Articles tagged with "parent"

It has been a while since I wrote about pseudoscience and scams around curing Autism, but that doesn't mean I haven't been collecting a whopper or two to share.

Apologies for this week's newsletter being a little late - I was planning to finish it off last night, but I was hit by some weird medical issue where I had a horrible headache and ended up sleeping from 5pm to get rid of it.

You would have to have been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks to not have heard about the case of the 4 month old baby at Starship Hospital needing heart surgery and, as part of that, donated blood products.

We've talked about purported psychic medium Thomas John before. He's a shady character whose real name is Thomas John Flannagan. Previously convicted of stealing security deposits from renters after posting bogus apartment ads on Craigslist, and having also worked as a drag queen, he's moved on to being a celebrity psychic medium.

Alex Jones, who runs the website InfoWars, seems to be coming apart at the seams.

On Friday afternoon I headed out to Khandallah School in Wellington as part of the Secular Education Network. SEN believes that schools should be secular, and that there is no place in our school system for Religious Instruction.

One of the issues with fundraising sites like IndieGogo and Kickstarter is that there's a lack of adequate oversight to ensure that the products being offered are actually plausible. Sometimes things end up on my radar that look too good to be true, and at other times they're just plain ridiculous.

Dr Libby is a nutritional biochemist, not a medical doctor, who regularly posts alternative medicine articles in Stuff. She sells books, goes on speaking tours, has promoted a Multi Level Marketing scheme - USANA over-priced vitamins - and now sells her own alt-med products

Up to 80 kids - 1 in 4 - at Brunswick North West Primary School in Melbourne have contracted chicken pox. The school is tolerant or even welcoming of parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids. Newsletters have reiterated this view:

As a teacher, it's unsurprising that I often come face to face with issues to do with children. I don't pretend to be an expert on children, and neither am I a parent, pediatrician or psychologist. However, while the government is making their laws, and social media is debating the ins and outs, and parents are wailing about their parenting rights, I have been there with the kid who has nothing for breakfast, the kid who thinks hitting is a way to solve problems, and the kid who thinks a certain way because that's what his mum and dad think.

In Issue 100 of the NZ Skeptic I commented on how issues of concern to this society never seem to go away. A classic example of the moment is the case of Neon Roberts, the seven-year-old English boy whose New Zealand-born mother took him into hiding rather than have him subjected to radiotherapy along with chemotherapy to treat his aggressive brain tumour, and fought in the courts for her right to use alternative therapies instead.

A 'natural' way to manage teething pain has no plausible mechanism.

Journalists in New Zealand generally show a lack of scepticism when dealing with issues of science and pseudoscience - except for mainstream medicine. This article is based on a presentation to the New Zealand Skeptics Conference, 11 September, 2004

This Bravo Award-winning item originally appeared as the editorial in the March 23 issue of the New Zealand Medical Journal

Being a skeptical parent in New Zealand isn't always easy, but it has its rewards. This was originally presented to the Skeptics' World Convention in Sydney, in November.

It's my right as a parent to decide what is best for my child. After all, I'm a caring parent who dearly loves her children and would do only what is best for them.

ONCE again the medical profession has made a mess of its relations with the public, and I'm not talking about Gisborne smear takers.

Several members have sent me cuttings which I am afraid we can not use but which I am always glad to get. Malcolm MacCleary especially has sent me some good stuff on how to be a winning punter, news from the Order of the Magical Rose, Nelson and some more remarkable extracts from the Melchizadek Manuscripts. See how many clangers you can find in this passage:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruling striking down Louisiana's creationism law signals trouble for fundamentalist parents in Alabama who have challenged public school textbooks on religious grounds, attorneys and educators are saying.