From the category archives:

Vaccines

Cold and Flu Season

May 25, 2012 Babies

What I have right now is not the flu. I’m just miserable with a snotty nose, sore throat and cough. Plus not sleeping. I had the flu once, I remember crawling to the bathroom because I couldn’t walk and shivering at the bottom of a scalding shower. But in Australia at the moment, ’tis the season [...]

The Social Media Users Who Could

December 28, 2011 Babies

I‘ve been umming and ahhing on whether to post this, because it doesn’t really fit with this blog. I know I do vaccine posts occasionally and it’s always a balancing act, but this isn’t really about vaccines at all. It’s about information, and if bloggers and social media users (ie you readers) don’t talk about [...]

All anti-vaccination rhetoric is conspiracy theory. Yes, you too.

September 6, 2011 Babies

It’s my soapbox and I haven’t jumped on for a while. And now that I’ve done the controversial headline I’ll put in the caveats. Most people concerned about vaccines are, as a commenter on an earlier vaccine post put it, relatively balanced parents holding a newborn in their arms. And it’s hard. I get that. I’ve [...]

Wakefield and the MMR for parents

January 10, 2011 Vaccines

I’ve written a few vaccine pieces for this blog when I think I can explain some of the basic science such as herd immunity and the chemistry of elements and compounds. What has unfolded over the past few days is not about basic science, it is about how science is done and how it can [...]

There Is No Mercury in Vaccines

November 4, 2010 Babies

This post is part of Vaccine Awareness Week, check out #vaxfax on Twitter or Science Based Medicine to see what’s going on. It is also cross posted on She Thought, the group blog where I think critically. You’ll have to indulge me a little here, but elements and compounds is year 7 or 8 science [...]

Interview – Professor Ian Frazer

July 26, 2010 General

Professor Ian Frazer is originally from Scotland, where he studied medicine. He moved to Australia to do research in immunology, and helped confirm that HIV was the cause of AIDS. He was involved in the discovery that Human Papillomavirus (HPV) was causing precancerous changes in cells, and is one of the causes of cervical cancer, [...]

How herd immunity works

February 20, 2010 General

I didn’t intend to write a series about vaccines, but it is a pet topic and there are a lot of scientific misunderstandings out there. So every now and then when the topic comes up in my life I can see I’ll be adding to this. The immune system Our bodies face multiple attacks every [...]

A Parent’s Guide to H1N1

November 20, 2009 Babies

I’m cross posting this here and on Fusion Parenting because I feel it is so important I want it to get out to the widest possible audience. If you find it useful, please spread the link around or distribute it as widely as you like. First off, I have no medical qualifications. My background is [...]