipment, rule-makers, sports-organizers, government regulators, coaches, other teams, referees and umpires—pretty much everyone who is trying to turn children’s PLAY into trophy’s, pro-level goals and techniques and, yes, money-making schemes.
Those situations are not easily decided because of the complexity we have turned today’s “children’s play” into. It’s NOT just your coach; but how qualified, tolerant the referees are. Do they simply use common sense beneficial to children or are they just “winging it” or some sports wannabe living vicariously. And the other coach. Is he a complete nut who belittles his kids to basically “win at all costs?” And the schedule, does it suck every bit of spare time for other (let’s face it more life-important or family) activities out of not only your kid but the family as well? And the equipment—and on and on. Every decision stands on its own. Just know that today, there is probably 800 times more regimented activity available than is needed by your child to grow, develop and be happy in his life. You don’t NEED to endorse any sport for them to grow to their best potential.
A man after my own heart, Dr. Robert Koch, one of the top 50 “influencers” of medicine of all time, loved to travel—except he had the where-with-all and time to actually do it.
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They guy who, unbeknownst to me, directed much of the many late nights I was on call for three years, comes up as number 42 of the fifty most influential doctors in history which we are going through.
Stanley Dudrick M.D. painstakingly invented and improved total parenteral nutrition (TPN) to the point it actually could be used in medicine and not cause more problems than it solved.
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