You might think a thing sold by a huge manufacturer of children’s toys and furniture as a “sleeper” would a safe, appropriate place for a baby to sleep. It is, after all, called a “sleeper.” But it is not a safe place for your baby to sleep.
The Fisher Price Newborn Rock ‘n Play Sleeper is a sling-shaped baby holder sort of gizmo, ...
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Wemberly worried about everything. Big things. Little things. And things in between.
–Wemberly Worried, Kevin Kenkes
The bottom line: you can add arsenic in rice to your long list of health risks you don’t need to worry about. And you can add Consumer Reports to your long list of media outlets that you can’t depend on for reliable health advice. Inaccuracy and breathless scaremongering ...
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First, it was the MMR-autism link—that turned out to be a complete fabrication, a fraud invented by a single “researcher” who made up his data. He was taking money from plaintiff’s lawyers, and he was trying to patent his own, competing vaccine. Too bad for the scare and the resulting surge in measles.
Then, the mercury connection. A mercury-containing preservative,
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Young children are naturally petulant, noisy, and self-centered. We’re all born with ourselves in the center of the universe, an impression reinforced by parents who must cater constantly to their young babies. But babies become toddlers, and toddlers become children. Sometime during this transition, parents have to teach their children that they are part of a family. For a family to function ...
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Medicines and other treatments need to be tested. We want reliable proof that something works and is safe before we recommend it. We don’t like the false dichotomy of “alternative medicine”. If there is good evidence that it works, it’s medicine. If it doesn’t work, it’s quackery.
It doesn’t matter who’s doing the quacking. A quack is a quack, even if ...
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Add to the growing list of reasons antibiotics might not be good for you and your children: a recent study showing a statistical link between early ear infections and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Researchers in the UK analyzed data from about a million children, looking specifically at the 750 who developed IBD (Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, mostly.) They then compared the kids with IBD to children without that ...
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We pay a lot of attention to hearing. Newborns get their hearing tested in most states, and periodic hearing screening is part of regular checkups. We know which children cannot hear. So why is it that so many kids don’t listen?
When we’re raising little kids, we know that we’re supposed to talk all the time. We yammer on in the grocery ...
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Let me tell you a secret. Examining eardrums in a squirming, angry child is really difficult—if not impossible. If the doc in your screaming, struggling child’s ear for a half-second, it’s unlikely that anything useful was seen.
Sometimes, it is just impossible to get a decent exam. But there are ways that parents (and doctors!) can help at least increase the chance ...
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The biggest problem with health care delivery in the US is cost, which seems to have taken a back seat to other issues meant to be addressed by health care reform. We spend about $2.5 trillion dollars a year on health care—that’s over eight thousand dollars a year for every man, woman, and child. What’s that getting you?
According to the government, about 30% goes to hospitals; 20% ...
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"A comprehensive and extremely useful roadmap for doctors."
-Eric Topol, MD, author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine
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Past 6 Months
Dear lawmakers: This is what it’s like to be a doctor today
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