The ‘Harvard Study’ researchers…in the flesh

I found this interesting ABC piece on infant sleep training (apparently televised last year) over at the Drs. Weissbluth blog. It’s not very long, seems journalistically well-balanced, and there are short interviews with some of the important players in the infant sleep industry: Ferber, T. Berry Brazelton, and pere Weissbluth himself.

Of particular interest to me, though, is the interview with Michael Commons and Patrice Miller, the husband-and-wife team of psychologists from Harvard responsible for the notorious Harvard non-study. You can find it about 3:55 minutes into the video:

Other than the self-satisfied looks on both their faces, I have to say they weren’t quite what I was expecting. I certainly wasn’t expecting them to sink quite so low with comparisons to Hitler and Saddam Hussein’s supposed parenting – which Miller tries to soften just a bit (probably because she belatedly realized how off-the-wall her husband sounds). Even if much of the interview was sane and edited out for brevity…they did say it. Contrast the absolute certainty Commons displays in 2008, as compared to this relatively cautious interview 10 years previously…and it’s not because the duo has done further research into the matter, mind. Nor has anyone else come up with actual research corroborating their conclusions in the interval.

What do you think?

What to do about the flu

Truth be told, I’ve been discussing the flu and flu vaccines – both seasonal and the swine/H1N1 variety – at work for at least 3 months now. We’ve been seeing a lot of swine flu around here – mostly, thank God, mild cases, but I’ve given my share of Tamiflu to ill pregnant women, asthmatics, and even a little girl with leukemia. It’s about time I discussed it here.

Seasonal flu vaccination is in full swing in our clinic. Spurred by the death of a local woman (she was not a patient of my clinic, but lived across the street) and her full-term fetus from swine flu, patients have been getting themselves and their children vaccinated in record numbers this year.

The first H1N1 vaccine doses arrived here in Israel about 2 weeks ago from Switzerland, but in typical Israeli fashion, the Health Ministry decided not to allow their use in pregnant women (who are 4-5 times as likely to die if they contract the flu) and children under 3 years of age. I was told by our local infectious disease specialist this week that the reason for this was because they contained squalene as an adjuvant, and because squalene is not FDA-approved, the Health Ministry decided to await the arrival of vaccine which doesn’t contain it to vaccinate these groups. The rest of us will be getting the vaccine starting December. (Hebrew link to the Israeli Health Ministry’s FAQ on the subject).

Yes, that sound you hear is my head banging on the desk in frustration.

Anyhow, if you’d like some reliable, alarming (but not alarmist) actual information about swine flu, you’ll want to go to the CDC’s website on the subject. I’m putting their flu widget on the sidebar for now as well, so that if you can access the site from anywhere on the blog if you want to be up on the latest.

Of course, no matter what vaccine is under discussion, you can count on the usual anti-vax crazies to come up with horror stories and conspiracy theories. Dr Val Jones and crew give Dr Joe Mercola (and I use the term ‘Dr.’ very loosely here) a well-deserved tongue-lashing; factcheck.org also has an excellent response to all those hysterical emails you might be getting on the subject (like the one on my local email list today, which quoted liberally from websites such as healthfreedomusa.org and naturalnews.com).

Orac, of course, also weighs in on a story being put out by anti-vaxers about a young woman who allegedly developed dystonia after receiving a flu vaccine. The verdict: most probably a psychogenic disorder. (I have to admit that I thought the same thing when I first saw the video in question, but not being an expert on the subject, I would have hesitated to state this categorically without an expert opinion).

EDITED Nov 5th TO ADD: Sure ’nuff…

And I really can’t talk about vaccines – H1N1 or otherwise – without exhorting those of you (yes, all 3 of you ) who haven’t read this fabulous article at wired.com yet, to go and read it. Now.

No Bradlies, doulas or contracts allowed.

At least, not according to the OB-GYNs at Aspen Women’s Center at Provo, Utah:

Killing him softly with their love: over-attachment as child abuse

Or at least, that’s what the mother and grandparents of a 12-year-old Italian boy named Luca are being accused of by the boy’s estranged father:

Ghosts of blogposts past

It’s really nice to be back at blogging, and sorry for the longer-than-usual hiatus. Holidays, work, kids and house renovations (along with a dose of self-destructive perfectionism and writer’s block. Don’t ask) and just plain life conspired to keep me away from this space, but hopefully, things will be settling down in the next few weeks and we’ll be back in our blessed groove again.

Just because I was busy, however, doesn’t mean I gave up my online life entirely. Those of you who blog can probably attest that reading other people’s stuff, and even reacting to written stuff in comments or messageboard posts, is a lot easier than composing blogposts. So I kept up with my reading, and found a lot of material in the past month which made for worthy sequels to things I’d already written about here.

Sleeping like a baby…in a magazine?

The AAP may not approve.

RIP, Norman Borlaug

Plant scientist and Nobel laureate, Norman Borlaug, died last Saturday at the ripe old age of 95. Borlaug, in contrast to many other self-described do-gooders on this planet, actually could take credit for saving millions of people in the Third World from starving to death by developing high-yield, disease resistant crops of grain.

Borlaug had little patience for these types:

Eventually, however, a backlash developed. In the 1980s, environmental groups began pressuring foundations and the World Bank to stop funding shipments of fertilizer to developing countries, particularly in Africa. Critics contended that the inorganic fertilizers used caused massive pollution; they argued in favor of “sustainable” agriculture using “natural” fertilizers like cow manure.

Borlaug was indignant. Using manure would require a massive expansion of the lands required for grazing the cattle and consume much of the extra grain that would be produced. At best, he said, such efforts could support no more than 4 billion people worldwide, well under the nearly 7 billion now inhabiting the planet.

“Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the Earth, but many of them are elitists,” he told the Atlantic Monthly magazine. “They’ve never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they’d be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.”

A truly great man has left us, but his cause can still be supported at Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture.

Ayup.

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:

Sleep tight, lil’ angels

I’ve never been one for class reunions, but it’s always fun to see what my fellow medical school classmates have made of their lives, and of the profession, in the years since we graduated. One I speak to on an almost daily basis, as we work together; others have become specialists I’ve referred patients to. My middle son’s pediatric neurologist is also a former classmate, and our yearly visits with her, while always professionally conducted, also involve friendly chat.

Hence, I was quite happy to hear from a mutual acquaintance that my former classmate Dennis Rosen has become a pediatric sleep expert in Boston, studying under none other than the Great Ferb himself. And that he writes a blog on the subject of sleep over at Psychology Today, called Sleeping Angels. It’s not just about kids’ sleep, either. And that it’s really interesting, too (OK, that was my own conclusion after reading several blogposts).

(And I’m willing to bet that if Dennis looks at his referral logs, he’s probably scratching his head about now and thinking, “Who the hell is this person?!”. We were a class of about 90 students, after all.)

Another new and valuable pro-vax resource

The good folks over at Scicence-Based Medicine (linked in the blogroll to the right) have produced an aggregate of SBM’s posts on the topic of vaccines and autism, along with an overview of the subject written by Dr. Steve Novella and a comprehensive list and discussion of the studies done on the subject.

Vaccines and Autism on Science-Based Medicine

I didn’t see this one on the list as it doesn’t directly pertain to vaccines, but Dr. Harriet Hall’s latest post is a very good resource to use when answering the biomed mommies, who claim their autistic child improved right after being given this supplement or undergoing that chelation. (See also her article on the placebo effect in the Skeptic e-zine).