Couple flee to avoid compulsory medical treatment

Another case of DOCS (child welfare agency) harassing good parents over minor infractions while ignoring feral parents. Decent people are a lot easier to deal with, you see.

And the record of compulsory medical treatment is not at all good. The medical wisdom of today is often the iatrogenic disaster of tomorrow. Take the example of compulsory blood transfusions for Jehovah's Witnesses. It was eventually discovered that JWs had a higher survival rate WITHOUT transfusions than did people who got transfusions. As a result, use of transfusions is now much more guarded than it once was.

Fear of vaccines is widespread and objections to it should be regarded as a basic civil liberty in my view. How would YOU like people coming and injecting into you something you did not want? I myself know of no proven harm done by vaccines but people should be allowed to make up their own minds in such a contested area. I have myself had Hep B vaccinations

A Sydney couple are in hiding after the Department of Community Services (DoCS) took out a court order to have their three-day-old boy vaccinated against hepatitis B. The parents, from Croydon Park, fled their home on Thursday to avoid police and DoCS officers after refusing to have their son vaccinated at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. They told Fairfax newspapers they believe aluminium in the vaccine can cause him more damage than contracting the disease.

The infant's mother, who is from China, was diagnosed with hepatitis B several years ago, but both parents believe the illness, which can cause liver cancer and cirrhosis, can be managed more effectively than any potential neurological damage from the vaccine.

Vaccinations are not compulsory in Australia but it is NSW Health policy that babies born to hepatitis-B mothers are given the immunoglobulin within 12 hours of birth. The treatment is followed up with four more doses of the vaccine over six months.

The father, a financial adviser, is seeking an injunction against the court order. He told Fairfax doctors and midwives on the post-natal ward told him he and his wife would be arrested and they would lose custody of their child if he left the hospital without being vaccinated.

The Supreme Court order, obtained by DoCS, states the baby must be vaccinated by midnight on Thursday but the father is adamant they will stay on the run indefinitely.

Source





Crooked medical journal

Refuses to print urgent warning to save embarassing medical bureaucrats

A taxpayer-funded medical journal has been accused of suppressing criticisms of flaws in patient medicine handouts that could have fatal consequences for thousands of Australians. The criticisms in a paper by five medical specialists reveal that alleged problems with the official advice for the drugs Cortate and Hysone are still unresolved, more than a year after the concerns were first publicised.

In the case of Cortate -- like Hysone an essential treatment for people with Addison's disease and some other hormonal conditions -- the consumer medicine information (CMI) handouts still advise patients not to take the drug if they have an uncontrolled infection. The paper by the five specialists says this is "dangerously incorrect" and patients taking the drug in fact need to double or even treble their dose to avoid serious illness. "If followed, such advice could lead to life-threatening consequences within 24-36 hours for some thousands of Australians who depend on glucocorticoid replacement," the paper says.

But the journal Australian Prescriber, part of the government-funded National Prescribing Service, faces claims it "nobbled" attempts to alert medical experts to the issue "to avoid a few red faces in Canberra", after it refused to publish the paper. The journal and its editor, John Dowden, may also face accusations they breached internationally accepted publishing procedures, by allegedly sending the five experts' paper to the Therapeutic Goods Administration for comment before the journal had decided whether to accept it. The TGA not only has ultimate responsibility to ensure CMI leaflets are accurate, it is entirely funded by fees charged to drug manufacturers.

In its response to Australian Prescriber, the TGA's national manager Rohan Hammett said a "careful review" of the CMI should allay any concerns over misinformation. The advice in Cortate's CMI regarding infections was not misleading, Dr Hammett said, because this appeared beneath a sub-heading "Before you take Cortate" -- which Dr Hammett said indicated it was only relevant to patients starting the drug, not those already on it.

The lead author of the rejected paper, Jim Stockigt -- a professor of medicine at Monash University -- said the approach of Australian Prescriber had been "amazing", and the journal had "fought tooth and nail to prevent dissemination" of concerns. "It's my feeling that this submission may have been suppressed or nobbled to avoid a few red faces in Canberra and to preserve the impression that all is well with Australian pharmaceutical product and consumer medicine information," Professor Stockigt said. "For those who depend on adrenal replacement for their survival, it is simply dangerous nonsense for the advice 'Do not take Cortate if you have an uncontrolled infection' to remain on the books."

In a letter to Professor Stockigt, Dr Dowden said the paper had been rejected because it was referring to letters printed in other publications a year earlier, it was not related to an article in Australian Prescriber, it was too long, allegations were included in the paper and an "external review did not support all the interpretations made in the correspondence".

After the paper's rejection Professor Stockigt consulted the British-based Committee on Publication Ethics for its views on Australian Prescriber's actions. The COPE's chairman, Harvey Marcovitch, replied that Australian Prescriber had either breached confidentiality by sending the paper to the TGA or, alternatively, the journal had "breached fundamental rules on the potential conflict of interest of reviewers".

A spokesman for Australian Prescriber said the journal had "robust and ethical editorial processes". "The decision not to publish in this case was made by the editorial executive committee and a full explanation was given to the authors," the spokesman said. "The committee stands by this decision."

Source





School choice is 'guesswork' says Federal education boss

Julia Gillard says parents have no guarantee their child's school meets a minimum standard of education, acknowledging that choosing the best school is little more than guesswork. In an interview with The Weekend Australian, the Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister said parents choosing a school for their child were forced to rely on rumour and prejudice, rather than being able to make a decision based on facts. "A lot of guessing goes into the decision and there should be more objective information," she said. "Giving full information to people would mean that they can actually know what's going on and, rather than judging individual schools or school systems on the basis of myths, rumour, prejudice or perception, people would have the facts,"

Ms Gillard called on the states and territories to agree to greater transparency of school results and features. Inspired by the changes made in New York City by the education chancellor Joel Klein, Ms Gillard is proposing schools make public as much information as they can, from the qualifications of their teachers to comparing their students' performance and improvement against groups of similar schools.

One of the features of the New York system is that schools consistently failing to meet benchmarks are closed, giving parents confidence that their child's school is meeting expected standards. Asked whether parents could have the same confidence in Australian schools, Ms Gillard agreed they could not. "I'm not sure that is the case at the moment. Perhaps as worrying as that statement is, from the point of view of being the federal Education Minister, I couldn't tell because the amount of information that's available doesn't enable me to make that judgment in a meaningful way," she said. "So I think the more information that's available to parents, the better. "People will still make choices for a wide variety of reasons."

Speaking at his Manhattan office yesterday, Mr Klein said he and Ms Gillard spoke at length about the need for federal governments to set clear national standards in education. "There should be very strong national standards and national assessments so we can say what it actually means to graduate from a high school, rather than letting each state set its own benchmark," he said. "Australian children are going to have to compete with kids all over the world, so the opportunity to set really strong standards and make the information about them transparent to parents, to educators, to everybody, seems to me to be a very intelligent central government function."

He conceded that letter grading of schools, while important, was not fundamental to the transparency process. "Put it this way, if she (Ms Gillard) were to make everything transparent, showing progress, tying it to meaningful national assessments but without putting a letter grade on schools, she would have accomplished a great deal," he said. "I think the power of letter grades is that they focus the mind. But data and information will also focus the mind, and you never want the best to be the enemy of the good."

Ms Gillard envisages a system in which schools report their students' achievements and the progress they are making, which would be compared with a group of peer schools with a similar student population. She said school reports should also include the staffing numbers and qualifications, welfare indicators about the students and how it defines its mission. The Government is still determining how to report student and school achievement, whether as performance bands or levels of proficiency as in New York.

"Peer grouping methodologies are very important to enable genuine comparisons of like with like," she said. "We know that kids across the nation go to schools with a set of abilities and challenges and we know that schools that cater for disadvantaged communities tend to be working with more students who need extra assistance."

Ms Gillard said the purpose was not to shame schools and students, but to identify those in need of extra assistance, and share the methods used by the most successful schools. "What's got a negative reaction from many around the place is the sense that was pushed very strongly by the Howard government that all of this was going to be about raw scores," she said. "School leaders and schoolteachers I think would respond well to feeling there is going to be an objective measurement and understanding of the nature of the particular task they face."

The New York system is underpinned by giving schools resources, giving the principals the autonomy to spend them, and then hold the principals accountable for meeting their own goals. Schools must set goals each year and are expected to show an improvement in their students every year, so that even the top-performing schools will not receive the highest rating if their students show no improvement. Schools failing to meet benchmarks year on year are restructured or closed while those that perform well receive financial rewards.

Ms Gillard ruled out a system of rewards and penalties in Australia and said the Government was looking to direct extra resources to the areas of most need. "We're looking at a model about supplementing resources to make a difference for disadvantaged schools rather than a rewards-based model," she said. "One would be in a better position to work out which schools need extra assistance, a better position to then measure the difference that the extra assistance and implemented programs make. That evaluation would enable us to identify and spread best practice."

Ms Gillard said bringing greater transparency to school performance and characteristics would confer greater accountability in the system, and motivate schools to improve each year. "I do think transparency of information in and of itself will spur people to do better and they will all want to be seen to be doing better," she said.

Source





Cholesterol drug linked to cancer deaths

Australian health authorities say they will review new information raising possible safety concerns about a popular cholesterol-lowering medication. The US Food and Drug administration says a clinical trial has linked the drug Vytorin to cancer deaths. In the study, a larger percentage of patients taking the drug died of cancer, compared to those on the placebo.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration says it will review the new information and determine whether action is required in Australia. The company that makes the drug is cooperating with American authorities. It is reported as saying the findings are likely to be an anomaly. A spokesman says patients on Vytorin should continue to take their medication and if they are concerned, they should speak to their prescribing doctor.

Source




A new Greenie excuse for protecting old houses

In rather devious reasoning, The National Trust calls for 'wasted energy' demolition tax

The National Trust in South Australia is calling for a tax on the energy it says is wasted when a building is knocked down. Ian Stephenson from the National Trust says pre-1920 buildings have a thick wall mass and therefore a lot of stored energy, making them energy stable. He says research shows that if these buildings are demolished, it will take 60 years to get the energy equation back to zero. "They should probably be introducing a tax for energy waste - if you want to knock a building down, if you want to waste that energy, then you have to make a payment for it," he said.

But the Property Council's Nathan Paine says introducing such a tax would have negative repercussions for people looking to buy a house. "If we suddenly introduce significant increased costs on new homes, that will actually drive houses to an unaffordable level and that will actually lock another generation out, so we actually have to look at this in a holistic sense," he said.

Source