- Australian girl to get vaccination shots after court overrules mother – “The girl was infected with whooping cough when she was in kindergarten, but the mother said this showed both homeopathic and traditional vaccines were not 100 per cent effective.”
- Natural does not mean safe – “This past October, the office of the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services issued two reports underscoring the need for improved oversight of the marketing of dietary supplements and improved surveillance of their effects.”
- Even Pat Robertson denies the earth is 6,000 years old – From CriticalDragon1177.
- Frozen waves at the Antarctic coast – Your soothing pretty pictures for the day, from Michael.
Another thing that always puzzled me on dietary supplements – people refer to them as “natural”, but aren’t they just pills produced in a factory and then placed in a plastic bottle? What makes them particularly “natural”, or more “natural” than real medicine?
I know a few people who really believe in alternative medicine. They will go on and on about how “Big Pharma” has made us into a pop a pill culture, but they take a crazy amount of (alternative) pills on a daily basis. One mom gives her kid pills whenever she thinks her child is feeling anxious. (She started this when her kid was 4.) What message does that give a child?
I don’t know, I think it’s some sort of doublethink. They pretty much expect it to be a scam and as such, don’t expect side effects.
Personally I like to explain to them that Ginseng may cause SJS. I always ask people if they’ve seen the movie “cube” before describing that disease.
Of course, the people that sell supplements are very bad people and are not above adding actual active ingredients to their products.
I’d also like to point out that I discovered what SJS was while trying to find out why my doctor would warn me about a rash from a new psych med. I was drinking Sobe Green Tea at the time.
Sobe Green Tea with ginseng! Dun Dun Dunnnn…
I didn’t die, but I did have some appreciation for how absurd the double standard they have for supplements is. Could you imagine if my tea had been forced to carry a warning that it has a rare side effect that causes your skin to fall off?
Even stranger, I had a friend who went for alternative remedies for her actual health problems but would take pharmaceutical drugs recreationally. So, she would take Vicodin and other pills for fun but insist on natural remedies when she actually needed treatment for something. I’m not even sure where to begin with something like that.
Amanda,
I’m glad the court overruled that Victorian mother, and forced her to vaccinate her daughter.