What’s the harm? A child dies a preventable death from an ear infection

C. Delozier said she had “done her own research” on vaccines. In other words, she read some rumours and believed the ones that supported her original opinions.

The end sentence of the news article points says the child was found to be “malnourished and dehydrated”. What kind of parent would ignore the fact their child is too ill to eat or drink?

I can confirm that over here with our socialistic NHS (while we still have it) the standard treatment for otitis media is antibiotics, like what I was prescribed last year when I had it.

And if I had been in Merkinania I would happily have paid for the same thing, ‘cos it works…

But I am a retired nurse and so obviously a Big Pharma Shill, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?

She performed CPR?

I doubt it was anything remotely close to CPR.

With tears streaming down her face, she went on to say, “I believe the medical community is at least the third, maybe the first, leading killer in the United States.”

Says someone who’s child died from being treated with homeopathy.

So, vaccinations are now linked to shaken baby syndrome? Someone shakes the hell outta their kid in a fit of rage, enough so that the child is badly injured, and the vaccine did it? I thought I’d heard (read) just about everything.

No, wait. A mother that let her child die horribly from a treatable condition cries and says the medical community is the biggest killer she knows. The complete lack of self awareness and accountability is gobsmacking. Unbelievable.

Interviews conducted with Christine Delozier on March 24 and March 30 found that her child had been born at home without the use of a midwife and from there on, had never seen a medical doctor, nor did she receive any vaccinations. She said her views against modern medicine stem from her childhood as she was raised without taking pills or receiving shots.

How does she know what modern medicine is like if she has had no experience with it? This paragraph implies that Christine might not have ever seen a doctor. It also tells us that she’s a second-generation anti-vax loon. Is she young enough to have been able to attend school with a philosophical objection waiver on her parents’ part, or was she home schooled?

And what about her husband? I didn’t see anything in the post regarding his views. Does he share her mistrust of (or lack of experience with) doctors? Did he try to do anything to get Hope treated sooner, and was overruled by Christine, or did he go along with it?

@Eric Lund

Not sure about Mr. Delozier’s views, though I did find his FB page, as well as a couple police reports from 2013 and 2014 for DUIs. The DUI reports were for an Ebed S. Delozier of Falls, PA. Could be a different Ebed S. Delozier than the one in Orac’s post, but I doubt it.

I would suspect there is more going on here. That line about western medicine being the number one killer in America suggests to me she is suffering some form of delusions. Clearly she was totally disconnected from the world. Perhaps a postpartum mental disorder was in effect.

She believes her dead child would have been treated differently in England? To some extent that is true. I do not think she would have been allowed to not give her newborn baby any form of post-natal medical examination. I think if she had continued to refuse a check up the child would have been taken in to care by its assigned social worker and therefore still been alive today. So there would have been that much difference.

The arrogance of this woman is sickening. He ignorance barely less so. The combination is toxic.

I wonder if the strain of Streptococcus pneumoniae was one of those covered by Prevnar (you know, one of the evil childhood vaccines).

The post-partum mind disturbance seems plausible, and as a mother, so tempting. I cannot fathom watching your baby die. But as the baby got sicker, she would actually be a lot less active, sleeping more… a mentally ill mother, rather than being alarmed, might find it a relief.

Poor baby girl.

The father said they couldn’t afford the medical bill for the hospital and they live in a camper on a church’s property. You have to wonder if they’re equally distrustful of government. It doesn’t sound like they have Medicaid, and are just one step above being homeless.

Certainly on certain point Mrs Delozier know more than the author of the article, (assuming the author really believe what he wrote). Indeed it is an established fact that american medicine
1) has been toroughly corrupted by pharmaceutical companies and some greedy (to a psychopathic level) doctors
2) and it has now become a major mortality cause in the USA.
Yes Mrs Delozier is very scientific on this because she could be defended by some of the world leading epidemiologists, including Dr Pete Gotzsch (co-founder of the prestigious Cochrane Collaboration group) (see his latest book: Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Healthcare). Dr Marcia Angel, former editor in chief of the New England of Medicine wrote that she has come reluctanly to the conclusion after many years at the NEJM that she cannot trust the studies she read in mainstream medical journal, just like Mrs Delozier.
Furthermore I found the harrassment against the well-meaning lady incredible, especially given the atrocious pain for this lady of losing her child.
The author of the article (who does not state if he has any link to pharmaceutical public relation firms) won’t put in contrast this rare death with other death created by anaphylactic reaction to antibiotics, and millions of death caused by pharmaceutical companies. On the whole for 1 exceptional case like Mrs Delozier child there might be 100 other cases (probably a lot lot more) that would be saved by a systematic distrust of the pharmaceutical establishment.
And while Mrs Delozier clearly had the best of intention, it is not the case with pharmaceutical who have and will continue to favor profit over customers death.
And I see no pharmaceutical CEO being charged with “homicide by imprudence” even there are dime a dozen cases cases of mass “premeditate homicide” with a clear profit motive (a recent one is Mediator in France)
A big mistake was for Mrs Deloziers to stay in the extremely toxic society that has become the USA in 2015 and move to some place where she could have found a less-corrupted medical community which could have respected and even shared some of her views while gently providing the missing knowledge and help that might have saved her child.
As the jews in the nazi germany have learn the hard way, it is sometime imperative to leave a toxic country

What the fuck! I hope all of their other children are taken to safe homes, and never allowed to be near their relatives ever again. How do you not notice a toddler in that much distress? Why do anti-vax parents even have kids? Is it just for the social points?

Personal story: me and little sis at about fiveish and three got ear infections. We were in pain and spent most of that time screaming. We got treated quick, because our parents actually cared. Of course, we subsequently made their lives a misery because the antibiotic was awful (and little brother got in on the action because he thought the anti-biotic was a special Big Kid thing.)

@ Andrew
I like to see her treat an urinary-tract infection.

There’s more going on here than mere distrust of “modern medicine”. I trust modern medicine; but if my kid was in this much pain and unable to eat and drink, and modern medicine had failed to cure him, I would try anything – anything! – to make him feel better. That includes homeopathy and chicken sacrifice. Watching you kid suffer and die while not doing anything is not normal.

Nice appeal to emotion. I wonder how all those kids with narcolepsy feel after their swine flu vaccine then.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/15/narcolepsy-and-the-swine-flu-vaccine-the-girl-who-falls-asleep-40-times-a-day

Maybe it’s time to start suing doctors for being incompetent asses. Oh we can’t , they are ‘protected’ by the FDA and guess what – we all pay for that privilege.

Herbert from Canada:

Indeed it is an established fact that american medicine…has now become a major mortality cause in the USA.

Citation needed. Citation needed that Medicine is a “major mortality cause”. Citation needed that patient outcomes would have been better without medical treatment.

The author of the article (who does not state if he has any link to pharmaceutical public relation firms)

Pharma Shill Gambit. Oh, and if you click on Orac’s name at the top of the page, you’ll be taken to his “About” page, which will tell you all you need to know.

this rare death with other death created by anaphylactic reaction to antibiotics, and millions of death caused by pharmaceutical companies.

As I said before, citation needed.

Congratulations, Johnny! You’ve identified one real, serious adverse event associated with one vaccine used during a single seasonal flu season–albeit one with an very low incidence rate (1 cses per every 1000 inocculations). By compariosn, note that the overall clinical fatality ratio’s associated with influenza infection in the Untied Kingdom was 0.4 per 1000 infections over the same time period–20 times higher–and within specific at risk groups much higher (for example, 1.5 fatalities per 1000 in indviduals aged 65 or older.)

Of course, public health agencies rapidly acted to withdraw the vaccine from use, and to investigate whether other 2009 and later seasonal flu vaccines containing the same A(H1N1)pdm09 virus strain were associated with increased risk of narcolepsy (they were not–see http://www.neurology.org/content/early/2014/10/15/WNL.0000000000000987.short)

So if your argument is that the 2009 Pandremix flu vaccine was associated with a severe adverse event occurring at a very low incidence rate, you’ve succeeded.

Other than that, though…

Another success story for homeopathy.

Key paragraph from the story

She told police she has done her own research on vaccinations and found they can be related to death, SIDS, autistic disorders, immune disorders and shaken baby syndrome. While her views are not religiously motivated, she said she does feel God is the ultimate healer.

This is not really a case of medical neglect.Deliozer is just another rabid antivaxer.A graduate of Google U.She is no different than the crazies that post at Age of Autism.

I really feel sorry for this poor child.I have some idea what she went through.I had recurring inner ear infections for many years.Well into adulthood.I did develop labyrinthitis,that mostly eventually improved.I found out eventually that my ear infections were just one manifestation of a cellular immune deficiency secondary to inborn metabolic disease.

Antivaccine beliefs kill children.It’s as simple as that.

“As the jews in the nazi germany have learn the hard way, it is sometime imperative to leave a toxic country”

Ah! And there it is! Was waiting for it…

The post-partum mind disturbance seems plausible, and as a mother, so tempting.

The question of whether or not the mother was suffering from some sort of mental illness has undoubtedly been looked into from a legal and medical standpoint since this utterly disgusting event occurred; it doesn’t seem to have been a factor, and discussing it seems pretty pointless.

Although religion is probably not the primary motivator in this case (as it was for the Schaibles, for instance), it clearly is a factor. (If I were the defense attorney, I’d build a case based on parental rights and religious freedom, because that’s the only one that might work.) Also, there does tend to be more of a reluctance to prosecute parents who lose a child as a result of their belief in religion—but only if it’s a good, Judeo-Christian religion, no matter how nutty the fundamentalist sect is.

I am quite possibly missing something, but I didn’t pick up any suggestion that these awful b@stards belonged to any particular sect, or even that they were Christians. “[S]he said she does feel [G-d] is the ultimate healer” could simply refer to a vague belief in some sort of G-d, even a “Life Force” or whatever.

If her views are “not religiously motivated,” and there’s no evidence that she belongs to any particular religion, I’d go with HDB in surmising that the problem is simple stupidity and rejection of the “medical paradigm” in favor of, well, nothing, I guess.

Orac@43

I think we can all more or less agree that antivaccinationism and all that goes with it,has become very much like a religious cult.The mistrust of government and mainstream medicine,the belief that homeopathy,MMS and other “sacraments” can “heal”,the god like worship of Andrew Wakefield,etc,etc,etc.Deliozer may not have had an autistic child,but neither do a lot of parents in the antivax cult.There are parents who fervently believe in this stuff,who think that their antivax,anti mainstream medicine beliefs prevented their child from becoming “vaccine damaged”.

As the jews in the nazi germany have learn the hard way, it is sometime imperative to leave a toxic country

Thanks to the misguided parents the child has left this( toxic) world.
And please, leave nazi germany out of the equation.

@ Gargoyle

salut, fellow countryman! Homicide par imprudence is manslaughter, if I’m not mistaken

*waving back*
It’s nice to know I’m not the only Frenchman/woman wandering here 🙂
(although there are a few other French people among the regulars, I believe)

And yes, manslaughter is the proper translation for “Homicide par imprudence”. Oddly enough, the “slaughter” part makes it much more ominous than the French sentence, to my ears.

@JP, as much as it might seem like I was wondering that, I was admitting to my own very human reaction – “was this woman crazy? Only a crazy mother could endure watching that kind of suffering in a child…”

I am tempted to disagree with Orac on her best defense. I think I would use extreme emotional disturbance and suggest that she was suffering from undiagnosed post partum psychosis and that her childhood made her more prone to be scared of medical intervention in her deranged state.

It is likely a lie, but most human beings cannot fathom refusing a child valid medical treatment and would struggle to remain skeptical about mental illness.

My son was very colicky and I would do anything and everything to relieve his discomfort. When it was obvious he inherited my familial allergies, ear infections became the norm until he was old enough for Zyrtec. He seemed the least bit off and we were at the pediatrician’s again. I cannot imagine no, wait, I can. I am watching an adult kill himself. You can find it more comforting to believe in woo’s absolutes rather than science-based medicine’s honest percentages. Still… not even believing in antibiotics… then again, I suspect the neighbor doesn’t vaccinate, and I know she believes in “natural progression of fevers to heal.” Not sure where she stands on antibiotics. She does do surgeries…

If we want to prevent such harms in the future, we need to understand why they occur, and chalking them up to ‘stupid’ does not help at all. I suppose the usage is figurative, but it still over-simplifies complex mental mechanisms, and short-circuits our understandings of what are most likely social pathologies. Even if Ms. Delozier has mental health issues, there are reasons she went down this particular anti-medicine path in her distress that have nothing to do with brain chemistry.

So yeah, the particular form of spirituality she holds (as opposed to ‘religion’ per se) is likely a significant factor, though not THE cause. I like HDB’s concept of “motivated spirituality”, and suspect it’s a good guess that Delozier went ‘shopping’ for both ‘research’ and ‘theology’ that would confirm her existing beliefs. The questions are: how did she come to those beliefs in the first place, how can we best ‘innoculate’ against the adoption of such dangerous beliefs, and best ‘treat’ the mental maladies when they do occur?

If we frame the problem as ‘stupidity’, the answers are too easy, and likely just wrong. If anything is clear from reading Orac’s reports on the woo-besotted and the troll posts that follow, it’s that exposing folks to the factual discoveries of medical science has no curative power. Literally stupid people don’t process well in any direction. They’re more befuddled than anything. That Delozier has developed a detailed mythological belief system to which she holds fast even after her child’s easily preventable death indicates not befuddlement, but rather what we might call a warped active intelligence.

The language of ‘stupid’ functions to keep us on the plane where scientists and skeptics are most comfortable: ‘fact’, ‘reason’, yada yada yada. Yet, if science and reason tell us anything about ‘the human condition’ they tell us that homo sapiens sapiens generally are not inherently ‘rational’ and scientific. Our ol’ lizard brains remain closer to the stem than out cerebral cortex, and ‘instinct’ or ‘the subconscious’ are going to trump (or dictate) abstract cognitive function most of the time.

Science speaks with great authority about objects and phenomenon that don’t involve consciousness. On matters of human thought and behavior, what passes for ‘science’ remains woefully bad. A couple millennia later, we still haven’t really improved on Aristotle’s .Rhetoric as a model for understanding persuasion and belief. Ari posed three parts of rhetoric, working in combination. Logos (the logic of the word) remains the least of these, the most easily ‘disposable’. Then we have Ethos, the personal ‘vibe’ of the rhetor apart from the subject at hand (e.g. I’m likely to accept things Orac says as i <i.feel he is generally knowledgeable, trustworthy, well-intentioned, witty, etc. etc.) And finally, the least dispensable element is Pathos, the activation of emotions.

Of course, that’s all extremely broad-brush. The question at hand would seem to be how these elements played out in specifics as Christine Delozier developed her hostility to conventional medicine. To begin to venture an answer, we would need to dig into her personal history. I doubt she came to her position by reading at pseudo-science websites. More likely this was a way of working out an identity that either meshed with her family and immediate community, or her define herself in opposition to them. Perhaps she had or witnessed some extremely painful experience she (or they) attributed to a medical professional, or medical professional are serving as a locus of projection of some other psychological injury at the hands of an authority figure too painful to deal with directly. Of course, the animus could be utterly idiosyncratic, but if it did turn out to be paradigmatic of some larger pattern, we might get some pointers on useful reforms to the way medicine is delivered in practice.

Again, i must suggest that anyone wishing to better protect the innocent Hopes of our society, including sbm advocates, could gain some insights on the issues here from cultural studies, specifically analyses of postmodern culture: which suggest that ‘virtual communities’ are coming to replace the roles of meat-space personal connections in many people’s everyday lives. Which is to say, pseudo-science web forums could indeed become places that function as identity-formation agents in the form or either conformity or rebellion. Baudrillard would likely consider them simulacra, a form of ‘the hyper-real’, but point out that in our ever more media-saturated culture, the hyper-real not only becomes experientially indistinguishable from the concrete real, but supersedes it in some cases. (“Television is reality, and reality is less than television” is a line from Videodrome, but it might as well be J.B.)…

Which leads me back to another thought i have regularly reading RI and SBM… It seems Orac and the SBM bloggers scan news feeds for instances of woo, and then critique the woo itself, as if the stories about the woo are some transparent window on things that already matter in the real world. This, I argue, misses the forest for the trees, the forest being the media representations that define these subjects one way or another and give them a ‘reality effect.’ The OPs have hyperlinks to the sources, but rarely cite them, and almost never interrogate why and how the ‘news organizations’ are covering the story at hand, or what the effects of the choices made in framing that coverage might be. Also, stories on internet sites with minimal readership are treated the same as stories distributed by wide-circulation media agencies… It’s all about the relative face-palm reaction to the degree of woo involved… In more than a few cases, the woo at hand is utterly trivial in itself, for, even if outrageous, there are only like a half-dozen wiggy people in one obscure involved — but the story about the woo is anything but, as it acts as metaphor or synecdoche for larger trends and may reaches millions (and millionss… and…)

One positive aspect of Hope Delozier’s otherwise horrible death may be that not only has a prosecutor brought manslaughter charges, but an editor has decided the case is newsworthy, and presented it within the conventions of a hard news crime story, which may add a few drops to the bucket of dissuading others from following in the Delozier’s footsteps. What the conventions of reporting on criminal cases will not do, though, is offer any insight into how the Deloziers came to do such a ‘stupid’ thing…

“Bellino agreed the child could have been saved with a vaccination or simple antibiotic.” NobRed

What more could we expect from the rubbery one. So from looking at photos the kid could have been saved.

Looks like more marketing promotion for the vaxxers to me, lots of appeals to emotion and false promise, taking advantage of undereducated people.

If it was science alone your opinion would be less than worthless. Get out that tissue box

“I think we can all more or less agree that vaccinationism and all that goes with it,has become very much like a religious cult.The mistrust of nature ,the belief that vaccines, drugs and other “sacraments” can “heal”,the god like worship of Paul Offit,etc,etc,etc. may not have had an autistic child,but neither do a lot of parents in the vax cult.There are parents who fervently believe in this stuff,who think that their vaccines and mainstream medicine beliefs prevented their child from becoming “vaccine damaged”. Roger Burp

“Looks like more marketing promotion for the vaxxers to me, lots of appeals to emotion and false promise, taking advantage of undereducated people.”

That preventing the infection (vaccination) or treating the infection (anti-biotic) could have saved her life is undebatable. Well, at least to people with a shred of intellectual honesty. Which you have clearly demonstrated you don’t have. There is someone under-educated here and it isn’t just the parents of this child…

I’m still waiting for your response over on SBM. Running away simply reinforces the fact that your arguments are specious and you know it…

Religion in the USA is very cultural and I find that many people are more spiritual than they are religious although they identify as Christian. It is an American thing and goes along with “God Bless America’ and national pride. It seems that this couple were more spiritual than religious.
They are probably going to use religious freedom in their defence as it will go better than the actual truth of neglect.

Also, not to detract from how evil this couple are but the US health care system is truly awful. All doctors need to band together to reset it completely. I am working here for a short time and being treated so shabbily makes me want to rush back home where I am treated with respect AND in a timely manner. Your current system is contributing to turning people away from science based medicine and over to this woo based nonsense.

“No Roger, those recurrent ear infections were probably due to the DPT vaccine.”

This child’s parents were strongly anti-vax and anti-medicine. Nice try…

Orac said: As it is, I highly doubt the Deloziers will ultimately serve significant jail time even if convicted. Parents who kill their children through medical neglect like this rarely do.

I second this. I had a toddler whose mother beat him to death with a table leg. She only got 11 years for murdering her son. Medical neglect is so passe compared to actual abuse, or at least our legal system seems to think so. 😡

Andrew #32: it is true that breast fed babies are less likely to get ear infections. It has less to do with the antibodies in the milk and more to do with how the babies suck from a human nipple as opposed to a bottle nipple. And while there’s some evidence that breast milk rubbed on an umbilical cord stump results in outcomes as good as soap and water or alcohol, there is a big difference between that and treating an actual infection.

I hate it when people conflate something that is healthy in one way as being a magic bullet to treat everything :facepalm:

I’m wondering if any of the medical pros here might have some thoughts/suggestions for a young friend (seeking) seeking an education program toward a career in medicine;

She isn’t qualified enough to pursue an M.D., and doesn’t want that level/sort of work anyway. Her plan was to become a PA, but she wound up only being wait-listed at any of the schools where she applied, all of which were in CA (where her family is) and are apparently among the more competitive for admission nationally. She’s trying to decide whether to cast a wider geographic net for PA programs, or seek training for Nurse-Practitioner instead.

I take it some readers here know this terrain pretty well, and I’d welcome any comments on the relative merits of the two career paths, or recommendations for good programs in either where she might have a better chance of gaining admission. (She’s an A1 ‘kid’, BTW, and would be a valuable contributor to medicine in either capacity, imho.) The pragmatic limiting factor is that her partner is a young chef working his way up in the world of ‘fine dining’ cuisine. So they pretty much need to live in a city with an active restaurant scene that would have job opportunities conferring some cred in the culinary world — which probably leaves out any universities in ‘university towns’.

Her dad’s a retired English professor; mom’s a graphic artist… there’s no personal resource for info/advice on medical training among close family and friends, so any informed input the minions might share would be great! (tia)

Julian #66; Fair enough. Mea culpa. Been too busy to use the blog. Shifted topics in one comment, too. Which could/should have been separate posts. So it goes.

Agreed that the mother is a horrible person, let’s not let Dad off the hook. Screw the bench warrant, his daughter was dying.

(I also have some problems with the 30minutes of CPR. Whatever she was doing for thirty minutes it wasn’t CPR.)

Once again, johnny argue by assertion as the facts are not on his side/.

sadmar@75
Pretty much what Kay Marie said. I’m fairly sure you need to be a nurse before getting NP. Whether that means a degree (BSN, ADN) or licensure (RN, LPN) I don’t know. That being said every NP I know had some years experience working as an RN before getting their NP. As far as PA school is concerned it is incredibility competutivw

Not sure if this is a general trend but in my experience I’ve seen more PA’s working in hospital settings and NP’s more often in private practice. I think it might be a function of what Kay Marie said about PA’s working under an MD. That being even in those cases the PA’s seem to operate pretty much independently of the docs.

@johnny (#64):

childhood vaccines kill children. period

I sincerely wish you had received all your childhood vaccines.

@ Roger Kulp:

Imho a good point about pseudo-religion in #51, which is why I couldn’t disagree more with #41’s attribution of blame to homeopathy and Google U Dunning-Kruger. I think Gargoyle’s right: something much deeper is at work here than any con-man can sell, or prime a rube to pick up on dubious websites. I also thing HDB has it pegged that whatever she Delozier adopted as treatment or rationale was mere convenience, guilty only of not being totally incompatible with her worldview. That the ‘modality’ happened to be homeopathy is likely no more significant than had she just kept wearing lucky underwear and tossing salt over her shoulder every four hours. Following Gargoyle, I’d note the con-ucopia of woo is overflowing with remedies she DIDN’T try as she watched her daughter sicken and die. And her reference to autism strikes me as grabbing anything that’s floating anywhere in the woo-o-sphere and tossing it against the wall opportunistically.

@JP:
By the same token, I don’t see a warrant to dump on the Baptists either (unless her specific church was fringey in that particular way, anyway). I think I understand your reluctance to consider mental health issues as a desire not to add to the demonization of the vast majority of us affected with same who pose no physical threat to anyone but ourselves. And Mrs. Woo’s query on PPD strikes me as perhaps too kind (in the wayfor which we love Mrs Woo), and not very likely a factor. But personality disorders are not the kind of things police uncover in investigations, even when the suspect has been diagnosed by a psych professional —which most haven’t and would be especially unlikely for a mediphobe such as Ms. Delozier. I don’t have a clues to what her ‘issue’ might be exactly, but I’m guessing it’s in the DSM. (Fwiw; afaik, personality disorders do not qualify as legal defense…e.g. I don’t think they let you off if you’re a sociopath.)

Sadmar @ 75: to become an NP you must have completed a BSN and then go on to a NP program (these are now offered at the doctoral level). Some DNP programs allow entry for students without a nursing bachelors, where the student first completes the BSN requirements and takes the RN licensing test, but continues seamlessly into the DNP.

Rules for practice as a mid level provider (PA or NP) vary mightily from State to State, so it is hard to clearly state which preparation would be “better”. NP programs may be less hard to get into, as many of these allow for part time study, and may be partially or fully online.

@Sarah A – I can understand wanting to avoid troll johnny’s inputs (fascinating – my Kindle auto corrected “johnny” to “nothing”). It has been my experience, though, that much of the longer discussions at RI are spent rebutting troll assertions, so I at least scan even the worst of the trolls’ screeds.

I do have to admit that troll johnny seems to do little to make him worth reading…

@sadmar:

By the same token, I don’t see a warrant to dump on the Baptists either (unless her specific church was fringey in that particular way, anyway).

I wasn’t dumping on the Baptists, actually; I doubt the Baptist Church she belonged to had much of anything to do with her beliefs or actions, TBH. It was just that I hadn’t read her statements as indicating that she even belonged to any religion in particular, and then noticed the reference to the Hope Baptist Church, so I was just correcting my own slip-up.

I think I understand your reluctance to consider mental health issues as a desire not to add to the demonization of the vast majority of us affected with same who pose no physical threat to anyone but ourselves.

There may possibly have been a little of that involved, but I actually don’t think so. It’s more that if there were mental health issues present in a way that might explain anything – i.e., actual psychosis, for instance – I imagine that that would have gone into the sentencing. It doesn’t appear to be the case from the information we have, which granted, isn’t that much, but I still don’t really see the point of speculating about it.

But personality disorders are not the kind of things police uncover in investigations, even when the suspect has been diagnosed by a psych professional —which most haven’t and would be especially unlikely for a mediphobe such as Ms. Delozier. I don’t have a clues to what her ‘issue’ might be exactly, but I’m guessing it’s in the DSM.

If it doesn’t affect her moral agency, sentencing, or anything else, what’s the point of speculating about whether or not she has a personality disorder of some point or whatever? I really don’t see what the point of diagnosing personality disorders over the internet based on limited information is.

Everything’s in the DSM these days, BTW.

Orac – I know you hate people telling you how to run your blog, but isn’t there any way to prevent troll johnny from appropriating proper Johnny’s username?

I’d second this, but I’ve been complaining about it for some time.

Thanks KM, capn and EB!

She been working as something like a CNA for a few years, in a private practice in Brooklyn, though I don’t know if she has an official certification for that. The desire for PA/NP isn’t financial, but wanting to help patients in a primary-care kinda way, and I don’t think she’d find any kind of med tech work satisfying.

What I got from her dad is that her applications were strong enough to get wait-listed at very selective schools (I don’t know which, but i’m guessing Stanford is one since they’re from Mountain View), so she might make the cut somewhere that’s still quite competitive, but just a notch or too less so.

That NP gigs are mostly in the sticks is good to know, and Pacific sounds like it could be an option! I can think of some universities with ‘name’ med schools in cities that would be on the culinary map (e.g. Minnesota, Northwestern or Loyola in the midwest, and various on the northeast or mid-Atlantic) but i have no clue which might be good choices for an aspiring PA. So, please, post other specific wider-net suggestions like Pacific if you have ’em!

capnkruch: For aspiring NPs, once they’ve obtained a basic nursing degree and worked a bit as an RN, what sort of competition do they face for admission to the NP programs? It sounds like this could be a long road with a possible dead end if staying an RN wasn’t a satisfying second-choice — is that so?

Ironic NB: My friend got her primary ed at the Waldorf School in Mountain View, now a major exemplar of a private school with atrociously low vax rates. I’d met parents of some her classmates there who had formed friendships with her folks (old friends of mine from grad school). This was over 15 years ago, and i had no specific woo-awareness really, but I never caught of whiff of any of crazy in this circle — though that might have been self-selection since my friends are art & literature types, but far too satirical-cynical to be New-Agey. They’d picked the Waldorf School as the best nearby alternative to the public schools they would have preferred, had those schools not been a mess at the time – the tech boom not yet having expanded into their ‘hood. It’s Google-town now though, gone way upscale. They couldn’t come close to buying their very modest townhome at current market value). The other Waldorf parents I met through them were similarly regular middle-class folks, not notably privileged at all, and with none of the ‘me, me, me’ attitude that seems to go with the money. Times change. Anyway, I thought the minions would like to know at least one young person emerged from a Waldorf School unscathed and seeking work in conventional medicine out of a desire to help sick people with methods actually proven to work by legitimate science. (Though public high school and college at UCSC did occur in-between.)

This is terrible. The whole reason hundreds, maybe thousands, of physicians over the decades have developed modern medicine was to avoid children dying like this. Poor, poor, little girl.

“That NP gigs are mostly in the sticks is good to know, and Pacific sounds like it could be an option!”

Pacific really is a great school. If your friend would like to pick my brain, I would be happy to send you my info…

@ EBMOD

The mom now has to double down on her non-sense lest she come to realize the reality of the situation: her daughter died for nothing.

Let’s not mince words. She killed her daughter.

@Julian Frost

“Citation needed”
You need to buy a new pair of glasses 🙂
The full title of the book and the author are clearly stated. The entire book is the proof you (don’t really) want to hear about

However you should have ask (but didn’t) for Dr Marcia Angel (professor at Harvard, and former editor in chief of the NEJM – one of the leading medical journal in the world) exact citation because this is the most devastating blow ever written to the foundation of medicine. So here it is:

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” (New York Review of Book)

And this was not enough she added:
“No one knows the total amount provided by drug companies to physicians, but I estimate from the annual reports of the top 9 U.S.-based drug companies that it comes to tens of billions of dollars a year in North America alone.By such means, the pharmaceutical industry has gained enormous control over how doctors evaluate and use its own products. Its extensive ties to physicians, particularly senior faculty at prestigious medical schools, affect the results of research, the way medicine is practiced, and even the definition of what constitutes a disease.”

No you are not reading Mrs Delozier, you are reading a top-notch medical professor at the leading medical school of your country.

The author of the article (who does not state if he has any link to pharmaceutical public relation firms)

The author of this comment does not state if he has any link to alt-med quacks, grifters and scammers.

Nice argument from authority, herbert. Understanding the actual context of her position at Harvard is important:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/science/a-drumbeat-on-profit-takers.html

she cannot trust the studies she read in mainstream medical journal, just like Mrs Delozier

Something tells me Mrs. Delozier has never even been in the same room as a mainstream medical journal. Do you think your revered St. Angell would advocate that parents refuse medical care for their child?

Even if the parents were poor they could have taken the child to the ED and had care provided. EMTALA doesn’t allow you to be turned away for inability to pay.

For that matter, if you’re down to living in a “camper” (scare quotes because I’m not sure what this really denotes) parked on church property, I’m pretty sure that the very contention is absurd.

@EBMOD
What you are quoting is not from me, it is from Dr Angell who was the frontline. But Gotzsche has listed lot of information that is publicly available (and some from his own epidemiologic research and contacts). Frachon talks in detail about Mediator, which is a special example, but the way it was treated by the official supposedly trusty medical independant organisation shows that you canot trust the regulatory bodies in France (and the other authors have example for Usa and other countries as well).
The conclusion of those who have studied the matter thoroughly is the same as Dr Angells: the corruption is thorough, pervasive, highly effective, and deadly. It isnt a special unfortunate case of an isolated unethical doctor as I previously thought and most of my colleague thought or are still thinking

Herbert, perhaps you’ll also be like the doctors who treated this child.

Are you really defending “a poor woman” whom watched her child suffer for two weeks and then gasp for air before trying to help the child? This seems like an odd place to draw your line in the sand.

Herbert: “Orac does not say in his blog description that he is not receiving any money from the pharmaceutical industry for this blog.”

That is very lame. Perhaps you should try his blurb at this not so secret other blog. And, no, I will not give you a link, because figuring out what it is comprises a sort of intelligence test.

@Chris

For your information, these are the official guidelines in a country where there is free health care for all, and as would Mrs Delozier say doctor are not being paid by their patient:

“The routine use of antibiotics to treat middle ear infections is not recommended as there is no evidence that they speed up the healing process.
…
Using antibiotics to treat minor bacterial infections also increases the likelihood of bacteria becoming resistant to them over time. This means more serious infections could become untreatable in the future. ”
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Otitis-media/Pages/Treatment.aspx

Only if later the situation does not improve should antibiotic be given.
Now what is not discussed and is crucial for fairness:
1) How quickly did the situation develop?
2) Was inadequate financial resources a factor is waiting a little bit more to see if it would improve? (of course, this is a USA-only problem)
3) How fulminant was the meningitis? (It may well be the case that even with the antibiotics the final outcome would have been similar)
4) Even though Mrs Delozier said she was against antibiotic, did she implicitly meant as a first-line treatment for otitis media (wise choice) or even if the situation deteriorate?
5) Even if she meant for all situation, can we really blame her with the education she has to be able to know when she can trust the treatment proposed by doctors and when she cannot ? (considering that many doctors might still be given antibiotics to all cases of otitis media in the usa)

Herbert-
I understand that you were quoting others. However, you were then extrapolating off of that information as if to imply that the notion of anti-biotics treating severe otitis media is a sham.

Nothing of what Orac criticized in this article would be changed even by pervasive corruption. With all of the independent research and adverse drug event reporting systems, to simply invent a drug out of whole cloth that offers no benefit and somehow get it through to market? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Lastly, as DZ pointed out, it is a really awkward spot to bring up your concern in light of this case.

Pretty clear that the mom was homicidally negligent…

Now what is not discussed and is crucial for fairness:
1) How quickly did the situation develop?

So, you’re too lazy to even read the post?

2) Was inadequate financial resources a factor is waiting a little bit more to see if it would improve? (of course, this is a USA-only problem)

Or the comments?

Herbert: “Using antibiotics to treat minor bacterial infections also increases the likelihood of bacteria becoming resistant to them over time”

How minor is a bacterial infection that leads to death?

As far as your other questions: read the article! Seriously, it goes into quite a bit of detail.

No you are not reading Mrs Delozier, you are reading a top-notch medical professor at the leading medical school of your country.

I’ve never read Ms. Angell’s book. And I’ve heard good things about it. But since I have, with my very own eyes, seen her pass along completely ridiculous, false, biased and easily disprovable assertions about psychotropic medications in the NYRB, I know for a fact that she’s capable of being very unreliable. Possibly dishonest. It’s hard to say.

That doesn’t mean she’s wrong about everything, of course. But, you know. In the piece I read, she was repeating Robert Whittaker’s deranged line of non-reasoning about how Prozac caused mental-health disability claims to sky-rocket as if it made sense. And it’s complete crap.

So caveat lector.

@EBMOD
—Nothing of what Orac criticized in this article would be changed even by pervasive corruption.—

It is the other way around: if there was not pervasive corruption, there would be more trust toward doctors and Mrs Delozier might have followed her doctor recommandation (and come to the hospital quicker when things worsened + take the antibiotic when required)
The pharmaceutical corruption affects even perfectly ethical doctors by making it difficult for patients to know how they can trust or not.

—With all of the independent research and adverse drug event reporting systems, to simply invent a drug out of whole cloth that offers no benefit and somehow get it through to market?—-
I was thinking like you 4 years ago.

—Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.—
You will find them in the writing of the previously cited doctors. You might be totally surprised and shocked as I was when I learned it. We are not talking of a free pen or a free conference or trip. We are talking of things like psychiatrist at leading institutions receiving 1 million dollar to sensibilise doctors to the presence of manic-depressive illness in 2 year old children and coaxing them to prescribe an early treatment consisting of a non-approved experimental multi-psychotrop treatment. Yet even when everything was revealed, there was close to zero consequence to the corrupted doctors.

#132 It’s documented- My style is the truth-yours is denial.

#132 Ann
Medical errors occur- he should not have been given the Hep B shot.

herbert, you have one seriously warped and ignorant view of this example.

Catherine Delozier was a convinced anti-vaccinator and had been brought up that way. Her distrust of doctors was not what drove her to her position, but an argument she invented to justify her activities. This is known as motivated reasoning.

As to recent recommendations about antibiotics and ear infections, the bit you avoided citing from the NHS Choices website was:

“Antibiotics are therefore usually only considered if:

1) your child has a serious health condition that makes them more vulnerable to complications, such as cystic fibrosis or congenital heart disease
2) your child is less than three months old, or they are less than two years old and have an infection in both ears
3) your child’s symptoms are severe
4) your child has discharge coming from their ear
5) your child’s symptoms show no signs of improvement after four days”

Hope Delozier’s symptoms as described in the blog post and the media reports clearly fitted numbers 3 to 5.

Why you failed to mention this in your comments of the official guidelines, I don’t know. At the moment I am considering the options: 1) ignorant and unable to read a website or 2) duplicitous.

We are talking of things like psychiatrist at leading institutions receiving 1 million dollar to sensibilise doctors to the presence of manic-depressive illness in 2 year old children and coaxing them to prescribe an early treatment consisting of a non-approved experimental multi-psychotrop treatment. Yet even when everything was revealed, there was close to zero consequence to the corrupted doctors.

Is that from the book?

Hmm. Well. I say again: I’ve seen her make very bad, very biased arguments. For example, she opens this here article entitled “The Epidemic of Mental Illness” by saying:

It seems that Americans are in the midst of a raging epidemic of mental illness, at least as judged by the increase in the numbers treated for it. The tally of those who are so disabled by mental disorders that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) increased nearly two and a half times between 1987 and 2007—from one in 184 Americans to one in seventy-six. For children, the rise is even more startling—a thirty-five-fold increase in the same two decades.

They changed the f*cking eligibility criteria for mental-health disability in order to make them easier to meet. It took effect in 1985. And that is primarily why there was an increase. The rest of it is due to similar socioeconomic factors that aren’t at all obscure or difficult for anyone who is making an honest attempt to answer the question “Why did mental health SSI/SSDI claims increase so much between 1987 and 2007” to think of or locate.

I know that because it took me less than ten minutes to locate them. And I wasn’t being paid to give my prestigiously persuasive, highly credentialed opinion to the readership of the NYRB. I just went to the Social Security Administration’s website. And there the answers were!

It really practically couldn’t be any more straightforward. That’s not an increase that represents any kind of epidemic.

And yet, that’s the hook on which Marcia Angell hangs her entire argument that there even is one.

Caveat lector.

@#ken —

You have no idea whether it had anything to do with the Hep B shot. You just like the story.

@EBMOD
Here is the link requested:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-companies-doctorsa-story-of-corruption/

@MiDAWN & alia
My apology. Orac did provide a timeline.
And yes, if there was more trust toward medical doctors she would have consulted earlier.
So if Orac is so eager to put blame on someone, than he should bite those who have corrupted medicine, not those who are the victims of it (the child and the mother).
Perhaps he has done so in the past, I dont know as this is my first time here

If it weren’t for the plethora of quacks, frauds and profiteers running around spouting BS about how horrible, corrupt and untrustworthy medical practice is, fewer gullible people would lead to make bad decisions that cost the lives of their children.

And yes, if there was more trust toward medical doctors she would have consulted earlier.

This woman was very clear in not wanting the ER staff putting holes in her daughter or injecting her with “chemicals”.
That level of trust would have overcome this?

It’s easy to rewrite history with “if”.

Orac would not be pumping out this blog w/o being paid.
If he is not being paid, he should use his gift of high intelligence and stick to researching and developing better diagnostic tools and treatment for breast cancer.
This blog has a very limited influence on changing anything.
It’s sort of like publish or perish- to get pharma grants.

herbert@143

And yes, if there was more trust toward medical doctors she would have consulted earlier.

I don’t know if you missed my comment or what so I’ll say it once again. The mother watched her daughter die and then waited 30 minutes to get help. At some point reasonable people would realize that what they are doing is nit working. One hopes it would be sometime earlier but at the very least death should be a reason to try conventional medicine regardless of how distrustful you are of it.

I think, as sadmar noted before, it is important to examine the why behind this neglect. I also think it is important to call it what it is, namely murder by medical neglect, regardless of the motivations. Most people would take their child to get treatment much earlier, distrust is not an excuse.

ken: “Orac would not be pumping out this blog w/o being paid”

That is hilarious. I see you have not yet found the other not so secret other blog.

This blog has a very limited influence on changing anything.
It’s sort of like publish or perish- to get pharma grants.

And you base that on what?

It can’t be on your wide experience of and intimate familiarity with how research grants are awarded. And it can’t be on Orac’s not-so-super-secret actual track record. So I’m stumped.

Quote-
“The most successful people on Scienceblogs are the best paid and none of them have left, so in a capitalist world, that means being paid did not damage their quality or the audience would not read them.   In a capitalist world where corporations win, they are the biggest and therefore the best.   And they are most certainly huge capitalists.    The miracle was convincing everyone for so long that they were not.
http://www.science20.com/science_20/blog/should_science_bloggers_be_paid

@capnkrunch
–Most people would take their child to get treatment much earlier, distrust is not an excuse.–

All people except psychopath would not market Mediator, greed is not an excuse.
Why are you not seeking indictiment for filthy rich well-educated mass murderer instead of a indigent and poorly educated helpless woman?

I suspect it is some sort of cowardice: pharmaceutical company will fight back and there are stronger than you. This poor woman can”t. So it is easier to beat her and humiliate her.
“?
@ann
Regarding your first post on Angell article.
Read her carefully
“It SEEEMS that Americans are in the midst of a raging epidemic of mental illness, AT LEAST AS JUDGED by the increase in the numbers treated for it.”
So what she is telling (as confirmed by the rest of the article, is exactly the same as what you say. This is an artificial epidemic, and she had that pharmaceuticals were behind those changes (that part you may not yourself be fully aware, and that”s ok — that”s the point of my intevention: bring awareness on this)

From the Canadian Paediatric Society, a quite thorough discussion of approaches to treatment of otitis media, intended as guidance for physicians, but in language I think should be reasonably easy for lay people to understand.

I note that the first-line drug of choice, amoxicillin, is described as inexpensive, which might make one think that perhaps there isn’t a lot of shilling for big pharma going on.

So Gordon dumps a bunch of useless crap in kids’ ears when he should know full well that otitis media very often will resolve without treatment.
What the blazes is mullein divided by garlic oil?

@sadmar:

If we want to prevent such harms in the future, we need to understand why they occur, and chalking them up to ‘stupid’ does not help at all. I suppose the usage is figurative, but it still over-simplifies complex mental mechanisms, and short-circuits our understandings of what are most likely social pathologies.

Yah, I intended “stupid” as shorthand, basically, as I have no idea of the actual cognitive functioning of these a$$holes.

I think everybody who’s not an actual monster thinks that things like this happening less often, or not at all (which is a nice dream), would be great. However, even if one could understand precisely why this happened, there would still be the question of what to do with that knowledge.

It’s my contention, though, that it’s hard to even know why this happened when there’s so little information to go on. It’s easy to make lots of speculations, but I’m not really sure what that accomplishes.

So yeah, the particular form of spirituality she holds (as opposed to ‘religion’ per se) is likely a significant factor, though not THE cause.

Sure, absolutely. Anybody who refuses actual medicine because “G-d is the ultimate healer” believes in the G-d of maybe a seven-year-old, a G-d who can, and is willing to, and is interested in intervening in the vagaries of each believer’s life in the way the beliver sees fit. This is not G-d so much as Santa Claus.

The tropes which influence religious believers to reject medicine usually amount to:

*”arrogant” doctors/scientists think they know more about life than G-d does, are too big for their britches, etc., and

*nasty materialist reductionist scientific worldview, yuck. (They prefer the true, spiritual reality. Gnosticism by any other name…)

If we frame the problem as ‘stupidity’, the answers are too easy, and likely just wrong.

Not taking your kid to a clinic when there’s (probably smelly?) fluid leaking out of her ears and she has been sick, feverish, probably squalling in pain and suffering for a couple weeks at least is not only cruel and disgusting, it is also stupid. I really cannot think of another word besides “stupidity” for that kind of behavior. These folks’ IQs could be normal, I dunno, but they’re definitely morons.

The question at hand would seem to be how these elements played out in specifics as Christine Delozier developed her hostility to conventional medicine. To begin to venture an answer, we would need to dig into her personal history. I doubt she came to her position by reading at pseudo-science websites. More likely this was a way of working out an identity that either meshed with her family and immediate community, or her define herself in opposition to them.

You’re missing some of the information we do have: she was brought up in the belief that shots and medicines and the whole nasty medical paradigm are worthless at best, harmless at worst. Her mom “didn’t believe in” medicine.

Why did her mom get into that worldview? Your guess is as good as mine. There are plenty of just plain contrarians out there.

Re: the idea that whatver issue she has, it’s in the DSM:

Maybe. I mean, probably, given the state of the DSM. I doubt we’re ever going to be privy to that information. So let’s look at what could actually be done if any of the myriad conditions in the DSM did have something to do with her actions:

*Could be some sort of severe depression, sure, maybe with psychotic features, maybe related to post-partum something. Could be another “axis I” disorder – I understand the “axis” classification has been ditched with DSM V – like some sort of psychotic disorder. What could be done, if that were the case (which I doubt it is) to prevent more of these things from happening? More awareness of mental health issues, especially among young mothers*, say, better access to treatment, less stigma surrounding treatment. Those are good things to work toward regardless, I think.

*Could be a “personality disorder,” I suppose. But this brings me to one of my key problems with personality disorders: they really have no utility as diagnoses. Except for BPD, which has recently seen some success in treatment with DBT, they are generally regarded as untreatable. Making the diagnosis doesn’t really help anybody – really, a lot of the time, it is just a medical-sounding, officially sanctioned way for a shrink to say “(I think) this person is a jerk,” and to effectively have them treated that way within the system. Maybe it is fun to sit and say, “I bet that person has Narcissistic Personality Disorder!” but I don’t see what good it really does. I mean, I have no problem with insulting people, but I can think of more fun and honest ways to do it.

*It would help if our society could get over its cult of motherhood and admit that being a parent is not all light and joy, IMO.

What’s very upsetting is that in many states, “personal belief” or “religious belief” is an affirmative defense to child neglect charges and many other things. Some states have religious defenses to manslaughter and murder. The organization CHILD (Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty) works to get these laws revised. All children deserve the same basic standard of care, no matter what beliefs their parents have.

So Gordon dumps a bunch of useless crap in kids’ ears when he should know full well that otitis media very often will resolve without treatment.

I’d say he does it because he knows full well that it will probably resolve without treatment – he’s a profiteering opportunist, not a “true believer.” After all, the affluent clientele he caters to are paying a (cash-only) premium for his services; if he wants to keep the gravy-train rolling he needs to ensure that they feel they are getting some sort of “special” care they wouldn’t get from one of those run-of-the-mill, evidence-based allopaths.

JP: I dunno, my money’s on ‘the parents are just terrible people’ and someone’s telling them what to say.

Herbert: She is not defenseless or harmless, she KILLED her toddler. I suppose you think kids winding up dead- of an easily treatable disease- is just fine.
Where the hell did you get your medical degree? Sagitta Volante Per Diem University? Oral Roberts? Or did you just buy a lab coat and stethoscope off somebody and start calling yourself a doctor? I don’t think you could pass a drug test, let alone medical boards.

Johnny: Pretty sure a mullien is a weed, might be related to a plantain.

Johnny: Pretty sure a mullien is a weed, might be related to a plantain.

My mistake, looks more like a cabbage.

Well, the bigger mistake is that it was doug that was asking in a rather sarcastic (I’m sure) joke, not me.

I don’t care what’s in a homeopathic nostrum, because, unless something went wrong, the answer is nothing much.

I don’t care what’s in a homeopathic nostrum, because, unless something went wrong, the answer is nothing much.

Should’ve stopped aspiring to a “Big J,” while you had the chance, Phildo.

Of course, you’ve already demonstrated that you’re willing to shіt on your very wife to try to distance yourself from the tediously, desperately, enthusiastically dedicated perv show that seems to be your very being when you’re not playing Lance Kerwin.

Hell, they’re probably the same thing.

I have noted before, “Mr.” Hills, that your aborted attempt to figure out Twatter is not generalizable.

Govern yourself accordingly.

I’m an otolaryngologist so quite familiar with ear infections; the term for this type of infection is acute otitis media (AOM). In recognition that many AOM infections are viral and in an attempt to reduce antibiotic-resistant bacteria, we try to hold off on antibiotics for the first couple days unless a child is really febrile or acting really sick. But if there is no improvement over 2-3 days then we usually start an antibiotic like high-dose amoxicillin or Augmentin (both are now available as generics). This child was apparently sick with an untreated bacterial infection for 3 weeks, leading to the brain abscess. Complications like this from ear infections were not that uncommon in the days before antibiotics and ear tubes.

^ Oh, f*ck, #175 was friendly fire. Apologies, real Johnny.

The general sentiments regarding DJ “Mr.” Mini-skule Jayzz, of course, stand.

See a dead-baby apologist like Herbert just makes me ill inside – he’s in the same category as the “shaken-baby / vaccine-causation” people….

Sorry, Johnny. But could you chill a little? I appreciate that this thread has gotten heated, but that’s no excuse to be rude to those who don’t deserve it.

Janerella: Oh my god, my sympathies. That must have been terrifying. I’m glad she’s all right now.

Lawrence: For a while now, I’ve been wondering if anti-vaxxers think children are people. I’m very sure that they don’t, since you’d think being against kids dying unnecessarily would be a no-brainer. Instead they only talk about the death of children when they’re trying to score points, and end up supporting a lot of vile people.

Does the general public really know what ‘research’ is

As used these days, it almost invariably means “bore a hole in the intertoobz and collect a few buckets of effluent” then apply the arrogance of ignorance and confirmation bias in deciding which buckets contain the good stuff.

Several years ago I heard some say something very appropriate. IIRC, the exact words were “The good thing about the internet is that anyone can publish anything. The bad thing about the internet is that anyone can publish anything.”

” It’s a pretty safe bet that, had Hope been seen by a physician in Canada or England, for example, she would have been prescribed antibiotics and treated pretty much the same way that local pediatricians in Bradford County would have treated her.”

Calling it a “safe bet” is an understatement akin to the one from the knight in Indiana Jones, “He chose…poorly”. We all had to deal with ear infections growing up, then later ear infections in children, nephews, nieces, friends’ kids, etc. Antibiotics were prescribed if the infection wasn’t resolving or if it was getting worse (when we were kids antibiotics were probably prescribed as a first resort, but that was decades ago).

@ PGP:

You mention something that I agree with in a more complicated way-
whether anti-vaxxers see their children as people or not:

I feel that they probably would recognise children as ‘people’ BUT they fail to see that their children have independent existences from their own, that they have or will have their own ideas, abilities, thoughts and dreams and that parents do not OWN their children or have omnipotent power over their lives. Parents have to answer to society ( or the state, if you wish) about their actions in regard to their children- they can’t just do as they like, harming or neglecting children who have as much rights as strangers and adults in this case.

You may remember that I’ve discussed how the concept of children itself has changed over the millennia:
obviously at one time, perhaps they WERE property of a sort; later religious folk believed them to be human but heathen and in need of a Christian education and the sacraments.. Children were imagined as being small adults and thus capable of working long, hard hours in farms, mines or factories even 100 years ago. More recently, laws that protect children emphasise their differences from adults and why they need governmental supervision when their parents fail to care for them appropriately.

AS you know, people vary in their abilities to take the role of the other – to understand how others think and comprehend the world differently from themselves. I would venture that some antivax parents may choose to ignore whatever inklings of recognition of these differences seep through their own set piece beliefs about their children if those inklings come through at all. Not all parents are sensitive to their children’s needs and ideas especially when they clash with their own.

Of course, adults may not be entirely able to choose what they believe about others – including their own children- and indeed, all of us are constraied by our limited abilities, be they cognitive, interpersonal or emotional. Everyone has limits in these realms. but learning is possible and hopefully, lifelong. Limits may be imposed because of psychological ills, lower intelligence and poor early experiences as well as choice. In other words, we can’t blame parents for their lack of compassion and self-centeredness 100% of the time- but some of them,sometimes, sure.

herbert, have you bothered to read the above article yet? Because without you actually doing that, it would be pointless to discuss anything with you.

@ fellow and sister sceptics :

I am on my way out the door so I wish that someone else would discuss the herbal/ supplement vs anti-depression meme put forth by herbert.
I KNOW you can do it.

And yeah, right, I ALSO use slashes to denote either conjunctive choice and/or variable names
e,g,
Alties/ woo-meisters/ prevaricators/ liars.

Slashes are acceptable/appropriate in lots of cases, but not the way J.G. used one in this particular instance. He certainly isn’t alone/unique in such misuse.

One the matter of apostrophes, very shortly after I posted my comment above I ran across this comment at the CBC:

Your full of it. How about anti-Christ’s killing Christian’s on a daily basis??

Talk about over- possessive …

Ok, pharmaceuticals throlls you won. I`m quitting.
But if even 1 person saw the light from reading the information I posted that it would have been at least worthwhile.
As for americans being desperate cases, I get that is being confirmed once more. There will beat up any indigent black or woman to death (emotionally or physically) but will keep their harvard corrupted psychiatrics killers untouched, simply because they have more money and that the brainwashing that money is the ONLY thing that counts (thanks Murdoch & alia) has been deeply imprinted in the american mind
I am so glad I refused 20 years ago an offer that would have double my income but would have forced me to move to the USA, given the sad state of these assieged people

Herbert, did you provide information? When?

Sorry about that. I tend to react badly to false accusations.

On a tangential topic, I was under the impression that antibiotics were ineffective for ear infections. Period. I was given the impression that this was one of the greatest misuses of antibiotics.

Obviously, I was wrong, but perhaps all the warnings about over-prescription of antibiotics has had a downside.

@Harold

I never saw any report that say every ear infection would always be harmless and would always go away on its own and no matter what no one should ever give a kid an antibiotic.

The way I read it was most of the time the antibiotic is not needed and many of the infections are not bacterial so it won’t help.

So don’t prescribe them right off the bat for anything with the set of characteristics of those infections that are unlikely to be a problem. Only prescribe immediately when there are these symptoms that something more serious is going on or when the symptoms do not resolve on their own in X time.

But I can see where some of the reporting could lead you to think NEVER prescribe rather than reduce the prescribing.

We do overuse antibiotics but all of the use less come with guidelines on when they really are needed. It was never meant to be be a never use them again at all because they are always in every case completely and totally useless.

So herbert flounced after being presented with an actual citation contradicting his assertions? I’m shocked.

Just to clear things up. Homeopathy is utter bollocks, just like the idea that a little bit of flu in a vaccine is supposed to prevent flu. it doesn’t and never did, the research tells us and decades of trials trying to make people ‘catch flu’ by spraying virus aerosols up people’s noses has failed to prove the contagion theory over and over again.

This thread is not news, it is just another vain attempt to validate a flawed vaccine on the back of a sad death.

Just like the one death from measles in Germany recently

If false “johnny” ever paid attention, he’d realize that this thread is about antibiotics, not a vaccine.

Slashes are acceptable/appropriate in lots of cases

Putting on my editorial hat for a moment, the use of the virgule in text denotes nonexclusive “or.” It is nearly always avoidable in formal writing, the exception being when the corrections get to be more clumsily distracting than just letting it stand after a certain point.

In particular, this implies that the sense “per,” e.g., “km/s” (or, worse, “m/s/s”) is right out unless there are no suitable superscripts available. Like here, where some genius has WordPressed the buttons to exterminate <sup> tags.

Putting on my editorial hat for a moment, the use of the virgule in text denotes nonexclusive “or.” It is nearly always avoidable in formal writing, the exception being when the corrections get to be more clumsily distracting than just letting it stand after a certain point.

I had a professor in college who had a real bee in his bonnet about using the virgule pretty much at all in writing, so the use was beaten out of me (metaphorically speaking) at a young age. He found it lazy.

F’r instance, instead of writing, say, “bees and/or bonnets,” I was specifically instructed to write “bees or bonnets or both.” It is nicer to read, I think.

sadmar@97

I see NP’s all the time at my large regional medical center. I think whoever said that about rural areas and NP’s was just saying that sometimes there is only a NP in some rural areas that can’t get a full time doc.

^ Well, apparently it did consider U+200B, but only to break the HTML escape for &.

I though Virgule was Dante’s guide through Hell.

but I am sure most american really think they are being informed (and not entertained and brainwashed)

I find it distressing to be accused of being brainwashed by people who are mindlessly repeating CCHR/Scientology propaganda about psychiatric meds.

pharmaceuticals throlls

“Throll” is perhaps a portmanteau of Troll + Thrall, and I am adding it to my vocabulary.

“But if even 1 person saw the light from reading the information I posted that it would have been at least worthwhile.”

No doubt oodles of people have contacted you privately to say that they agree with your drivel, but can’t say so publicly due to potential harassment. Isn’t that usually the way it goes?

Not sure if banning advertisments for life saving drugs would pass co nstitutional muster and the smell test especially while the anti-pharma propaganda and advertisement for “immune boosting” supplements would continue unabated. Maybe we should *incentivize* drug companies to market more effectively.

It used to be drug companies didn’t advertise prescription drugs, I believe. We could at least get them off of television. We don’t allow tobacco advertising on television. Obviously there is legal precedent for limiting advertising some ways

That was what I initially thought, but would that explain the lack of proper plurals?

In French, the plurals ending in “s” are written but the “s” is not pronounced in speech. The plural is indicated by the article: le or la – singular, les – plural. Francophones have a tendency to not pronounce the “s” in English plurals, so I guess that this would carry over into writing.
This is based on a lot of speculation, since I am basing this on my high school French (which was so long ago it may be Old French), a few Francophone acquaintances (not many, I live in Western Canada) and some commenters on RI and elsewhere. If anyone more knowledgeable wants to take me to task, feel free.

On a not-unrelated note, AofA has one of their typical, odious “defending baby killers-shaken baby syndrome is really vaccine damage” stories today. I won’t link; those of you so inclined know where to find it.

I still don’t understand how they can claim vaccines break bones, however.

As for the equally-odious Herbert, not to claim I’m a genius but I recognized his writing pattern as a francophone “speaking” English immediately. Every single francophone I work with speaks English the exact same way: no “s” on plurals and all kinds of unusual verb usage, for example. As TBruce points out, it’s a by-product of thinking in French and then mentally translating.

I now feel pretty convinced that herbert is francophone. Everyone I’ve ever known whose first language was Quebecois French spoke English very well, so I’ve never noticed the dropping of s from English plurals.
Actually, one of my first thoughts about herbert, given that I thought he was probably French Canadian, was that he might be related to the Deloziers.

Yah, direct-to-consumer advertising didn’t start in the US until 1997

No, Virginia Pharmacy Board was decided in 1976. I can’t dig into the whole timeline at the moment, but see generally here (PDF) and, probably, here.

@ doug:

My point exactly!

@Sadmar:

Nursing instructor here. Your friend would have to finish a program in registered nursing first, and pass the NCLEX-RN before she could become a nurse practitioner.

While there are some ADN to FNP programs out there, generally the path is BSN to MSN to NP program. NP programs are moving to the DNP level (we’re supposed to be there now nationally but the faculty shortage is pushing the deadline back). There are some direct BSN to NP programs, and many MSN to NP programs, but she’ll need to do her research in her area. YMMV.

ADNs once could practice in practically any specialty in nursing for their entire careers but generally can’t get into management, and now it’s pretty much a given you have to get your BSN within 5 years to keep your job.

NPs can practice solo in many states, but not all states. In other states, they have to have a practice agreement with a physician. A PA can never practice solo, they are always attached to a physician. So NPs have some different options than PAs, but PAs often have access to specialty training (often highly technical and surgical oriented) that NPs don’t.

NPs can and do see their own patients in the hospital, whether they are solo practitioners or not. In my state NPs and PAs have very similar roles, except some NPs can set up independent businesses such as home health agencies and PAs can’t.

Competition to get into both ADN and BSN programs (the first step) is also stiff in many parts of the country. A national shortage of nursing faculty means that many programs can’t take in as many applicants as they would like. My program has three applications for every seat, and we start two cohorts every year (Fall and Spring).

My recommendation is she start community college (cheaper) and take her pre-reqs including 2 semesters of A&P, Microbiology, and Chemistry if she can fit it in, along with Intro to Psych and Developmental Psych. Then she’ll have the background to successfully get into to either an ADN or a BSN program, and she can focus on the nursing courses. We find that students, even top students, who take the general science courses WITH the nursing courses struggle more. Those who take them before hand have a better foundation and to better.

Hope this helps.

Did something happen WRT drug ads on television at that time? Did DTC advertising just become more common?

I’m not sure. If you see footnote 38 in the PDF above, it has this to say (boldface added):

“From 1997 to 2001, the percentage of DTC advertising for print ads declined from 74% to 35%, while the percentage of spending on television ads increased from 25% to 64%. See General Accounting Office, Prescription Drugs: FDA Oversight of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising Has Limitations 10 (GAO-03-177) (Oct. 2002) . . . . For a history of the FDA’s regulation of DTC ads, see[*] Timothy S. Hall, The Promise and Peril of Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Promotion on the Internet, 7 DePaul J. Health Care L. 1 (2003).”

* Bluebook FAIL, BTW.

I now feel pretty convinced that herbert is francophone.

I’m with the former MSII on the that-seemed-obvious front (the rest I’m not going to delve into).

Everyone I’ve ever known whose first language was Quebecois French spoke English very well, so I’ve never noticed the dropping of s from English plurals.

Have you ever imagined what C.W. McCall’s Convoy would be like in Français québécois, given the documented divergences in C.B. lingo?

^ My dad’s side of the family is “mostly” French Canadian, incidentally.

The Great Gazoogle tells me this

It sounds about right. I ran across that earlier, but I only glanced at it, because I was looking for legal opinion.

I have a history on this subject.

Do tell.

Every time someone dies in the ‘care’ of a doctor, maybe we should sue them. currently being killed by a doctor on the wrong medicine is only slightly less dangerous than being on the right medicine.

If Alain were here, this would be simpler. I [d*mn] well better still have the proof-of-concept audio track,* but I could swear there was a short video, too.

Goodness, I’d like to see (or hear) that.

@ChrisP

The possibility of herbert being related to the Deloziers was just a fleeting thought.
Vermont does share a border with Quebec, Canada’s predominantly francophone province. Canada was also on the pathway between France and the US for many US citizens of French ancestry. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of blood ties between herbert and the Deloziers, but it really is of no importance one way or the other.

Orac, here is a homeopath’s analysis of this article > http://tun.in/tgUiFe (Should be Tuesday 16th June Hour 1)

Antibiotics are worse than homeopathy, apparently.

I’m here and yes, I can confirm that Herbert sound like a French canuck but I’m not what Narad refer to. Give me a few hours of sleep and a few coffee later on and I can give better answer.

Alain

NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161869/Top-doctors-chilling-claim-The-NHS-kills-130-000-elderly-patients-year.html#ixzz3dQ1j2vcY
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

So is this any different to an uneducated family allowing their child to die?

Was there an over/under on when Johnny would link to the Daily Fail?

So is this any different to an uneducated family allowing their child to die?

There’s no reason to think it’s happening apart from it being the opinion of the guy who wrote something saying so for the Catholic Medical Quarterly, who appears to have been motivated by a religious objection to palliative end-of-life care, which he’s calling euthanasia because he would prefer to see the divine spark of life kept lit, like G-d wants it to be.

Which is certainly his prerogative. As is voicing his opinion. However, there is zero evidence that any excess unnecessary deaths are occurring, let alone hundreds of thousands of them.

So in the sense that it’s purely notional, whereas the Delozier’s little girl is both real and really dead, yes, it’s any different.

yes I suppose so indeed. But clearing doctors clearing hospital beds by withdrawing care is very similar. I suppose the doctors are trained and therefore know what they are doing.

Of course there isn’t any proof of anything to do with that Daily Heil article “Johnny” cites: it’s the Heil, probably the worst of the mainstream British press for its lackadaisical attitude to accuracy (although the Independent has run it close lately with its HPV vaccination scare stories); the Heil, being a huge proponent of “free market” dogma, has for years taken every opportunity to slagg off the NHS.

Disclaimer: my sister is a senior nurse in palliative care and may know a thing or 2 about this end of life stuff…So that probably makes me a proxy Shill for Big Death or something…

@ TBruce

Only the difference between about 80 years life expectancy versus a few days or weeks.

That’s a bit rash.
I will say it’s the difference between something witch could be easily cured (ear infection) and something for which there is no certain cure (old age’s infirmities).

Back to homeopathy,there is this post over at Science Based Medicine.

Sorry, Johnny. But could you chill a little? I appreciate that this thread has gotten heated, but that’s no excuse to be rude to those who don’t deserve it.

PGP –
I apologize that this is coming rather late (yesterday was very hectic) but if my post at #173 caused you any distress, it was not my intent. My comment about the contents of homeopathic nostrums was intended to reference the fact that homeopathy is full of nothing (I am assuming you were not offended by me pointing out that it was doug’s joke, and not me, asking about mullion). I did not intend to be rude towards you about your post that my #173 was in response to, as your related post did not offend me in any way.

That my sloppy writing has offended you disturbs me, and I promise that, in the future, you will be sure if I take exception to anything you post. For example, I may post something like ‘PGP, you are an ignorant bigot’, or, in the words of friend shay, ‘You effing idiot…’. But I will not post anything relating to homeopathy in your general direction.

I hope you find my apology satisfactory.

Proper Johnny
Accept no substitutes.

A bit late to the thread, but I found the use of The Godwin by Herbert to be a bit ironic. He is perhaps unaware that the Nazis were also unappreciative of antibiotics, in spite of the fact that the first successful antibiotic put on to the market came from Nazi Germany. I suspect that their reluctance was not due to any distaste toward corrupt big companies (they had no reservations about corruption) but had more to do with their idiotic notions of “purity”.

The first good commercial antibiotics were the sulfa drugs, discovered by Bayer and marketed in the mid-1930s. The German scientist who discovered the drug and led the effort to develop it was arrested by the Gestapo, and tossed in jail for a while for the crime of getting a Nobel prize.

Sulfa ended up saving far more Allied soldiers than Germans because the German military was reluctant to use it. It was mostly replaced by penicillin by the end of the war.

I was just reading a download on my hard drive of the front page of AoA and the articlke on the left side, from a day or two or a few ago, had a link to an article alleging that the medical establishment is the third most lethal whatever…apparently the perps imbibe of the woo…[!]

Sia
I am sorry,but a very large percentage of autism researchers do not follow the purity of the DSM description of autism.You seem to believe in.You might be surprised how many mainstream psychiatrists and psychologists do not use the DSM when diagnosing autism.

A sizable chunk of research articles are about (Fill in name of medical condition) “in children with autism spectrum disorder”.Often with detailed tables of all the medical conditions the children have.You should spend sometime reading this stuff.

There is a big debate in the autism research and medical communities about “autism pure” VS “autism plus”.I might add that those in the neurodiversity movement,who are neither doctors,psychologists,or researchers,are some of the biggest advocates of the “autism pure” model of the condition.

“I FOUND IT”

CHS is John Stone’s BFF* Clifford “Graph Boy” Miller.

* And, for a time, Wakefraud’s “foreign counsel” in the comedy that was the Texas libel suit. (Sadly for the popcorn crowd – as opposed to the defendants in this asshattery – the anti-SLAPP was never reached, so it didn’t make it to the Götterdämmerig level that it truly deserved.

What concerns me is how to counter it

In a just world, we wouldn’t have to. Decent, rational people see these parents for what they are; it’s the cranks and the ghouls who don’t.

Didn’t you all read the full article? They didn’t bring the child to the hospital 60% for financial reasons and 40% for their beliefs. In other words, the major reason was financial. A continueing problem with those not insured or poorly insured. Obviously, in retrospect, they made a bad judgement call in thinking they could have treated this on their own.

People with misconceptions about vaccines will only start to change their minds if the rest of society stops hating them for their fears.

How can you say that someone who tho.is vaccines/antibiotics are bad for their child and therefore refuses to use them hates their child? It can’t be so, but this would be a case of misguided good intentions.

60% for financial reasons and 40% for their beliefs

Oh yes? These percentages are stated In the full article, you say, and not something you pulled out the air just now?

I couldn’t even find the numbers 60 and 40 in the article, let alone as percentages.

Given the family background of both parents and the attitude displayed by the mother, I suspect the real percentages would be closer to 200% and 20%.

They waited until their daughter was almost dead before they took her to the hospital, or did you miss that part?

Regardless of my financial status, I think that after the second week of her running a fever, screaming in pain and draining fluid out of her ear, I might have decided that getting help for that baby girl trumped any and every other consideration.

Just finished reading Dr. Off it’s book, “Bad Faith.” As far as stopping or greatly reducing this type of medical abuse, it appears that stricter laws do a lot to reduce these kinds of “choices,” even though they don’t end them completely.

Lots of opinion articles recently about the rather proud anti-intellectualism rampant in American culture and the bad outcomes it produces. One suggested that Christianity and how it is practiced in this country, our history, etc., are a big reason these problems exist.

The complexities of all of this are fascinating… and the carnage it creates breaks my heart.

this would be a case of misguided good intentions

There is this old fable about the village idiot who decided to chase the flies which are bothering his sleeping friend. He grabbed a hammer for this job, and proceeded to smash the flies with it. Including the one which landed on the head of his friend.
Of course, the hammer blow killed the friend.
(the story does’t tell if at least the fool hit the fly).

The morale of the story: it’s better to have a smart foe than an idiotic friend.
Or, in the case of Hope, than an idiotic mother.

If someone doesn’t realize than certain actions have lethal consequence, it’s past time to sit this someone and have a long talk with him or her. In short, don’t put fools and hammers together.