Whining about writing - my monkey

Months into an assignment and as usual I find that I can't sit down and write like a sensible person. The kind of person that writes summaries of papers as she reads them, for example. As usual I am stuck with a bloated brain full of convoluted unpaved roads, too many cul-de-sacs and nothing on paper. It would be nice to be able to, just once, read a paper and write 100 words or so on what the author wanted to say, in other words, be capable of churning out a literature review. Reading, understanding, then writing – how hard can it be? Instead, as I read my brain is a cacophony of implications and disagreements, none of them hanging around long enough to be scribbled onto a notepad, let alone make it into the lofty realms of the text editor. Maybe the problem is that I read actively, and I need to find a way of getting my analytic side to butt out on occasion. Maybe the problem is that I find the activity of reading with summarising in mind dead boring. Well, to be fair, it is. What's the point of reading with nought but reiteration in mind?

Well, none for you Emma dear, let's face it, criticising and lampooning is more your thing; but it does help the newbies jack into your thought process doesn't it? Gives them a bit of background, lets them know what it is you know, solidifies your context, outlines the sources of your premises.

See? I know why summaries are useful, I just-can't-do-them.

I blame my monkey.

I go to all this trouble to acheive quiet, to make the area nice, to excercise and tire him out, to caffeinate him into oblivion yet he insists on cracking jokes in my head at every opportunity! Goading me into playing games, twittering, checking my stocks… I hate him. I want him dead.

Now I'm officially procrastinating by having a jab at middle class whiners.

Someone tell me to stop with the politics and get back to work...

What Jason from Melbourne said. And also, though people who earn 150K a year may be supposed to pay 44K in tax, most of them don't because they pay expensive tax agents to exploit loopholes in our ludicrously complex tax system. I know because I've been there. We were bewildered by all the "middle-class welfare" coming our way. We took it because, hey, we're human and by no means asset wealthy. But in our Lefty Greeny heart of hearts we knew we didn't _need_ it. We also don't need the 30% tax rebate (but we take it). We have also experienced first-hand the benefits of being privately insured when we had a child with a condition that threatened his sight. He was treated that night instead of six weeks later (his fate under the public system). The middle-class only feel poor because we mortgage ourselves to the hilt and buy things we don't need. The middle-class on 100-150k, particularly folk with no carer responsibilities are doing better than fine, and I think some of us need to spend some time in a soup kitchen to remind ourselves of the things we're missing out on.

Commenting on SMH re Abortion Decriminalisation.

... or rather, having fun with the anti-choicers again. What can I say? It's a hobby.

This is my latest post just in case the SMH don't let it through (it would be comment 31). It does have a tiny ad hominem element... teeny weeny...

Wow, only 16 comments before the Nazi's were mentioned by an anti-choice advocate. It's not a record but it's impressive nonetheless. I'd respond in full, Adam, but I think a) you have me confused with Amy and b) your comparisons re democracy and majority rule are invalid anyways. This is because your examples refer to harm to conscious, sentient beings and also to the status of scientific knowledge. It is unlikely that we would find common ground as I do not believe that life begins at fertilisation (see daniel's response above for some of the excellent reasons why) due to research in the areas of embryology and fertility a lot of which I have read - we have come a long way since the majority believed the earth was flat. Your references to an objective morality betray a religious viewpoint. You might remember that it was the Church who forced Galileo to recant before finally subscribing to the heliocentric hypothesis. It is my hope I will live to see the demise of all Churches still clinging to the belief that a conceptus is a life form worthy of rights that trump those of a fully grown human. These people (most of them blokes) are gravely mistaken, and women the world over still suffer for this error.

How can a mother trying to find the father of her child be offensive?

I found this utube video on Jon Faine's blog this morning, with a warning that some viewers might find the content offensive. Having seen it, I can't imagine WHAT he thought would be offensive. Even if it is a ridiculous hoax, what was bad about it? The idea that a girl might have sex with a boy she just met and likes a lot? The idea that, horror of horrors, she decided not to hide the evidence and have an abortion? Gah.

Have an opinion on pain relief in childbirth? Not if you're a bloke you don't.

Wow, check out the backlash from girls who think they're experts on pain relief in child birth because they've had 1-5 kiddies. I'll take the opinion of a professional midwife over theirs any day, no matter what sex the midwife was. Is it possible that he's touched a nerve ladies? Sounds like those who begged for pain relief are being a bit reactionary, not to mention guilty of taking the poor bloke out of context. The idea was that women are frequently NOT educated about the side effects of strong pain relief such as epidurals (thus choice is not informed), and if it's possible to go without it's better for both mother and baby. He was not saying that women should, "just put up with the pain of childbirth" as the HS headline implies.

57% of Australians are incompetent?? A quick check of the ABS survey.

W.A. Today has just reported that according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics only 43% of Australians have sufficient health literacy to cope with the complex demands of life and work.

That's ranked from one to five, with one the lowest level and three classed as the minimum required to meet the complex demands of everyday life and work.

57% of Australians tested scored below 3. This is quite alarming in a day and age where doctors are supposed to be as open as they can with their patients in the name of informed consent.

So of course, I have to go have a squizz, at least at the summary. It turns out that they tested literacy in four domains: prose literacy, document literacy, numeracy and problem solving skills. They then:

As a by-product of the above domains, a fifth domain measuring health literacy was produced. Health literacy is defined as the knowledge and skills required to understand and use information relating to health issues such as drugs and alcohol, disease prevention and treatment, safety and accident prevention, first aid, emergencies, and staying healthy.

Ah, so hopefully, we are just assessing their capacity to understand the leaflets in the doctor's office and the warnings on the nice television rather than understand the doctor's words, because that would have been a worry.

The survey contained 191 daily tasks that were judged to measure health-related activities in five domains: health promotion (60 items), health protection (65 items), disease prevention (18 items), health-care and disease management (16 items), and navigation (32 items).

I don't know what disease navigation is, I don't think I want to. As someone who has dealt with a veritable onslaught of viruses and bacteria for the past few months, I can only guess that it means you know what is happening to you when it happens? and you can successfully steer yourself toward the paracetamol when required? Bleah.

Anyways, I checked cohorts, locales and took a quick look at some of their questions. I'm relieved to be able to report that the ABS was (fairly thoroughly) testing the ability of folks to stay healthy outside the doctor's office, and that anyone trying to use these results to undermine the idea of informed consent will have a difficult time doing so. Though if 57% of Australians are classed as less than health literate, we may need to rethink the public health messages beamed out to the Australian pubic on an almost nightly basis.

Women's Health Victoria outlines the Abortion Law Reform

This is a nice clear outline of the Abortion Law Reform in Victoria by Women's Health Victoria. It includes a clear explanation of the conscientious objection clause including what might happen to practitioners who do not refer women to a health care provider without objections to abortion and the impact of non-referral on women.

Comparing it to the rather dramatic responses of some of the Catholic clergy is illuminating - of course hospitals won't have to close....

Tell the Truth Coalition's website is now home to a web page builder.

I was conscientiously checking that recently used exit links still worked on Emervents when I discovered that the Tell the Truth Coalition's website http://www.tellthetruthcoalition.org.au/ is now home to a no-brand Website Builder.

So sorry to anyone who has been clicking on links to their website only to get a refreshing blast of white screen.

If one clicks on the "Start Building!" button one gets redirected to http://www.tellthetruthcoalition.org.au/sitebuilder.php and everything hangs.

My more paranoid persona wonders whether my IP address is being collected in the interim and added to a list of all those who would still investigate them.

Ah well, I'm sure I made their list last year...

On another note, Ron van Wegen has made his blog available to invited readers only so the links to his blog (http://australianprolifeconference.blogspot.com) will probably not work either.

Personally I'm very pleased to see that his internet presence has shrunk somewhat.

Critique of AVN's 10 Reasons Parents Question Vaccination

This is a sequel to the previous post, where I complain that parents trying to research the topic of vaccination are sabotaged by misinformation on the internets.

The folk at Australian Vaccination Network appear to be less qualified than I to comment on vaccine safety (and I’m not pretending to be qualified, just more eductated on the subject than yer average Joe), yet they don’t let that stop them. What follows is my dissection of their “reasons” for questioning vaccination. If you’re going to read their website, then please read this too! Their stuff is in block quotes and the full text can be found here.

“1 - Vaccines have never been tested.
The gold standard of medical science is the double blind crossover placebo study. This test has never been performed on any vaccine currently licensed in Australia. In an astounding leap of logic, contrary to all rules of science, vaccines are assumed to be safe and effective and therefore, it is considered to be unethical to withhold vaccinations for the purposes of testing them.”

Here is what AVN doesn’t tell you. In order to perform a conclusive double blind comparrison with placebo study on a vaccine you need to take a group of volunteers (and I assume these volunteers would have to be children to satisfy AVN that the vaccines were safe in children) and give half of them the vaccine (say, MMR for example) and half a placebo (all the contents minus the disease compnent). The words “double blind” indicate that the people administering the vaccine and monitoring for reactions do not know whether they are injecting vaccine or placebo into the patient. This prevents bias in the observations when adverse reactions to the needles are recorded, as the impartial observers do not know who has vaccine and who doesn’t. That’s the safety nice-nice part of this trial.

The bit that AVN has either omitted or simply not thought through (this is the logical bit), is that in order to truly prove or disprove the efficacy of these vaccines the volunteers then have to be infected with Mumps, Measles and Rubella. You want to know that the vaccines work, right? Well, this is how you tell whether or not they are effective. You give some people vaccine, some a placebo then you infect them with the disease. If no-one gets the disease there’s something very wrong with your methods because your positive control has failed and you have to start again. If half your volunteers get sick, the trial is a success, the vaccine works and half of your volunteers are now at risk for all the complications that can arrise in those diseases. If everyone gets sick, your vaccine has failed and everyone is now at risk for complications.

I sincerely doubt that any of the people clamouring for gold standard double blind trials for vaccine effectiveness would volunteer their own child for such a trial. It’s one thing to claim that it’s better to “get the diseases naturally” it’s quite another to let a medico infect your child isn’t it?

There are reasons for not trialing vaccines in this way OTHER than that they are “assumed to be safe and effective”. They are very good reasons. They are not “contrary to all rules of science” and they are ethically sound. The closest we can get to a decent test of vaccines is longitudinal studies of vaccinated and unvaccinated groups. Here is an example. Here’s another.
Vaccines are also being checked for long term efficacy as in this measles study.

The examples I have given are a few of many. When AVN says vaccines are not being tested they are either gravely mistaken or lying. Don’t trust them, search for yourself.

“2 - Vaccines contain toxic additives and heavy metals.
The list of vaccine ingredients includes toxins such as formaldehyde, a substance which the Queensland Poisons Control Centre has said was “unsafe at any level if injected into the human body”;”

Well, the Queensland poisons control centre was probably thinking of pure formaldehyde because, get this, humans produce formaldehyde as part of normal metabolism! Who knew! And when we are exposed to it (through, say, the AIR we breath) we break it down very quickly. Sure, in concentrated form I wouldn’t go near it - we used it as a tissue fixative, you really don’t want to get any on you. But in vaccines it is a teeny weeny diluted amount. According to Autism-News-Beat a very interesting website if you’re interested in vaccines, a 12 pound baby makes more formaldehyde in a day than you would get in any five childhood vaccines combined. Now I don’t know if this is strictly true, but hey, most people researching vaccines these days have Google PhDs, so check out the view from the other side.

“carbolic acid, also a strong poison which was implicated in deaths and serious injuries in a recent Sydney hospital mishap;”

Apart from not being able to find reference to a serious hospital incident involving carbolic acid anywhere - references people?…

Hmmm phenol (another name for carbolic acid). Causes death or grave injury at 140mg per kilo of human (to put this in perspective, at 70kg I would need to drink 9.8kg of the stuff to be seriously harmed. Because phenol is lighter than water, this is over 10 litres). This information can be found in any MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) for phenol. It is highly irritating and we are very careful when we use it in the lab. We don’t splash it around, but we don’t use "dragon hide gloves" either. It’s one of the oldest known disinfectants. It used to be diluted and sprayed on wounds to prevent infection and OMG! save lives! (The guy who first thought of this is called Lister - he has hospital wards named after him.) Its purpose in the vaccine is as an antibacterial (preservative). That is, the nice guys who make your vaccines don’t want them going off and giving you septicaemia. The quantity of phenol in vaccines is miniscule. Certainly a tiny tiny fraction of the 140mg per kilo required to cause death or grave injury. To my mind the phenol probably doesn’t hurt as an adjuvant either. But of course the guys at AVN would be explaining to you what an adjuvant is, right? Because they know exactly how vaccines work, right? Wrong. *sigh*

“aluminium which is linked with the development of Alzheimer’s disease and allergies;”

Actually no, the Alzheimer’s link was debunked years ago people. But don’t believe me, check out what the UK Alzheimers Society (people who would have a vested interest in promoting research if there was any link whatsoever) has to say about aluminium.

As for causing allergies, here we have OMG! a grain of truth! There have been reported cases of the aluminium adjuvant causing irritation at the injection site in some vaccines but not others. People who say they know why are giving you their pet theories (another danger to look out for when reading abstracts for information). Here’s a nice summary of one study. I hope you can access at least the abstract, because it is quite nice.

Also the WHO has commented on incidences of high levels of macrophages containing aluminium at injection sites. I agree with them that it is a minor problem that requires further investigation. This is in light of the fact that the incidence of irritation is low and the diseases they are trying to prevent are severe.

“and Thiomersal, a mercury-based preservative which is a known neurotoxin and whose inclusion in vaccination sparked a series of Congressional hearings which saw the US Government and the AAP (American Academy of Paediatrics) call for its immediate withdrawal from any vaccine product and which was withdrawn over two years ago in the USA from any over-the-counter medicines. It was also withdrawn from the American Hepatatis B vaccines, Engerix and HB Vax II, though their Australian counterparts which are still being injected into children here today, are only just being made mercury free or mercury reduced (though the old, mercury-laced stocks will be used up rather than being withdrawn from use).”

*sigh* This one is the real kicker. What actually happened was that the FDA was commisioned to measure mercury exposure in the general population and someone noticed that will all the vaccines the kids were getting these days the total amount of mercury was, not dangerously high, but higher than anyone felt comfortable with. Before anyone claps their hands with glee and says “I told you so!!!” Try having a think. If the mercury levels were ACTUALLY dangerous there would have been LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of cases of mercury POISONING. Millions of them. There were not. The reduction of mercury was a precaution blown into a health scare. Liza Gross, a medical anthropologist, does a lovely job of outlineing just how this happened here.

“3 - Vaccines are contaminated with human and animal viruses and bacteria
All childhood vaccines, apart from the Hepatitis B (which is genetically engineered and carries with it a different set of problems,) are cultured on either animal tissue, a broth of animal and/or human blood and blood products or the cell lines from aborted human foetuses.”

In this alarmist little paragraph the AVN left out growing viruses in egg yolks and chick embryos. To someone who has no idea, they sound credible, to someone who’s done any culturing of cells they sound like complete morons.

It is preferable to produce vaccines in human cell-lines simply because our own immune systems prefer similar proteins. The cells they use did come from aborted foetuses - in the 1960s. Since then those cells have been dividing and growing in containers, the cells they use now are not from human foetuses, but they have a human foetus as their great great great great….. grandparent. Human foetuses were used to create the cell-lines because they divide more quickly (because the foetal growth rate is much higher), and you have a better chance of finding a cell-line that likes to grow in a container than you have with adult cells. Perhaps the AVN would prefer that cell-lines from adult human cancers were used? (The most well known being HeLa cells.) Of course not.

If animal or human cell lines are used to produce vaccines (and indeed they are) then the blood products from animals or humans is required for the cells to grow. These blood products are tested for contaminants and handled under extremely sterile conditions, you couldn’t culture the cells otherwise.

“None of these culturing methods is able to guarantee an uncontaminated vaccine. In fact, it is well known that many foreign viruses and bacteria can and do contaminate vaccines.”

The AVN are again, way out of date. I gather they haven't been inside a vaccine manufacturing plant lately. These guys swab the WALLS to test for any nasties hanging about that might get into their product. Again, human cells are used to culture vaccines because it’s SAFER to use human blood products and tissue as the resulting protein mix is known to our bodies. We also have a reliable, safe and tested source of human blood products via the Red Cross. I know this because we weren’t allowed to have the extra specially safe serum for our lab, the REALLY good stuff went to the people researching things that would go back into human bodies, like vaccines.

“Almost none of these contaminants have been studied.”

This is patently untrue. They are studied, and tested for. This WHO bulletin sums things up nicely. Though I believe they indicate that practise could be better in some places, as in, some people were still using antibodies to detect impurities when they could have been using PCR which when used correctly is far more sensitive. And this is also a nice example of the kind of thing that goes on in the name of vaccine safety.

“The few which have been leave many parents concerned about the long-term effects of injecting these substances into their children. For instance, SV 40 (simian or monkey virus 40 – just one of 60 monkey viruses known to contaminate the polio vaccines) has been linked with cancers in humans;”

Yeah, but that cancer link was also debunked, and they stopped using the contaminated vaccine back in 1963. That’s nearly half a century ago! Check out the study from JAMA.

“there is a chicken retrovirus which contaminates the measles and mumps vaccines called Reverse Transcriptase.”

Now this display of ignorance would be hilarious if the topic were not so serious. Reverse Transcriptase is an E-N-Z-Y-M-E not a virus. It is an enzyme used by some viruses (retroviruses) to copy DNA when they hijack the mammalian cell’s protein-making machinary. Something all viruses do in order to replicate and cause disease by the way.

“This substance, an ancient non-human DNA code, is thought to switch on the HIV virus and cause it to become AIDS in humans;”

To the dear guys at AVN - ROFL NO, please, please stop, you are tooooo funny! Could your language possibly be more dramatic? Could you possibly be more wrong? Ok, you didn’t say HIV came from aliens but you might as well have. Here’s a link to a lovely Wiki article that is, if not in layman’s terms, at least provides links for most of those long words us scientists love to use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_transcriptase. If you don’t like the wiki, go to a LIBRARY, open a first year BIOLOGY TEXT BOOK and look up RETROVIRUSES. mkay? Do this before you misinform well meaning parents who are taking you seriously. Yours sincerely, Emervents.

I don’t know if reverse transcriptase is ancient, my vague memory is that retroviruses are fairly new on the goelogical timescale, but reverse transcriptase IS definitely non-human. It is part of the armoury of all retroviruses. They carry it with them, in other words. It does not “switch on” HIV, it is an enzyme HIV uses in order to reproduce. This is because HIV is one of the retrovirusus that operates in this way. No-one really knows why HIV infection becomes AIDS in some people and not others, certainly not the AVN.

“AIDS itself has been linked with a virus called SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus) which contaminated both the polio and smallpox vaccines;”

Actually, it wasn't, the link was refuted scientifically in 2004. Again AVN has siezed on one hyped up scare caused by a guy who wrote a book (and who ought to have his PhD retracted) and presented it as fact. Try the Avert website, an AIDS charity for a balanced look at all the suspected sources of HIV, including all your conspiracy theories.

For the nerdier readers, here is one response from the FDA that contains sound scientific reasons to refute the SIV scare. UPDATE: Since I linked to this page it has been taken down by the FDA, which is a shame. This is possibly because it looks like an internal memo and contains the name and contact details of the person who wrote it. I have saved the page and if anyone is desperately interested they can email me and I will send a copy minus the identifying details of the author.

“the current MMR (measles mumps rubella) and other vaccines which contain bovine (cow) blood products are thought to be able to spread the human and always fatal form of mad cow disease, Creutzfeld-Jacobs disease, more readily than eating contaminated meat.”

Now where did AVN hear that one? A reference please. I love it when people like AVN use buzz words like “are thought to”. Thought to by whom? The wizards? There is exactly one SUSPECTED case of CJD from vaccination in VAERS see for yourself. The author of the Nature review I gave above said that he couldn’t rule it out, but the chance would be less than one in a billion.

“4 - Vaccines can cause serious immediate side effects.
As long as there have been vaccines, there have been reports of serious side effects following their administration. These side effects include (but are not limited to) convulsions and epilepsy, permanent brain damage, anaphylactic (life threatening allergic) reactions, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), retinal and brain haemorrhages (now being confused with Shaken Baby Syndrome) and death.”

Lots of things have side effects, lots of things cause reactions and vaccines are no exception, but you have to be susecptable. Antibiotics cause life threatening reactions if you happen to be susceptible. So can peanut butter if you’re susceptible. So can dust mite poo if you’re susceptible.

With regard to SIDS AVN is plain wrong. I checked the numbers on VAERS and the incidences of SIDS reported after vaccination were well bellow the rate of incidences in the general population. That a doctor reported SIDS after a vaccine does not demonstrate a cause unless you can show that there are more incidences of SIDS in the vaccinated population than the non-vaccinated population. I'm beginning to be irritated with AVN. Where do they get these “facts”?

There are people working on it anyway, which I assume is one of the good things to come out of databases like VAERS. Try these:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/319/10/618
http://fetalneonatal.com/cgi/content/abstract/73/6/498
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/79/4/598

And where is the AVN's evidence that brain haemorages caused by vaccines are being confused with shaken baby syndrome (SBS)? The diagnosis of SBS is being called into question, but I cannot find a credible mention of SBS confusion anywhere other than alarmist websites like AVN's. Please, if anyone from AVN reads this, refer me to your source. UPDATE: Nope, I found some, only, they're on an anti-vax sight so should be read with their political leanings in mind.

“5 - Vaccines can cause serious long-term side effects.
According to medical reports, children are now less healthy than they have ever been before. More than 40% of all children now suffer from chronic conditions , something that was unheard of prior to mass vaccination. Vaccines have been associated with such conditions as Asthma, Eczema, Food Allergies, Chronic Ear Infections, Insulin Dependent Diabetes, Arthritis, Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, Autism, Attention Deficit Disorder, Ulcerative Colitis, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Hyperactivity, Schizophrenia, Multiple Sclerosis, Cancer and a raft of other chronic and auto-immune conditions which are experiencing dramatic rises in incidence.”

40%?? that’s a lot of kids to put on the special bus. Again, where is your evidence? Parents who may have got this far, close your eyes and imagine your kid’s school playground or playgroup, does it LOOK as though nearly half of them have chronic conditions?

And here’s a lesson in numbers AVN, when there are more people in the population, the number of incidences of any condition will go up. What we are interested in, is the RATE of chronic conditions, not the number of incidences. It is not whether the number of kids with MS has gone up, but whether the percentage of kids with MS in the population has gone up. Again, I’d like evidence from an expert and not someone who proports to be an expert on everything the government won’t tell you about vaccines yet gets their enzymes and viruses confused.

“6 - Vaccines do not necessarily protect against infectious diseases.
For many years, parents were told that once a child was fully vaccinated, they would be protected for life. That has now turned into a series of life-long boosters that are still not able to protect either children or adults from infectious diseases.”

Er, blanket statement much? I was vaccinated in the early 1970’s and my parents didn't tell me it was for life. How many years is “many”?

It is true that vaccines can wear off, though personally my rubella vaccine hasn’t yet and I’m 37 that’s been good for 25 years now. My Hep B hasn’t yet and that’s been ten years. The others I haven’t had reason to test so I don’t know. Still, I’m enough of a counter example to show that whether or not they don’t give protection for life might be a little more variable than AVN is suggesting. Could it possibly be that they don’t know what they’re talking about?

“For the very real risk of both short and long-term side effects from vaccines,”

And did they mention, very small risk? No I don’t think they did. Very, very small.

“parents are asked to allow their children to be given vaccines that at best, will provide a temporary sensitisation to illnesses and at worst, can make their children more susceptible to both opportunistic and infectious illness.”

What does AVN even mean by temporary sensitisation? Do they know what sensitise means? Are they saying that the MMR vaccine I gave my son made him more sensitive to Measles? OMG!! And when they say the children will be more suseptible to both opportunistic and infectious illnesses, does that mean the vaccines give them AIDS??? OMG!!!! Please, give me a list of opportunistic illnesses and a list of the infectious ones, because my children are in danger of being more suseptible to BOTH kinds!!! *sigh* I’m sorry, I’m tired. I’m tired of reading this crap, and I’m plagued by the thought that there are people out there who are going to take AVN seriously.

“As evidenced by the recent whooping cough outbreak in SA, the only Australian state which actually records vaccination status in cases of infectious illness, 87% of all those who contracted whooping cough and whose vaccination status was known were fully and appropriately vaccinated. In fact, Australian government statistics have shown that the majority of outbreaks in Australia occur in those who have been either fully vaccinated or were too young to be fully vaccinated.”

Yeah right. Evidence please. Even a year for the outbreak would be nice. Websites with data, government publications, anything. Evidence. I went to the South Australian Department of Health website and found media releases urging people to get boosters. Why would they do that if 87% of people who contracted it were fully vaccinated? Maybe they were encouraging adults to boost to protect the unvaccinated population. I think AVN have pulled the figure of 87% from somewhere dark and unmentionable. I found several news items on abc.net referring to whooping cough outbreaks but none of them mentioned the high rate in vaccinated people. You’d have thought that would be news worthy! Unless, our Aunty ABC is in the pocket of big pharma too! Oh noes!!!

UPDATE: I went to my doctor a few weeks ago to get a whooping cough booster as my next door neighbour has just had it and she's now the fourth adult I know of to contract it. It's doing the rounds in our area and I can't afford to get it. My doctor told me that he recently treated a nurse for whooping cough and that this was the second time she'd had it. She got it as a kid and it still didn't protect her as an adult. It seems that whooping cough is something we do need boosters for even if we have had the disease. Though at $80 a pop I'm not impressed with its lack of accessibility.

“7 - Doctors, as paid salesmen for vaccine products, are no longer considered to be trustworthy arbiters of their safety and effectiveness.
Doctors are currently receiving several payments from the government to push vaccines. These include $6 for reporting vaccinations to the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register (ACIR), a national database which tracks vaccination status in our children and which has been called “a back-door Australia Card”; $18.50 on top of their Medicare rebate for vaccinating a child on time; and a bulk payment at the end of each year based upon them having a practice vaccination rate in excess of 80%. These payments can add up to many tens of thousands of dollars in a busy inner-city practice.”

I spoke to someone I know who is a doctor and she confirmed that they did get $6 extra dollars, but the time it took to fill out the paperwork hardly made it worthwhile, epecially since the $6 was before tax. The idea behind the scheme was to achieve 90% immunisation rates in 90% of practices. She said there is a rumour that the scheme will be scrapped as it didn’t work, indicating that it did not change immunisation rates anyway.

“As a result of this grossly unethical situation, doctors can no longer be thought of as objective when it comes to this issue. Parents no longer trust that their doctors will recommend that they vaccinate simply because it is the best thing for their child rather than the best thing for the doctor’s bottom line.”

Whether that was true remains to be seen. I’ve heard a rumour that it didn’t effect vaccination rates at all, and I’m waiting for EVIDENCE to confirm or refute that rumour before I leap to conclusions. How about you, AVN?

“8 - Pharmaceutical companies have paid for almost all vaccine research to date.
Just as the tobacco companies paid for corrupt and incorrect research which purported to show that tobacco and tobacco products were safe for human consumption, so too the pharmaceutical companies have paid for and produced almost all of the research into vaccines. While the Australian government continues to spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars a year in promoting and implementing vaccination campaigns (an example is the $292 million earmarked for vaccination against Meningococcal this year alone!) and little or no money on independent research, parents will continue to mistrust the research that has been performed by vested interests. After all, companies are by their very definition commercial concerns which are motivated by profit. There is nothing that would make a pharmaceutical company intrinsically more ethical and therefore more trustworthy than a tobacco company.
In addition, it is a little-known fact that the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), the government body which licenses and registers vaccines and other medical products, does not perform any tests whatsoever to verify pharmaceutical company claims of safety or effectiveness.”

Don’t you just love paragraphs that begin with, “Not many people know this, but….” or “In addition, it is a little-known fact…” Actually I must admit to agreeing with most of the above point, but want to add that one of the very good reasons for trials being funded by the pharmacutical companies is that human trials are hideously expensive. I don’t think the government could afford to run its own trials for every new drug that came to market. The results the big companies produce should be read carefully BY EXPERTS in the field who know all of the tricks the companies use to make their products look good, experts such as OMG! the TGA!! Oh, hang on, I think that’s what they do! Jolly good then!

“9 - Doctors and health professionals rarely if ever report vaccine reactions.
In discussions with representatives of both ADRAC (The Adverse Drug Reactions Advisory Committee) and the SAEFVSS (Serious Adverse Events Following Vaccination Surveillance Scheme), the two government bodies charged with keeping track of reactions to vaccines and other drugs, the AVN’s representatives were informed that less than 10% of all adverse reactions are ever reported.”

Whaaaaa???? How could anyone possibly know this? If these adverse reactions are never reported, how does anyone know they exist? Further more, how could anyone count these non-existent (at least on paper) reactions and get a figure like 90%? If I have to read any more flawed logic like the next bit my head might explode.

“This means that the government’s claims of vaccine safety are admittedly 90% incorrect.”

Not only does the maths not work out there, but, if things aren’t reported, they are neither correct nor incorrect because they are NOT KNOWN. Bloody hell, we’re counting phantoms now? With accuracy? If you rocked up to our local hospital for the mentally ill and announced that you knew everything that hadn’t been reported to a government agency to two significant figures they wouldn’t let you go home for your pyjamas!

“In addition, the AVN’s adverse reactions database currently contains details on more than 800 serious adverse vaccine reactions. Not one of these reactions was ever reported by the doctors or health professionals involved. Parents cannot rely on data with that wide a margin of error when they are dealing with the health and well-being of their children.”

I believe the AVN has collected this data in good faith. Although I cannot find a link to it on their website, if they truly think this data proved anything you’d think they’d be clamouring to have the public look at it. If you’re serious, AVN, remove identifying details and leave it open to scrutiny. I’d say there is a good reason none of it was reported by doctors or health professionals, but I doubt anyone from AVN would be prepared to hear good reasons from a science graduate, as I’m obviously in the pocket of big pharma.

“10 - Some childhood illnesses have beneficial aspects and therefore, prevention may not necessarily be in the best interests of the child.
Measles, for example, has been used in Scandinavian countries to successfully treat such autoimmune conditions as eczema and many studies have performed which show that children who do not contract measles naturally as a child are more likely to suffer from certain cancers later in life.”

Evidence? citations? “Many studies” is not good enough for this thinking Mummy and it shouldn’t be good enough for anyone else. I have used every advantage (read access to university databases and Google foo) at my disposal to try to find an example of measles being used to treat eczema. I found nothing, zilch, nada. Not even a hint.

I managed to find this news article about the Mayo clinic using measles to fight certain cancers, but would AVN believe them? After all, in their disclaimer they say that they stand to make some money if their treatment works…

“In addition, recent studies have shown that contracting the common childhood illnesses help to prime and strengthen the immune system in a way that vaccinations just cannot do. This priming means that children are much less likely to suffer from the now common allergic and autoimmune conditions that plague them today. Conditions such as asthma, diabetes and cancer.”

*sigh* again note that they do not refer you to the actual recent studies. I could not find any. I don’t know where they got them from. I would love to know.

“In addition, vaccinated mothers cannot confer passive immunity to their children even if they have contracted the wild form of the disease.”

Again, where are they getting this information? Zorba’s Get Well Guide?

There’s a nice review in Vaccine 2007 called “Passive transmission and persistence of naturally acquired or vaccine-induced maternal antibodies against measles in newborns” I can read it free, but many of you will have to pay unless you have access to a library with this journal (Something that makes me grumpy buts that’s a whole other issue.) After reviewing many studies, some of which found no difference, but most of which found a little difference, it seems that vaccinated mothers only protect their infants until eight months, while mothers who acquired natural immunity protect their infants for a whopping three months longer. If vaccinated mothers were exposed to the disease, their antibody titre was boosted and they also confered immunity for around eleven months. The researcher’s conclusion? Might be a good idea to bring the vaccination dates forward a bit in communities with low or no naturally occuring cases of measles.

“This immunity used to protect all children during their vulnerable first months and years. Now, a vaccinated mother will give birth to a child who will be susceptible to these infections when, prior to vaccines, they would normally have been immune.”

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong according to dozens of trials in many countries. Wrong. Dudes, antibodies are antibodies. Whether they be for a vaccine or the naturally contracted disease. If a mother has immunity, wehther that be natural or no, she will confer passive immunity to her offspring.

“Vaccination is a medical procedure. It should never, ever be mandated. Nor should there ever be any coercion, financial or social penalties for those parents who have chosen, as is their right under the law, not to take the above risks on behalf of their children. Unvaccinated children continue to be among the healthiest children in our society.”

What if their choices put other children at risk? Because that's what will happen if enough people go unvaccinated. What then? I'm all for mandating vaccination in all who can be.

That unvaccinated children are among the healthiest is unsubstantiated. AVN, please provide a source.

“They are no more the carriers of disease than any other healthy person.”

And this is false. And an odd thing to say given that AVN seem to think that it’s better to contract the diseases naturally. Surely then, the unvaccinated kiddies can be carriers of disease?

“It is the government’s responsibility to do the necessary research to ensure that procedures they are recommending for all Australian families are as safe and effective as they possibly can be. It is also their responsibility to keep vested interests honest. On both counts, this government has failed in its duty of care to our most vulnerable resource – our children.
Every one of the points raised above deserves critical examination and public discussion and the parents who ask these questions deserve respect, not vilification.”

The government is made of people who do not want to hurt you, and who are doing their best to keep the population as healthy as possible. They are, for the most part, hard working human beings and not mass poisoners.

I agree, the parents deserve respect, not vilification and would probably be less anti-vaccine if their local GPs treated them like intelligent people instead of idiots. But YOU whoever you are at AVN, you deserve vilification. Your ten reasons page is 70% erroneos, 10% appalling logic (where you attempt to use it), and 20% dramatic hyperbole. And I pulled those figures from the same place you pulled yours I suspect.

Thinking about Vaccines? Thinking of Googling? Found AVN? VISA? Think Twice? Well think again.

I’m supposed to be reading up on levels of consciousness but I just had to get this out of my system. That is what this blog is for after all. I apologise for the sometimes acrimonious tone of this blog post. There were times when I got very angry, and when I get angry I get scathing.

I blame Twitter.

And facebook.

This all started when I connected my Twitter feed to my facebook account so that all my fb friends could see my every tweet. As a result a few of my friends saw me have a grumble at people who did not vaccinate their children when there was a confirmed case of whooping cough at my son’s school.

This provoked an unexpected, but interesting response from two facebook friends for whom I have a fair quota of respect, “Why don’t you have any patience for them? It’s their choice, they do the reasearch and choose what is best for their children…” I paraphrase, but you get the gist.

This provoked a long discussion, and some soul searching, not to mention internet searching on the issue.

I was told by my dissenting friends that far from being ignorant, non-vaccinators have read a great deal on the individual vaccines and their side effects. They constantly have to justify their choices on forms to medicos, schools and childcare. Their position has to be well thought out in order to navigate the hurdles a conscientious objector must leap in order for their child to participate in many areas of society the vaccinated take for granted. I would not, under any cirumstances, call them stupid. However, having taken a look at the kind of information out there for people trying to find information on vaccines, I would hazard a guess that they, and others, may have been misinformed at best, criminally misled at worst.

If you google the fairly inncouous “vaccine information australia”. There are a two organisations that crop up immediately. Vaccination Information Servicing Australia (VISA) and Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) were the two top hits. With catchy slogans like “Investigate before you vaccinate.” and “Love them. Protect them. Never inject them.” These websites proport to give you the truth on vaccines that the government won’t.

Sadly, I don’t have the time to nit-pick the websites in their entirety though I would dearly love to! However, I can, I hope, give enough reason to cast a serious shadow of doubt over their reliablility and legitimacy.

Both websites give “10 Reasons Why Parents Question Vaccination” or “10 Reasons to Investigate Before You Vaccinate.” The AVN’s is more detailed so I’ll look at theirs. They contain, if I’m kind, many errors of reasoning bolstered by sound ignorance and an appalling unawareness of the theory and history of vaccination. If I were unkind I would say that most of their “facts” are unsubstantiated in the extreme and that a lot of the more dramatic “facts” are made up.

If there are parents reading this post who are currently investigating the pros and cons of vaccination for their children I would implore them not to rely on the information these websites provide. It is often conveniently out of date, contains glaring misinformation and inaccuracies and in the case of at least one of them occurs within a broader agenda of a “natural life style philosophy” that generally shuns western medicine and endorses living harmoniously with mother nature.

If this is your view point I would still implore you not to take their “facts” at face value. They claim to be critical of scientists and doctors yet they are ill equipped to do any criticising. Judging by their commentary they are neither scientists nor stastisticians, and so in many cases they have their facts and interpretations of facts completely wrong.

A good place to get up to date information is Medline. But even then, if you only read the abstracts you can fall prey to tricks the pharmacutical companies use to make their products look better than rival company products. So in order to really know what’s going on with the latest research you have to be aware of who’s funding it, have a sound knowledge of what makes a good clinical trial or study (how cohort selection can bias results, for example, and the political leanings of the researcher running the trial) and a good grasp of the theory. To give an indication of how tricky I think this is, I have a science degree that included immunology and statistics and I wouldn’t feel capable of getting thoroughly on top of the research without at least a year of doing that and nothing else.

Here is a small example of the kind of misinterpretation that can be made by laymen when reading medical or scientific articles:

This article in Nature (Vaccine safety–vaccine benefits:science and the public's perception by Edgar K. Marcuse, Christopher B. Wilson in Nature Reviews Immunology 1, 160-165 (31 October 2001), that I highly recommend for a balanced and honest view on vaccines (though it is dated 2001 - always check the publication date!) contains the snippett: “relatively few infections are prevented by immunisation”. This can be interpretted in two ways. To those that know there are over 400 viruses and bugs out there that the newborn has to come to terms with, this means that immunisation is used to prevent a few of the more horrible kinds of infection. Therefore, relatively few infections are prevented by immunisation and the rest the children deal with on their own. To the lay-person, however, the same snippet may read as “relatively few infections are prevented by immunisation so immunisation obviously doesn’t work. Look, it’s in Nature!” That this interpretation is at odds with the rest of the paper does not matter to the zealous. They can cite that portion to their hearts content and look credible to all but the most astute observers.

There's this kind of misrepresentation and the fact that most of the population isn't capable of accurately assessing risk. Take the person who doesn't like swimming in the ocean for fear of sharks, but crosses roads every day. The risk that they will end up road kill is much higher than the risk that they will be shark food but the human brain is crap at making that assessment even when presented with the numbers. If most of the population can't make that kind of assessment, how can they be expected to make an assessment about immunisation where the theory is more complex and the numbers harder? Most people don't have access to the latest articles (or would rather google than go to a library), and end up being swayed by the scare-mongers who had a bit of bad luck in life and decided to blame their child's autism, cerebral palsy or whatever on an injection they had once.

I worry that 99% of those who say they evaluate the pros and cons are doing less evaluating and more looking for evidence to support their paranoia. And they will find this "evidence" in abundance on the internet.

I've been checking out some of the pro and anti vaccine debate on the internets. Sorry to say that mostly, and I mean to emphasise MOSTLY, the anti proponents don't do themselves any favours at all. They tend to display a glaring ignorance of immunology, epidemiology and medical history - I'd have thought they would be essential reading for anyone claiming to have researched the issue. They also, again MOSTLY, provide no evidence for fairly outlandish claims ("There was a pertussis outbreak in Idaho and 100% of the victims were immunised!!!"). When the pro-vaccine people join the conversation they are flamed down as being in the pocket of big pharma. This was a little unfortunate as the pro-people were more likely to ask for evidence and provide evidence in return.

There was a lot of scary anecdotes from both sides, none of which amounted to a shred of proof about anything but which made for interesting reading. Anyone researching off the beaten track, and I imagine that includes most parents must remember that: THE PLURAL OF ANECDOTE IS NOT PROOF.

Speaking of anecdotes though, the most interesting were the number of parents of autistic children who chimed in to say that they had done an awful lot of reading on the link between MMR and autism themselves, they were not satisfied there was a link, and could everyone please just shut up about it and use their energy for improving conditions and treatment for autistic children? Anecdotal I know, but still, surprising given the forum.

Sorry to say that the few reasonable anti-vaccinators armed with evidence and argument were still very conspiracy theory oriented, but even if they weren't they were drowned out by the complete idiots anyway.

I have no qualifications other than being a fan of medical history, managing to stay awake in immunology and epidemiology and I worked in an industry that creates antibodies for research. Compared to the average Joe I know my stuff. To me, vaccination isn't just about protecting my kids (well, ok, tetanus is) it's about helping to protect the vulnerable in our community, namely tiny babies and people who cannot vaccinate for whatever reason. I don't want to go back to the days where hospitals had to have dedicated measles and pertussis wards. I don't want to live in a world where everyone knows someone affected by polio or congenital rubella.

And this is why I get grumbly when people don't vaccinate. I feel that they're taking their healthy society for granted, even taking advantage of it. I might feel the same way about people who refused to fight if our country was being invaded. I might feel that they weren't earning their safety or protection, that they were letting other people take the risks for them. I'm community minded about vaccination so that's just how I feel. I also think I've done the hours of homework and have earned the right to feel that way.

My next post calls out some of the misinformation on the Australian Vaccination Network website. It's lengthy, but if you're serious about researching vaccines and you don't have a scientific background I recommend you read it all.

Yey! Because babies are ALWAYS a blessing, and ALWAYS wanted...

I feel so sad every time I read one of these. I think of teenage girls giving birth alone and terrified. I think of abused women giving birth in secret and abandoning their baby to what they hope will be a better life. I think of a mother with too many children already, wrapping her newborn lovingly, leaving it where it will be found and running away before she can change her mind. I think of young women forced to give birth in secret at home by ashamed parents who take the baby away and make it someone else's problem. It's totally heartbreaking I tell you. And every time I can't help wondering if this particular abandoned baby is the result of a problem accessing sexual health services, whether that be information about sex, contraception or termination.

Try googling "baby found" and check out the roughly 70 million hits. Or maybe don't, actually.

Response to SMH "Are home births safe?" Your Say.

Response to Your Say question on SMH.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of regulation and safety standards not all home births are safe. Preston was prepared, some are not and I'll bet it's the unprepared that skew the figures for home birth. For example, I'd call having a water birth at the top of a spiral staircase attended by a "birth attendant" with meagre medical qualifications ridiculously unsafe.

I would call a home birth with a suitably qualified midwife in attendance plus easy access to medical facilities if required very safe indeed. Safer, in fact, than most hospital environments where my need for a quiet, dimly lit, safe place to give birth is dismissed and often mocked by the white coats.

For most of us "crazy hippy home birth types" the position is a logical one: That the high rate of medical intervention we are seeing now is the result of the high rate of unnecessary meddling with what is a natural process. We believe that if the doctors interfered less, there would be less for them to do.

You can see how this position might mean a significant loss of cash for a certain powerful white coat lobby? You can see it from space.

Sadly, there is a bit of knee-jerk reacting going on with some women choosing to birth without any kind of attendance whatsoever. I believe this practice is a direct result of a public system that is letting women down. This is a difficult belief to prove.

However, the logical position I hold, that less unnecessary medical intervention (drugs to hurry labours, episiotomies, monitoring that restricts the movement of the labouring woman) would lead to less necessary medical intervention is not as difficult to prove. There are new studies appearing all the time: episiotomies, once routine are now known to heal more slowly and increase the risk of anal tears; caesarian sections are not as safe for the baby as once thought - it turns out that squeezing the baby's lungs on the way out is an important factor in the prevention of chest infections in the newborn. There are others of course.

The medical community has been misguided, ethically suspect and downright wrong before, take leeches and no hand washing between postmortems and surgery on live patients for example, not to mention the horrific error that curare was an anaesthetic. It's perfectly possible that they are wrong about home births now, the error would not be without historic precedent.

Letter to Ministers re Maternity Services Review

As usual, please feel free to use any of it as a template for your own letters. All care no responsibility etc.

Your MP's email addresses can be found here: http://apps.aec.gov.au/esearch/

and remember to CC the Minister for Health: Nicola.Roxon.MP@aph.gov.au

Dear Minister,

I’m hearing all over the media that only 1% of women “choose” homebirth in Australia. I’m sure that if homebirth were not prohibitively expensive the figure would be very different. I only “chose” to give birth in a hospital because the choice of homebirth was not available in our public health system, I could not afford a private midwife and I was not so stupid as to attempt to give birth unattended.

Though I had perfectly satisfactory birth experiences both times, (partially because I was lucky enough to experience continuity of care in family birth centres), I would have preferred to have had them at home. Had I, and others like me, had the option of homebirth readily available you would definitely find that a greater number of women would choose homebirth.

It is incorrect to say that only 1% of women “choose” homebirth. It would be more accurate to say that 1% of women were “able to have” a home birth. I am deeply saddened to read that the maternity review does not recommend that home births should be made more readily accessible to healthy women. In fact, it seems to be suggesting that homebirth would be effectively outlawed by 2010. It seems to me that this will endanger women who are not as willing as I to resign themselves to their hospital fate. These women need a safe solution, and women such as myself would deeply appreciate the choice.

Homebirth needs more monitoring, not outlawing or ignoring. Homebirth needs to be interfered with so we don’t see more tragic scenarios where women die doing it. Two examples spring immediately to mind: A woman who decided to have a waterbirth at the top of a spiral staircase with an inexperienced birth attendant who was “uncomfortable” inserting an IV that might have saved her life (Victoria), or the ignorant and unattended woman who decide to labour in filthy mud after her waters broke (Queensland). Had safety standards for homebirths been in place and enforced neither of the above women would have had to die. Though I think both women chose to give birth in ill conceived scenarios, I view their deaths as direct consequences of a health system which is letting them down with regard to birth choices.

In my opinion, midwifery attendance at homebirths ought to be compulsory and midwives who attend homebirths need to be registered as qualified to do so (homebirths require a distinct skill set and a greater depth of experience from the attending midwife). Midwives also need rigorous safety protocols with which they are bound to comply, they need idemnity insurance, and they need to be confident that they will be well received at hospitals should their clients require hospital care.

The maternity review is the perfect opportunity to explore solutions such as those outlined above. If the argument that women ought to be able to exercise more autonomy in the birth arena does not persuade you, then perhaps this notion will: These solutions, once in place, would be cheaper than maintaining a hospital environment for healthy women who do not want to attend one. Our community would also reap the rewards postnatally with less women feeling traumatised and invaded by a hospital experience they would have preferred to avoid - postnatal depression is costly to the federal government and the community.

Please consider campaigning for safe, commonwealth funded home birth in Australia. It is too late for me, but not too late for women who come after me.

Yours faithfully,


BSc/BA Hons (Philosophy)
Mother of two.

Some common sense from Holden.

I was please to read in The Age today that Holden is considering cutting down workers' hours across the board and freezing executive salaries rather than resorting to mass sackings. It's such an obvious solution and a morally responsible example I'm hoping other big companies will follow.

Take THAT eBay...

Readers may remember that I was very cross with eBay a while ago.

From the Reserve Bank today:

... the Board has been assured that eBay and PayPal’s current ‘no discouragement’ rules do not prevent sellers from expressing a preference for an alternative payment system. It will re-examine this issue if it becomes apparent that the ‘no discouragement’ policies are being implemented in such a way as to prevent sellers from exercising choice.

Read the full media release here, the relevant bits for PayPal and eBay users are at the bottom. It's not as good as a proper smack down but it'll do for now.

Father Sells Daughter for Cash, Beer and Meat

Father Sells Daughter for Cash, Beer and Meat

What I want to know is, what the hell are they thinking sending this girl back to her abusive family????

The breast feeding pics that Facebook banned.

Can't remember how I found this collection of breast feeding photos that were removed from Facebook, but it's enlightening. A couple of the more pertinent (not to mention old) points that were made were:

Men's nipples can be photographed and those photos published without comment but a woman's areola is obscene. One of many examples of double standards within our nice western patriarchy and...Facebook.

Photos of topless women holding babies are pornographic according to Facebook - you can bet they haven't removed any photos of topless men holding their tots.

The funniest photo is captioned: "If breast feeding on facebook disturbs you, please feel free to put a blanket over your head." Any woman who has fed a baby under a blanket so as not to frighten the general public with the sight of a baby having lunch will know precisely why this is hilarious.

In my opinion, if photos of breasts doing what they are supposed to do appears to be pornographic to the viewer, then the viewer might want to ask themselves some pertinent questions with regard to what turns them on. Breast worshipping, (or viewing bare breasts as obscene which equates to a hatred of breasts), is a cultural phenomenon. For some reason our culture seems to be afraid of breasts, as though the sight of a nipple might drive men mad and contaminate the minds of little children. Fear of exposed body parts is one of the more ridiculous social norms I grew up with, and one of the hardest for me to overcome (if you think I exaggerate consider that I feel naked just showing my ankles), yet I can still see past my inhibitions to the logic of the situation.

The logic is this: Breasts are milk making machines, it's a biologically hardwired thing humans have going on. Even men's breasts, usually considered redundant, can be made to produce milk. What breasts cannot do is possess magical power over the minds of others. Breasts cannot make a man have an erection or desire sexual intercourse, nor can they make little children into sexual deviants. Amazing though they are, breasts simply do not have those powers. Despite all appearances to the contrary, those extraordinary powers lie elsewhere, in the context. Our poor beleaguered breasts exist within a society that indoctrinates us with a sexual view of our milk making machines. And SEX, oh my goodness, SEX is BAD. Soaked in our deeply Christian culture is a morbid fear of SEX. We do not talk about the SEX, we hint at it, we suggest that there may be the merest possibility that it may be going on. We protect our children from the SEX while allowing them to see footage of people shooting each other. I fear I may have digressed...

The upshot is this: breasts have no special powers other than making milk and providing a soft place for children to rest their heads. All the other powers attributed to them are actually sourced in our craniums. It is the mind that makes the breast a sexual object. It is definitely the mind that makes a picture of a breast feeding baby pornographic. Facebook needs its head read.

Some Reactionary Commentary on the film Orgasmic Birth by someone who read the pamphlet and checked out the website.

I must be feeling a bit better because these (very similar) articles in The Age by an Avril Moore made me a tiny bit angry. Just a little bit. A twinge.

Maybe, because I've seen the film and helped host the Melbourne screening I'm taking the whole thing a little personally.

Or maybe I'm just cross because she spouted her drivel having not seen the film.

Nope, it's neither of those things, it's this: This Avril chic is using her painful births to trump all the women who report a painless or ecstatic birth. She has blithely silenced the voices of women who report beautiful birthing experiences, dismissing their accounts and replacing them with her own. Isn't that one of the things the patriarchy is supposed to be good at? Disregarding the reported experiences of women? Telling us what it is we are supposed to be experiencing? particularly when it comes to childbirth? Tisk tisk Avril, BAD feminist, naughty!

Avril called the "natural birth community" backward when she accuses them of deferring to men. Avril complains that, "this 'woman-centred' approach to birth, all dressed up to empower labouring mothers, remains unapologetic in its deference to men" simply because one woman reported a reduction in pain when she smiled at her husband.

Wow.

Some readers may remember that I happen to know quite a bit about pain, and I'm pretty sure that what Avril knows could be stamped on a paracetamol capsule: Times New Roman, size 10 font - "Birth, it hurt when I did it!". It is not unreasonable to suppose that smiling at someone you love during labour could reduce pain. Distraction is an age-old technique for reducing pain, meditation forms part of the armoury against chronic pain and there is plenty of other evidence much of it published in reputable journals, that focussing on pleasurable things works wonders for pain. In infants, physical pain response is reduced when they are given sucrose to suck on, distraction with something nice is a time tested pain reliever for young children. If smiling at your husband distracts you and gets some happy chemicals pumping in your brain then wonderful! It's hardly what I would call deference.

She cites other examples of deference too. Ina May Gaskin dares to dedicate her first book to her husband and apparently two homebirth doctors in the 1970s were OMG! blokes! Avril, in the 1970s most doctors were blokes, you played the odds and won there, and my honours thesis would have been dedicated to my husband (if it had been dedicated to anyone) that doesn't mean he told me what to put in it.

Avril's contempt for Ina May Gaskin beggars belief given her credentials. Avril has experienced three births, Ina May has been present at over 1200 and pioneered an extremely effective low intervention solution for shoulder dystocia. Avril, 3, Ina May, 1200. I think Ms Gaskin is winning in the experience stakes. Also, as a writer, Avril should know that a book like Spiritual Midwifery doesn't run to four editions if it's full of hippie clap-trap.

If Avril had seen the film, she would have known that the women in it are a far cry from shutting up and smiling submissively at their husbands. They are not only very much in charge they are very noisy indeed, it's just not the kind of noise that we expect to hear having been fed hysterically screaming women by mainstream media. It's animal, it's beautiful, and if you heard only the sound track you might think you were listening to quality porn - for real.

I gather, Avril, you were more of a screamer? REALLY focussed in on that pain, did you? Good on you! Whatever works dear.

Target women - Birth Control

I'm a bit of a latecomer to Sarah Haskins, but just in case there are other ignoramuses like me out there I'm sharing the love. Those using readers might need to visit the blog to watch the videos.

I like:


and:



...and there's so much more for those who Google.

Dear diary, What's Wrong With Me?

I've written three hundred blog posts in my head I'm sure. If not three hundred, at least 30 and none of them are making it to the ether. This could be because I'm time poor and trying to get to sleep early. But I think it's rather a depressing lack of motivation caused by the roller coaster I've been on for the past couple of months. I think if I have to do one more extreme high (e.g. relief of Mum dying, 11yo with his A average) followed by an extreme low (e.g. Mum dying, missing out on scholarship) I might just risk life and limb and jump off the ride.

I do have time to write. I'm going to bed at 2200 and finding that I'm still wide awake at 0100 and wondering why didn't do something useful rather than stew fretfully in bed listening to the walrus choking on a fish next to me.

Activities that normally entertain me have lost their appeal. The thought of trolling pro-life websites and picking holes in their logic, usually fun, just fills me with a tiredness bordering on despair. Because study next year is still up in the air I can't pick up any philosophy or psycho-neurology without feeling depressed and pointless. Much of my feminist rants were anger driven and the anger just isn't there at the moment.

I can't get pissed off, I can't get motivated, and with the aid of Travis I seem to have cried myself out over my mother. All the cleaning an tidying has left me with a still overflowing in-tray and a house that is only half orderly so the thought of doing more to no avail makes me miserable.

Coffee with friends always helps, as do lists that I can tick so I can see that I've accomplished something for the day. Charming, cheeky 11yo boys always bring sunshine into the house. But right now... right now I just might break out the new toy...