To wonder why so many otherwise intelligent people are so against modern medicine?

[toptramp]

I do have time for some complimentary medicine but i knoe some people who would rather do homeothapy than vaccines etc. Am i right in thinking that modern medicine is fab generally?

oh, did you miss my post where I said I refused vaccines in a developing country, then?

admittedly I was not queuing outside a clinic, but I was certainly not just lining up for any and all vaccines for dd1 (especially since a lot on offer were ones that had been withdrawn from the western world and shipped on out to Africa instead...)

Sorry, silverfrog, yes, I did miss your post. I don't know about your individual case, of course, and the nurse should not have done what she did. But her behaviour seems to suggest that yo were very unusual in refusing vaccination for your child?

No, I refused vaccination in a developing country too. Three or four actually.

Three or four countries, not three or four vaccinations.

So would you happily live with your children in an area where polio, for example, or even smallpox is endemic without vaccinating them?

No, I gave two of my children an IPV. If only OPV had been available I wouldn't have done it tbh.

no, seeker, her bheaviour suggests that she was an arrogant arse who didn't even bother to listen to parents (she claimed afterwards that she thought we were worried about dd1 crying when given jabs - because that is why we said "we do not want her to have those jabs. we think they are unnecessary' [hmm )

OPV was one we argued against. while living in Africa

Another thing that comes hand in hand with all this are the conspiracy theorists. To be honest whenever a drug is produced of course there is going to be money and power involved. The big companies do have hard working scientists producing evidence based research who do need to be payed. I hate to think about the fat cat directors and how much they earn.

And sure; 3rd world countries are often lumped with out of date drugs as they can't afford to catch up.
Also there is the scandalous post code lottery regarding drugs such as herceptin for breast cancer. It isn't all to do with altruism. But drugs have done some wonderful things.

Most medicine evolve alond with scientific advances and patenting breakthroughs etc. In years to come we will look back in horror at chemotherapy and wonder how we could produce drugs which kill all cells and not cancer cells etc. We will wonder why we smoked and ate rubbish jusnk food that made us ill in the first place.

But back to the present we have to work with what we have. I am not saying that complimentary therapies aren't useful; they are and I have used them but it's this paranoia that the conspiracy theorists have about it all that gets to me. Not sure why.

"no, seeker, her bheaviour suggests that she was an arrogant arse who didn't even bother to listen to parents"
Well, yes, that too. But was your situation comparable to the women I talked about who queue for hours to get their children vaccinated against the diseases that kill so many children in the developing world? Or were you in a similar situation to the one you would be in in this country?

I am not sure what you mean, seeker. We were living in the middle of Africa. Yes, I had been vaccinated as a child, as had dh. And we were the people likely be in closest contqct with dd1. But we did not live in isolation, and there were several people with access to our house whose vccination status was unknown.

Clearly, though, we had access to cleaner (though by no means clean) water than a lot of other people, and better nutrition etc.