Tag: children
Do Covid-19 Vaccines Affect Fertility?
Fears of future infertility are keeping some parents from vaccinating their children for COVID-19. These fears are not supported by any evidence.
A Modest Proposal: Schools Must Open With Untested, Unmasked, Unvaccinated Children
Kids don’t need Covid-19 vaccines to return to school and the downsides of masking young students are real.
Covid-19 in Children: A New Study Out of China
Children may be less likely to develop COVID-19, but they can get it too; and it may be more severe for infants.
Hot-Zone Schools and Children at Risk: Shedding light on outbreak-prone schools
The subject of parental vaccine refusal and the impact that has on disease outbreaks has been covered many times on SBM and elsewhere. I apologize to our readers who are growing tired of the subject, but there is perhaps no subject more deserving of focus and repetition. There’s also an important angle to the discussion that I’ve written on previously and which...
Energy Drinks are Risky, Especially for Kids
Should children drink energy drinks? No, it's a terrible idea.
Legislating Ignorance
Science is under attack, and not just from anti-vaccine celebrities and parents with degrees from Google University. Scientific illiteracy is being woven into the very fabric of our society through legislative assault. If you dismiss this as alarmist hyperbole, you haven’t been paying close enough attention. Every day thousands of pediatric health care providers throughout the country provide safety advice to patients...
Lemons and Lyme: Bogus tests and dangerous treatments of the Lyme-literati
It’s that time of year when every day I can expect to see at least one patient with a concern about Lyme disease. In Lyme-endemic regions such as Western Massachusetts, where I practice pediatrics, summer brings a steady stream of children to my office with either the classic Lyme rash (erythema chronicum migrans, or ECM), an embedded tick, a history of a...
VacciShield: Pixie dust for an imaginary threat
I know by now I shouldn’t be, but I am still amazed by how readily so many people buy into the seemingly endless array of bogus sCAM nostrums. Many are marketed and hawked for the treatment or prevention of diseases that are poorly managed by science-based medicine. There are countless examples of dietary supplements that are purported to effectively treat back and...
Amber Waves of Woo
As a pediatrician I have an opportunity to observe a wide variety of unusual and sometimes alarming parental efforts meant to help children through illness or keep them well. I have recently noticed one particular intervention that seems to be becoming more prevalent, at least in my practice. I’ve begun to see more and more infants sporting Baltic amber teething necklaces. These...
You can’t beat the common cold, and that’s a fact
The common cold is very, very common, with a lot of treatments proposed to control its symptoms or shorten its course. Most don't work.