Friday, November 26, 2004

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Mumps is back and GPs are in the frontline.
As predicted...
"Some 1,352 cases of mumps were reported between April and June 2004 ­ the highest in the seven years since records began

·MMR uptake fell to 80 per cent across the UK in 2003/4

·Uptake of first MMR vaccine by age five also fell by 0.5 per cent and coverage of the preschool booster plunged by 0.6 per cent in the last quarter

The country-wide outbreak started several years ago and so far there have been 3,756 confirmed cases in the first nine months of 2004 compared with just over 372 in 1999 ­ the cause is in part due to how the MMR programme was implemented in the 1990s and in part to the ongoing concern about adverse vaccine events and its knock-on effect on MMR uptake.

Saturday, November 20, 2004

Palestine: the assault on health and other war crimes

I cannot believe that by publishing this article in the BMJ they got so much hate mail from angry Israel supporters. Over 400 responses in a few days, wanting vengence, wanting the editor to resign, threats of cancelling BMJ subscriptions....
And it had the desired effect of forcing the BMJ to write a response saying that Summerfield was wrong. Even though he gave evidence and references for what he said. Just shows what sort of a world we live in.

Friday, November 19, 2004

National Dietary Guidelines rewritten to favour industry Tracking the Bush Administrations misdeeds. It seems sometimes the more we know about something, the less they want us to know about it.