Apology to the world (2/12/2006)
No, not for anything I have done, have not done or am about to do or not do in the near future. I am apologising on behalf of all sane Australians for inflicting Viera Scheibner on the world. Dr Scheibner (she has a real PhD in micropaleontology) is one of the leading lights of the anti-vaccination movement, and is often called on as an expert. The following quote from Dr Scheibner indicates both the quality of her expertise and why an apology is needed to the rest of the world for the actions of this Australian resident.

It is well known that measles is an important development milestone in the life and maturing processes in children. Why would anybody want to stop or delay the maturation processes of children and of their immune systems?

Isn’t it amazing that millions of children in Australia, the USA, Britain and other places manage to survive infancy and grow up without experiencing this “important development milestone”? In the rest of the world, the death toll of only a few hundred thousand dead children so far this year must be a small price to pay for the benefits accruing to other unvaccinated children. What would a few deaths matter, or millions of blind kids or kids with meningitis, when we are talking about preventing “delay [in] the maturation processes of children and of their immune systems”? And people still ask me why I call anti-vaccination liars “liars”.

Source? Google it yourself. Isn’t that how all you nutters do ‘research’?

There is yet still hope for an original thought Gary. Keep at it.

Master Suppression Techniques

[ That's not advice,

that's what they're called ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppression_techniques

Gary sounds like a brainwashed doctor, that paid to be brainwashed by the muti-billion dollar vaccine producers at medical school..very sad

http://moremark.squarespace.com/quackcast-list-mp3/

The easiest thing for AAH would be to refer people to their website (www.aahuganda.org) and follow the  instructions to donate; to donate to the clinic projects, people must specify for the donations to go to the Bupoto clinic project.  For Partnership Uganda, people can go to http://www.partnershipugandainc.org and follow the directions under the “Support” tab.

Mail:

Subject: Hate (of CAM) mail and many props from Uganda

Message: Hello Mark,

I am a pediatrician working in rural—and I mean rural—Uganda; I’ve been here full time for about two years now and on and off for four.  I’ve been lucky enough to find a scientist husband with a passion for international health, and I drug him and my dog to a little village in Manafwa District in eastern Uganda, near the Kenyan border.  There’s not much running water, power, or internet in our village, and I have to work hard to keep up my medical knowledge.  I discovered your pus- and pod-casts during one of my searches for free CME, and my husband and I have been hooked ever since.  When we travel the two or three hours every few weeks to get supplies for our clinic, we’ll download as many of your casts as possible, and we wanted to thank you for keeping us entertained and informed in the far reaches of the world.

I’m writing specifically to thank you for and comment on your “Without Borders” pod-cast.  I always enjoy your logic and critical evaluations on (S)CAM, and this cast resonated particularly strong with me—not only because we live in the trenches of one of the countries you mentioned, but also because I am as angry and disheartened at the wasting of money on poor research and bunk therapeutic options here as you seem to be.  We know your “reply to email” stance, so we’re not expecting one; we just wanted to thank you for your work and share our take on it.

In my region of Uganda, I’m one of four pediatricians; my three colleagues are two hours away in Mbale, the nearest big city to us, and otherwise I’m alone in the eastern territories.  We find that the doctor to patient ratio you mentioned applies more to the bigger cities; the situation is exponentially more critical in the far-flung regions (the forgotten districts, as I call them) of the country.  For the last two years, I have managed and operated two grass roots NGO clinics, and my husband and I have adopted a “McGyver Medicine” approach to make every single resource, every single cent, and every single health worker as effective as possible.  Our districts are some of the poorest and worst served areas of the country, and to compound the problem of poor education, rampant infectious disease (including an HIV/AIDS prevalence much worse than the national average), and awful infrastructure in education and public services, we’re lucky if we see a small portion of the $135/capita you mentioned Uganda spends on healthcare.  In a nutshell: every single cent matters and literally determines the difference between life and death.

The studies you reviewed in the “Without Borders” cast are sickening.  I see time and again groups of do-gooders from around the globe popping into countries like Uganda to “help,” but who conveniently might just get some data while they’re at it.  Do they consult the people they want to study?  Maybe. Do they get permission from the country’s IRB-equivalents for ethical research protocols?  Probably not, although I bet the US institution backing them is on board and never mentioned the need to consult the in-country ethics boards.  Do they realize how far their money could go if used prudently?  Definitely not, otherwise I can’t fathom that anyone would go forward with the severe waste of resources that I see.  As I said—those of us in these countries who see the true state of health know that not a penny can go to waste.  But millions of pennies go pouring down the drains (or bills lit on fire, as you said!) on these research projects.  The acupuncture study in Uganda was a perfect example of this—hearing you speak about it made me want to scream (pretty sure I did and scared the chickens).  

There is no wiggle room on this—we cannot allow independent groups or bad science to dictate how money is spent in areas where $1 may make the difference between a person’s life or death.  Sometimes, you literally have one opportunity to reach people: they may visit you or participate in your study for their one healthcare encounter in a decade.  How can you waste that opportunity by not using it to provide the things we KNOW will help them: de-worming, vaccinations, multivitamin supplements, HIV testing, education…

We argue to put the money instead towards training health workers to go into their communities and educate about basic hygiene, vaccinations, nutrition, and other health topics.  As you’ve mentioned multiple times, there are not many interventions with NO possible or tangible harm done, but education sure comes close.  I’ve now worked with two groups of 16 community volunteers—people from the communities in which I’ve worked—who we trained in basic education following international and Ministry of Health guidelines.  Their educational work alone has taken a big cut out of delayed wound care, diarrhea outbreaks, and malaria cases in the community.  We attribute a rise in family planning use to their work.  Our patient volumes at the clinics in the areas have increased, and people seem to understand basic health better.  How much did it cost to train these people?  About $200.  TOTAL.  Imagine putting all that acupuncture money towards widespread community health worker trainings in Nepal, Uganda, Nicaragua and Haiti.  This is what keeps me fighting in international healthcare and why I get so damned pissed off when I hear about studies like what you discussed.  Thank you SO much for addressing this tragic ethical issue in your podcast.  We loved your work before, and we do so even more now.  Please keep up your good work, and know you’re reaching health workers and doctors in some of the most remote areas of the world.

Also, if it’s interesting to you, we came across this journal recently; you may already know it well, but it’s the African Journal of Traditional and Complementary Alternative Medicine.  I’m sure there is a wealth of articles ripe for the picking apart.

Thanks again,

Lisa Umphrey and Douglas DaSilva

Thanks Gary – interesting post.

How long do you think it will be before the first allegations that these two are “Big Pharma Plants” start flying?