Hello world and welcome to my (hopefully) very informative blog!
Well, due to a combination of my incredibly short attention span and some giant mosquito bites on my feet (trust me, they’re HUGE distractions), I’m updating on Sunday night. There was much itching, but at least now my feet smell like flowers after covering the bites in lavender oil. It DOES work people! Oh hey, what I brilliant segue into out assignment on Conventional and Alternative medicine! (kinda, hur hur)
How goes my research? Well, I’ve been doing some research on vaccinations. It’s a very interesting topic for me, but it’s tough to not be biased. I have never been immunised, and don’t plan on it if I can avoid it. My mum has done a lot of research on them and doesn’t like them. That’s a bit of an upside though becuase I have quite a number of books to use for reaserch.
- ‘Vaccination and Immunisation: Dangers, Delusions and Alternatives (What Every Parent Should Know)’ by Leon Chaitow
- ‘Vaccination’ by Viera Sceibner
- ‘Vaccination Roulette: Experiences, Risks and Alternatives’ by the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN)
- ‘Vaccination; The Right Choice?’ by Maureen Hickman
Yeah, I know those all sound terribly biased (except for ’Vaccination’ by Viera Sceibner, that’s just a history of vaccinations) but I of course have also been using internet sites. Here is all the research I have gathered so far:
A definition of conventional and alternative medicine.
- Conventional: “Conventional Western medicine is organized around the Theory of Diseases, which believes that a person becomes sick because he or she contracts a disease. In this model, each disease is seen as an independent entity which can be fully understood without regard to the person it afflicts or the environment in which it occurs. Conventional treatments are treatments of diseases, not of people. Most of the drugs employed in conventional medicine are designed to act as chemical strait jackets, preventing the cells of the body from performing some function that has become hyperactive.”
It seems that this sort of medicine can have quite a lot of nasty side effects, in fact “A Harvard research team concluded that 180,000 Americans are killed in hospitals by their doctors every year.” This is apparently due to the doctors treating the disease and not taking a close enough look at the patient to see if environmental and other factors could make prescribing the certain drug a bad idea. I was a bit surprised by that, I mean I already knew that vitamins and stuff could be better for a cold than some cold medicines and things like that, but I had no idea that the death toll was that high! And that’s just in America, I wonder what it is worldwide… I might look that up later.
- Alternative: “All alternative systems of healing, ancient or modern, share one common characteristic which separates them from conventional Western medicine. They all approach sickness as a dynamic event in the life of an individual, a problem of balance and relationship, the result of disharmony between the sick person and his or her environment. This approach to understanding illness is called biographical. In the biographical concept of illness, the “disease” itself has no independent reality. The healer’s job is not to identify and treat the disease entity, but to characterize the disharmony of each particular case, so that they can be corrected. These disharmonies are described differently in different cultures.”
Well, at least that tells me why when I feel sick my mum tells me to cut down on salt and eat more fruit. I think the idea of alternative medicines appeal more to me than that of conventional, but maybe that’s just the way I was brought up. *shrug*
Vaccinations:
What is a vaccine?
- ”Vaccines are medications that are designed to stimulate the body’s immune system to generate a response that will protect the individual from disease by the pathogen in question.”
- “Vaccines work by preparing a child’s body to fight illness. Each immunization contains either a dead or a weakened germ, or parts of it, that cause a particular disease.”
- An interesting fact about vaccinations is that if you get the jab, you do not have guaranteed immunity, there is even a chance that the vaccination itself could make you sick (albeit a very small one and it’s impossible unless the disease in the vaccination is just weakened or modified, not dead) and there are whole lists of possible side effects for all vaccines. That’s not to say vaccinations don’t work, they do and there are a lot of people out there who have benefitted from immunisation as well as those who haven’t.
Pros
- Vaccinations decrease the chance of contracting a certain disease.
- Peace of mind; if you get the vaccination you may be less worried about the disease.
Cons
- There are many side effects and some people can be allergic to certain vaccines.
- Peace of mind can be a bad thing, it’s a bit like letting your guard down I guess. Like I said before, immunisation doesn’t guarantee immunity (the name is perhaps slightly misleading…) so you may be unprepared if said disease is contracted.
~Interesting fact!~
There was a general downward trend in death rates and incidence of measels, mumps, whooping cough and rubella before vaccination was even introduced. This suggests that better hygene, sewerage, handling and improved nutrition were mainly responsible.
[according to 'Vaccination; The Right Choice?' by Maureen Hickman, pg 9]
Unfortunately, this is all I have time for tonight. I will be adding to the pros and cons as well as some more interesting facts in the very near future. This assignment has been so much fun so far, I can’t wait to see our final result. I think this is going to be one of the best projects I’ve ever done!
Over and out!
Beth
