BBC2 Horizon 9pm

[ArcticRoll]

'The cosmetics industry makes great claims for its products but do these claims hold up?Professor Lesley Regan investigates.'
Should be interesting.

Everyone who has been wondering why Lesley regan did the Horizon programme -

I don't know this for sure, but I thnk she was returning a favour to one of the Horizon producers. Horizon made a documentary about the Recurrent Miscarriage Clinic she runs at St Mary's Paddington, and then one of the producers cut some of the programme up to make a DVD to help launch the campaign she is running to save the academic gynaecological research dept at St Mary's as the NHS (bless em) won't pay for it to be refurbished and one of the labs has been condemned. So I suspect she was returning the favour...

I suspect you might get a tongue lashing about the MMR DC. My son has a severe reaction to the DPT and went on to develop life threatening allergies. Understandably we were cautious about giving him the MMR. Our options were to do it in hosp with resuscitation equipment to hand should he react badly. We were pondering our options and then he got measles. It was bad and he was pretty sick but interestingly the media has whipped me up into such a frenzy about the dangers of measles that I was sure he was going to die. At the time discrediting the MMR was out of fashion and the new sport was highlighting the intense dangers of measles.

I was in a state I can tell you and when I spoke to my mother she thought I had lost the plot as to her it was an illness but a common one (in her day) and chill. She dug out some old literature she had about it (going back to the 60s) and gave me the advice about feeding him orange coloured food. I think it is Vit A that has a significant impact on reducing the effects of measles. This was later confirmed by a GP old enough to remember measles.

My partner's business is the largest French retailer of "parapharmacie" - French cosmetics brands that only retail in pharmacies or stores run by qualified pharmacists. So (while he is a business man, not a scientist) he knows quite a bit about the cosmetics industry and (lucky me) I get to try any product I want any time, even brands my partner doesn't sell, as we're always trying the competition and looking at innovations.

So - insider information on amazing products that really work (some of these products may not be available in UK though):

Cleanser: Sensifluid by A-Derma

Body lotion: TriXéra by Avène

Toothpaste: Elgydium by Pierre Fabre (use a Braun electric toothbrush)

Handcream: Xerand by LaRochePosay

Footcream: Compeed

and, for everyday soaps and body washes, I use Dove which seems to me far better than any of the expensive pharmacy stuff.

NO products work for cellulite - neither creams nor pills. This is well known in the industry (but consumers are gullible so they keep on bringing out new products).

Oh, and Vaseline is an excellent product - the basic stuff and Vaseline Intensive Care. Not sold in my partner's shops though because it would destroy the margins...

I fully accept that the Professor's motivation was honourable, even though I didn't know about the DVD.
A medical academic researcher can help their work by getting funds, and being "that woman on the telly" won't hurt research on miscarriages.
I'm sorry you got upset drosophila, but your post exemplifies exactly the problem. I'm allergic to penicillin, it nearly killed me as a child. I'm also allergic to eggs, so many vaccines are out of bounds to me.
If you based health policy on me, half of all vaccines would be banned, and 1/3 of the NHS would be devoted to chest infections.
DSs have been tested for a wide range of allergens and none were found. So a small sample, like personal experience is a tragically bad way of making decisions where it's a balance of probabilities.

That's why we have the science of statistics.

The evidence is not only a lack of MMR caused autism, but a surprisingly strong case that it actually prevents it. So many people wwere conned by the BBC into avoiding MMR that the numbers dropped hard.
However, in that period autism case went up significantly.
That's not the same as proof of course, but that fact didn't make the mainstream media either.

MMR prevents autism - oh PMSL. Show me the studies. Unless you mean by preventing maternal rubella (which can be a trigger for autism if caught very early on- about week 5 of pregnancy- only ever very small numbers involved).

Incidentally the theory was never that MMR was responsible for the massive rise in autism. Only that it triggered autism in a subgroup of the autistic population. Generally the figure for that is now put at 7% of the autistic population-at the time of the original paper no-one knew how big the subgroup was - everyone now believes it is small so really whether autism is rising or dropping is neither here nor there. I have told you this repeatedly DC so I don't know why you insist on repeating this irrelevant rubbish about what autism rates are doing.

Gut damage of some sort is remarkably common in autism. Incidentally Wakefield's description of autistic enterocolitis as a novel gut disorder found in autistic childre has never been disputed- only its causes. Of course if your child needs treatment for this very painful condition it is very difficult to now get in the UK.

Sorry, which bit of that are you disputing ?
Are you saying that autism numbers have not gone up ?
or are you saying that MMR numbers haven't gone
down ?
I explicitly said it was not proof. Unlike BBC arts types I have quite high standards for that.

In my book if you have the alleged cause get rarer, but the effect goes up, then you have to look pretty hard at the idea that it's causing it.
If you do less X, but get more Y, then do even less X and still get more Y, at some point you should doubt that X causes Y.

I was only pointing out how the media upset me not wheter MMR is safe or not. It can work both ways.

MMR is not the only "alleged cause". Anyone working in the field of autism would agree that there are multiple causes of autism. And when those cases with an environmental cause are considered there are believed to be many. In some people the condition itself will have a high heritability, in others it's the susceptibility that is high- and for those the presence/absence of particular environmental triggers is important. BUt they are different environmental triggers.

Wakefield's model isn't just about MMR anyway -he considers live viruses in general (in combination with specific gut problem). The herpes virus is widely accepted (in fact I don't think is under dispute at all) as a trigger for some children.

Autism rates have gone up. But if MMR is only triggering 7% of autism cases tops then you need massive populations of vaccinated vs unvaccinated to achieve statistical validity to examine such a small effect. All published studies have only examined whether MMR is responsible for every single case of autism- which no-one has ever suggested it is.