Fatherhood, Skeptically

I was recently directed to a blog post  via a parent that discussed whether or not mental pharmaceutical treatment was preventing modern prophecy. This interesting perspective is brought by Vironika Tugaleva, a self proclaimed life coach who has authored two self help books. Now, setting aside the obvious differences in Religious beliefs that are likely to come up, the arguments she gives in this post have some clear issues, both factually and, if I'm going to be honest, ethically. Let's dive in to them. Let's begin by looking at the context given for the discussion. An individual named Ken Dickson and his book, detailing his personal experience in dealing with his mental illnesses, that lead her to some interesting conclusions. She makes three observations about Ken's experience: Everyone around him thought he was crazy and dangerous while Ken gained abilities that some people vie to access with daily meditation and ceremony Our current mental health care syst...

Recently, Reuters published an article claiming that the talc Johnson and Johnson used to produce its baby powder, among other things, was highly contaminated with asbestos. They further claimed that J&J knew since the late 1950's.  Considering that baby powder is, after all, used on babies and many parents are likely to become worried about whether or not this is an issue I feel it is a good idea to go over the evidence. The claim that J&J was hiding a carcinogen in their talc products is a pretty extraordinary one. And as Carl Sagan put it, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." It seems even more extraordinary when there are multiple scientists backing up J&J's claims of safety. So does Reuters have the evidence to back it? Sadly, it seems they do. The strongest piece of evidence presented are the reports from outside labs, as early as 1957, that show detectable amounts of asbestos minerals in the talc. The 1957 and 1958 reports ...

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume most everyone knows what asthma is. Basically, it is when you have a reaction that causes your lung airways to become inflamed, causing a decrease in lung function. Given the sudden onset of asthma attacks, the highly effective medications, and the necessity of, you know, breathing it never occurred to me that parents would ever dabble into woo where asthma was involved. Boy was I wrong. As I've mentioned, I'm a member of a local skeptic group. One of the members gave me an example she came across of a parent giving, frankly, wildly inappropriate suggestions for the treatment of an asthmatic child. We'll discuss those in a moment. First, lets discuss that which elicited the response. A parent was distressed that her child didn't seem to be improving with normal treatment. Additionally, she was concerned that her counter, "looked like a pharmacy." Now, given the time frame she provided and the lack of other medi...

My youngest son O will soon be turning one; a whole trip around the sun. As I prepare for the influx of sugary snacks, chiefly cake , I'm reminded of the common scapegoat of parents with hyperactive children, "Oh, must have been all that sugar she ate." In recent history, sugar has become somewhat of a boogie man. The media likes to portray it as the source of all our health woes: weight gain, diabetes, heart disease; the list goes on and on. The weight (pun intended) of sugar's importance on health is still somewhat debated within science (and a discussion for another day). It is clear that moderation (as with all things) is key. But one thing is for certain: it doesn't cause hyperactivity in children. Let's discuss the history of this myth. Near as I can tell, the myth began with the publishing of Feingold diet in 1973 by Benjamin Feingold, M.D. His diet advocated for the avoidance of salicylate, artificial food coloring, and artificial flavors as a...

One of the group's I'm involved in on Facebook is a parent support group for children with emotional and learning difficulty. I've only recently (at the time of writing) been actively interacting with the group for a little while but there's a clear leaning towards pseudoscience in some "therapies" for these kiddos. This is actually pretty understandable. Behavioral difficulties can become unmanageable really fast. And parents, most of whom don't have the training to cope (I'm lucky to have had classes via foster care training) can get unraveled really quickly. Even those trained, myself included, can become overwhelmed. It's a truly difficult and frightening thing to deal with. But this doesn't mean you should look to alternative therapies; quite the opposite. In my honest opinion, all that will do is waste time you could be spending finding a treatment plan that will actually help, and help long term. This brings me to the u...