Posts Tagged ‘i am not a doctor but i play one on tv’

Vaccination Woes?

“Calgary’s Bishop and Alberta’s Health Minister were locked in a war of words Sunday over the local Catholic school district’s refusal to participate in a cervical cancer vaccination program, with both men accusing each other of irresponsible behavior.” (LINK) Catholic church, epic fail!

Full text from September 29, 2008 by Brad
Filed as: MiniBlog by SkepDad

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Lipids, Drugs, and OMG THINK OF TEH CHILDREN!

If one ever needs a reminder of the sad state of medical and science reporting in the modern media, one can often just turn on the television and witness a lemming-like approach to sensational news stories. This morning, for example, after the wife and I watched last night’s The National (CBC) report on a new report on childhood obesity from the American Academy of Pediatrics I Google’d a total of six-hundred and ninety-five redundant articles on that same subject proclaiming the same exaggerated and out-of-context headlines: “Cholesterol drugs urged for children as young as 8” or even “A sad milestone: Kids and cholesterol drugs.”

I wonder how many of those six hundred and ninety-five publications and their editors bothered to scope out the real deal behind the story?

I spent five minutes and tracked down the actual article — available online, in full, for free (by the way) — and skimmed through it in enough detail to realize that the “drugs for eight-year-olds” is LAST on a list of thorough recommendations that works through a progressive, stepwise analysis from diet and exercise to counseling and advanced screening to (yes, at the last-ditch, holy-crap your kid is so fat his knees are going to buckle) drugs.

Yet, the television reports and the print articles simply wave the flag and shout: “these guys are saying eight year olds should be on drugs.”

Unfortunately for a group like the American Academy of Pediatrics who publishes papers such as this from respected researchers there is a need to be discrete and professional — and so the language of the report is subtle and nuanced and doesn’t bother to speak to the public in plain language.

The seven recommendations, as I have reinterpreted them are:

1) Guess what. Your kid is a little person and needs good food. Feed your kids good and proper food, you stupid parents. Not crap. For example, a strawberry milkshake from McD’s is not the same as a wholesome glass of two-percent.

2) If you don’t know what good food is, talk to someone who does. There are people who know these things. Really. It’s their job.

3) If you are fat as an adult we know you like to blame your genes. But guess what! We can screen your kids to see if there is some genetic link — or if you’re just fat and lazy and setting a bad example.

4) By the way, this means soon. Probably when your kids are between two and ten years old would be a good time to start thinking about healthy lifestyle choices.

5) If you are a doctor and you’re reading this report there are ways to test kids that are different than testing adults. You probably know that, but we have to tell you to cover our butts here.

6) If your kid is already fat, start feeding him properly and pry the Wiimote from his hands before it’s too late. There are some great new inventions to help with this: balls, bikes, running shoes. Really, get off your couch and do something physical with your kids — maybe take them to the farmer’s market and buys some fruit.

7) If your kid’s blood is already measured as a double-digit percentage of chocolate and french fry grease, guess what: you’re a bad parent. Really. No, you suck. We can’t do much to fix this anymore with diet and exercise — and if we try we’ll probably do even more damage — so honestly, sorry to say, there isn’t any other way than pumping them up with some powerful drugs in the hopes that they don’t keel over the video game controller and have a heart attack at twenty-five. We don’t like it any more than you, but if you haven’t figured this out in the first eight years of your kid’s life we don’t know what to say.

The media’s reply: OMG! They want to drug our kids! Story at 10!

Full text from July 8, 2008 by Brad
Filed as: Encounters of the Mind

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