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Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Should pediatricians diagnose rudeness? Is Vicks OK under noses? Are vaccines NOT the cause of autism?
It’s Health News Round Up Wednesday where you’ll find the answers to these and other compelling questions.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There are too many good stories out there to choose just one today, so I’m giving you a HEALTH NEWS ROUND UP WEDNESDAY!
Should pediatricians diagnose rudeness?
A pediatrician, Dr. Perri Klass, writes in The New York Times that sometimes her patients are quite rude - the children, not the parents. She writes it off to parents as demanding but basically she thinks a lot of them just haven’t been taught good manners. Should a doctor tell you if your child is rude? Should she couch it as your child needs to work on his “social skills?” Is developing the skill to get along well with others just as important as motor skills and other developmental issues?
New book comes out strongly that vaccines are NOT causing autism
“Dr. Offit, a pediatrician, is a mild, funny and somewhat rumpled 57-year-old. The chief of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, he is also the co-inventor of a vaccine against rotavirus, a diarrheal disease that kills 60,000 children a year in poor countries.”
“Dr. Offit’s book, published in September by Columbia University Press, has been widely endorsed by pediatricians, autism researchers, vaccine companies and medical journalists who say it sums up, in layman’s language, the scientific evidence for vaccines and forcefully argues that vulnerable parents are being manipulated by doctors promoting false cures and lawyers filing class-action suits.”
“ ‘Opponents of vaccines have taken the autism story hostage,’ Dr. Offit said. ‘They don’t speak for all parents of autistic kids, they use fringe scientists and celebrities, they’ve set up cottage industries of false hope, and they’re hurting kids. Parents pay out of their pockets for dangerous treatments, they take out second mortgages to buy hyperbaric oxygen chambers. It’s just unconscionable.’ ”
See what Dr. Offit says about the cause of autism and let us know what you think.
Spirituality linked to kids’ happiness.
Apparently, it’s fairly well known that having a spiritual life leads to teens and adults being happy, but a new study now finds the same link in children.
FoxNews.com reports: “Specifically, the study shows that children who feel that their lives have meaning and value and who develop deep, quality relationships — both measures of spirituality, the researchers claim — are happier.”
“Personal aspects of spirituality (meaning and value in one’s own life) and communal aspects (quality and depth of inter-personal relationships) were both strong predictors of children’s happiness, said study leader Mark Holder from the University of British Columbia in Canada and his colleagues Ben Coleman and Judi Wallace.”
“However, religious practices were found to have little effect on children’s happiness, Holder said.”
What do you think: If kids are more spiritual are they happier?
Vicks VapoRub should not be used under noses
I’ve gotten a couple of emails about this story, so I just wanted to point it out to parents. It’s a video from Fox News explaining why parents should NOT put Vicks VapoRub on a child under 2 and definitely not under a child’s nose. The pediatrician interviewed in the story says it actually increases the mucous instead of reducing it when placed under the nose. According to the interview, the packaging tells parents not to use Vicks on a child under 2 and says specifically to rub on the chest. Here’s the footage from FoxNews.com.
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