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An infant is exposed to over one million bacteria proteins during birth so no, new borns does not "basically have no immune system". If that had been the case then all infants would die at birth. Calculations done point to infants having enough immune system to handle over 10000 vaccinations at a time: https://pediatrics.aappublicat...

While "19 vaccinations" sounds like a lot one have to understand that that very same child will be exposed to more than a million bacteria proteins during and shortly after birth so 19 is a drop in the ocean for an infants immune system.

When measuring the immune system of an infant Scientists have calculated that they can handle over 10000 vaccines at any one time: https://pediatrics.aappublicat...

Yeah, fucking with the brains of children to damage them psychological for life, not the same. Why is this different from paedophiles grooming children to exploit them, of course it is different the paedophiles do it to a child here and there, the corporations do it on a mass scale. They are actively promoting sex to children, why, what are the corporate executives after http://pediatrics.aappublicati..., https://www.uow.edu.au/~sharon....

How damning is that stuff, is profit all that psychopath corporate executives are after, they know, they full well know all the harm they cause. Not only do they not care but it seems very much like they want the outcomes. Are corporations mass grooming children for their corporate executives, so that those corporate executives can access and abuse those children after their databases have exposed the most accessible and exploitable ones.

This is starting to look real sick probably because it is real sick.

Here's a start; the lit review at the beginning is rather thorough.

Insufficient Sleep in Adolescents and Young Adults: An Update on Causes and Consequences

The association of early adolescent development/pubertal onset and a more evening-type circadian phase preference (ie, preferred timing of sleep and wake as well as daytime activities) has been documented since the 1990s.36 The behavioral result of this biological process is most clear in the timing of sleep, particularly for weekends. For example, Roenneberg et al37 measured the midpoint of weekend sleep in European schoolchildren and revealed a marked linear delay of 2 (girls) to 3 (boys) hours across the second decade, roughly 12 to 18 minutes later with each year of age. The reversal of this delayed weekend sleep pattern may be a “biological marker for the end of adolescence.”

Recent data have indicated that another process involved in regulating sleep timing seems to be altered to favor late nights across adolescent development. This process, called sleep–wake homeostasis, can be thought of as the system that accounts for greater pressure to sleep as one stays awake longer. Data collected with 2 different paradigms to estimate the rate of buildup of sleep pressure in prepubertal versus postpubertal adolescents indicate that more mature adolescents accumulate this sleep pressure at a slower rate.38,39

This observation is probably due to the fact that criminals (drug dealers, robbers etc) are more likely to end up shot or dead,

That explains all why the US accounts for 91% of gun related deaths of children under 14
http://pediatrics.aappublicati...

[citation needed]

Citation: Fruit Juice Intake Predicts Increased Adiposity Gain in Children

Citation: Reducing childhood obesity by eliminating 100% fruit juice

Citation: Fruit consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes

Citation: Intake of Fruit, Vegetables, and Fruit Juices and Risk of Diabetes in Women

Citation: Soft drink and juice consumption and risk of physician-diagnosed incident type 2 diabetes

>"The primary useful thing about smart guns is that they prevent your toddler from finding your gun and killing you, themselves, or each other. This happens all the time-- 1300 children get killed by firearms per year. [cnn.com] (alternate source [newsweek.com])(another story on the subject [cbsnews.com])."

Yeah, like let's analyze those numbers. That is 1300 "children" just being killed by firearms. Why not look at the SOURCE: http://pediatrics.aappublicati...

" among children aged 0 to 17" "Nearly 1300 children die[...]for gunshot wounds each year." "older children more often died in the context of crime and violence"

And here is the part of the study you need to speak about in regards to our topic with any meaningful force:

"6% were unintentional [accidental] firearm deaths (n = 82)"

So, the CORRECT number in this context is 82 per year. A mere 82, and that INCLUDES TEENAGERS 13 to 17 years old! Not 1300, not even CLOSE. Most of the rest is GANG VIOLENCE and there is NO EVIDENCE the gun was obtained, insecure, from their own house. Don't you love how the media can twice statistics around to make them sound like there is some horrible number of gun accidents that are killing our children?

If you look at actual statistics about "children" accidental deaths, firearms are not even hardly statistically relevant. It is all about suffocation, poisoning, drowning, motor vehicle accidents, falls, medical errors, etc.

"Smart" guns are a [non] solution looking for a problem that doesn't really exist. Instead, they will absolutely cause all kinds of unintended problems.

Why should they know better? Because when they were younger they had more examples of normal-weight kids around them. Their perceptions are like the frog sitting in a pan of progressively hotter water.

It's the same with kids opinions about their being overweight or obese. Many kids just don't see it. They think of obese as normal. And why wouldn't they - they see it everywhere now, so being overweight or obese has been normalized.

A fifth (20 per cent) had a BMI in the overweight category and seven per cent were categorised as obese.

Of these, around 40 per cent thought they were about the right weight.

And it's not getting better.

f parents are to be part of the solution to childhood obesity then parental recognition of overweight and obesity must be improved, they said. Dr Angela Jones, who carried out the study, said that part of the problem was that their had been a shift in what was considered "normal" weight in the last few years.

Only extremely overweight children were recognized as having a problem. The findings were mirrored by a study in the Netherlands which found three quarters of parents did not recognize their children as overweight and half of those with children that were obese.

Why do you think you're seeing all these ads now telling both adults and kids that they're perfect even if they're obese? And the whole "don't body-shame" thing? Shaming works. It worked with tobacco addiction, where smokers over the decades went from being normal to being pariahs, and nothing less will work with obesity. As long as everyone keeps pushing the message that it's okay, people won't feel the pressure to change. It's the "new normal."

Except that the treatment itself is gender reassignment, and it's effective. Example study:.

RESULTS: After gender reassignment, in young adulthood, the GD was alleviated and psychological functioning had steadily improved. Well-being was similar to or better than same-age young adults from the general population. Improvements in psychological functioning were positively correlated with postsurgical subjective well-being.

Example:

Results

A difference in SCL-90 overall psychoneurotic distress was observed at the different points of assessments (P0.003), with the most prominent decrease occurring after the initiation of hormone therapy (P<0.001). Significant decreases were found in the subscales such as anxiety, depression, interpersonal sensitivity, and hostility. Furthermore, the SCL-90 scores resembled those of a general population after hormone therapy was initiated. Analysis of the psychosocial variables showed no significant differences between pre- and postoperative assessments.

Conclusions
A marked reduction in psychopathology occurs during the process of sex reassignment therapy, especially after the initiation of hormone therapy.

Example:

Longitudinal outcome studies of gender dysphoric individuals suggest improved psychological functioning after gender reassignment treatment.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

You're wanting to withhold effective treatment, why exactly? Because it makes you uncomfortable? Is your identity or sexuality so fragile that you can't deal with existing in a world with transpeople, and as a consequence want them to remain untreated? Because that is the treatment.

It's quite true that transpeople have higher suicide rates than the general population both before and after treatment (although not the same before and after). But what exactly do you expect when dealing with family rejection, workplace discrimination, medical discrimination, parenting discrimination, huge medical costs that they have to bear unlike people being treated for almost any other condition (aka, they pay in their insurance premiums for other peoples' treatments but other people don't do the same to them) and (combined with workplace discrimination) correspondingly higher rates of homelessness, higher rates of sexual assault, higher rates of physical assault, pricks passing "bathroom laws" and the like, and general anti-trans assholery, e.g. like you find here at Slashdot?

The CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics cite numerous studies showing blankets increase the risk of death.

https://www.cdc.gov/sids/paren...

http://pediatrics.aappublicati...

Quoting American Academy of Pediatrics:
"It is important to note that a large percentage of infants who die of SIDS are found with their head covered by bedding. Therefore, no pillows, sheets, *blankets*, or any other items that could *obstruct infant breathing* or cause overheating should be in the bed."

"Soft objects,19,20,55â"58 such as pillows and pillow-like toys, quilts, comforters, sheepskins, and loose bedding,4,7,59â"64 such as blankets and nonfitted sheets, can obstruct an infantâ(TM)s nose and mouth. An obstructed airway can pose a risk of suffocation, entrapment, or SIDS."

AAP cites:
Hauck FR, Herman SM, Donovan M, et al. Sleep environment and the risk of sudden infant death syndrome in an urban population: the Chicago Infant Mortality Study. Pediatrics. 2003;111(5 pt 2):1207â"1214pmid:12728140

Fleming PJ, Blair PS, Bacon C, et al; Confidential Enquiry into Stillbirths and Deaths Regional Coordinators and Researchers. Environment of infants during sleep and risk of the sudden infant death syndrome: results of 1993-5 case-control study for confidential inquiry into stillbirths and deaths in infancy. BMJ. 1996;313(7051):191â"195pmid:8696193

Brooke H, Gibson A, Tappin D, Brown H. Case-control study of sudden infant death syndrome in Scotland, 1992-5. BMJ. 1997;314(7093):1516â"1520pmid:9169398

Kemp JS, Nelson VE, Thach BT. Physical properties of bedding that may increase risk of sudden infant death syndrome in prone-sleeping infants. Pediatr Res. 1994;36(1 pt 1):7â"11pmid:7936840

Kemp JS, Livne M, White DK, Arfken CL. Softness and potential to cause rebreathing: differences in bedding used by infants at high and low risk for sudden infant death syndrome. J Pediatr. 1998;132(2):234â"239pmid:9506633

And many more

According to the following studies, darker skin colors are are significantly associated with poorer vitamin D status and whites are 30% more likely than blacks and 50% more likely than Hispanics to be identified with Autism. These trends do not seem to support the hypothesis that vitamin D deficiency is a primary cause of Autism. http://www.medscape.com/viewar... http://www.aappublications.org...

If anything, CDC studies have shown that trying to educate many anti-vaxxers actually increases their anti-vax beliefs. After a certain point, all your doing is feeding into their conspiracy theory by trying to further educate them.

Doctors are telling us to keep our children away from peanuts, eggs, and various other foods until two years of age. Then we're supposed to introduce them one at a time, with a few weeks between to monitor results & possible outbreaks. Even if no one in the family has any such allergies.

I'm sure it's not just me, almost every friend across the US with kids in our approximate age range have talked about the same things. I wonder if the people who write this stuff are paying attention...

I have a five month old son, so I've been paying attention to this kind of thing. I've noticed that doctors' recommendations change every few years. My mom's generation was told to introduce rice cereal at six weeks, but now the recommendation is to start at about 6 months. We were also told to introduce at most one new food every three days so that if an allergy is discovered it would be easier to identify the cause.

Here is an exert from a 2008 statement from the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) :

Although solid foods should not be introduced before 4 to 6 months of age, there is no current convincing evidence that delaying their introduction beyond this period has a significant protective effect on the development of atopic disease regardless of whether infants are fed cow milk protein formula or human milk. This includes delaying the introduction of foods that are considered to be highly allergic, such as fish, eggs, and foods containing peanut protein.(View Report)

Most sources say to hold off until 8 months before introducing eggs and 12 months before introducing peanut butter. Of course this guideline will vary if family member is known to have allergies for a given food.

Also lots up upper middle-class white families with a good education. Poor tend to be under-vaccinated (poor access). The unvaccinated seem to have bizarre first world fears.

http://pediatrics.aappublicati...

So, I wouldn't look so strongly at Mexico, as I would at San Diego, which is the backyard of Dr Bob Sears and his Vaccine Book. He promulgates a non-evidence-based Alternative Schedule that more or less gives privileged white parents permission to be suspicious of the pro-science crowd. (See http://pediatrics.aappublicati... for cogent commentary on the same.)

With a panel of about 2000 patients, I've got more or less 0 vaccine refusers among my Mexican and Central American population, which correlates well with the Unicef data cited above.

Wrong wrong sadly wrong.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/02/25/peds.2013-2365

You can't reason with these people. Facts, emotions, whatever. You won't win.

Medical professionals have been saying for sometime now that you need to let a fever run it's course. To give an idea how much things have changed I once brought my child into the emergency room for a fever of 105.

I was then made to sign a piece of paper saying that I would not do so again for a temperature that low. Mind you this was the first time I had ever brought my child into the emergency room for a fever. Here's something from the Mayo clinic saying not to even take tyenol below a fever of 102

http://www.mayoclinic.org/dise...
http://pediatrics.aappublicati...

Parents have had another child for this same predicament

Do you have a link to that? I would like to see it.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/116/6/1506.full

Unexpected Increased Mortality After Implementation of a Commercially Sold Computerized Physician Order Entry System

Pediatrics Vol. 116 No. 6
December 1, 2005
pp. 1506 -1512
doi: 10.1542/peds.2005-1287

... and a quick Google search says your wrong.

The presence of lead or other heavy elements was not required for visualization. Fragments as small as 0.5 mm were easily detected if there was no overlying bone.

And a somewhat NSFW link with some glass objects that shouldn't be there.

Density makes a difference. It won't jump out like metal, but it should be visible. here are some examples and notes

On the subject of Irlen Syndrome:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/128/4/e932

Which isn't to belittle your brother's achievements, but my understanding of Irlen Syndrome is that it's quackery. They diagnosed both of my kids with Irlen, but the colored overlays made no difference to their reading abilities that I could detect. It's always a warning sign when a 'syndrome' is a registered trademark.

Anyway my outcomes will be better by having a gun.

Statistically speaking, you are more likely to kill yourself in moment of depression, a family member in the heat of anger, or a family member in an accident, rather than a criminal seeking to do you harm.

Fact: If you have a gun, everybody in your home is more likely than your non-gun-owning neighbors and their families to die in a gun-related accident, suicide or homicide.

Citation: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9715182
Citation: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/105/4/888.full
Citation: http://ajl.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/02/01/1559827610396294

Saying my argument is retarded is ignoring the clear and well establishing science. Rejecting the evidence with anger and namecalling does nothing to support your side that you will react with calm rationality in all situations, and never snap.

The American Academy of Pediatrics' issued a recommendation in 2001 that children under two should be discouraged from watching television at all: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/107/2/423.full

Research has shown primary negative health effects on violence and aggressive behavior7–12; sexuality7,13–15; academic performance16; body concept and self-image17–19; nutrition, dieting, and obesity17,20,21; and substance use and abuse patterns.7

Pediatricians should recommend the following guidelines for parents:

        Limit children's total media time (with entertainment media) to no more than 1 to 2 hours of quality programming per day.

        Remove television sets from children's bedrooms.

        Discourage television viewing for children younger than 2 years, and encourage more interactive activities that will promote proper brain development, such as talking, playing, singing, and reading together.
        [...]
        View television programs along with children, and discuss the content. [...]

        Encourage alternative entertainment for children, including reading, athletics, hobbies, and creative play.

Report of the task force on circumcision

Male circumcision for HIV prevention in men in Rakai, Uganda: a randomised trial

Just the first 2 links from scholar.google.com

Actually, I carry out research in the field of autism. There are certainly examples of unvaccinated children with autism--in some cases they are children of parents who have a previous autistic child, and who have bought into vaccine paranoia. These children manifest clear symptoms of autism around the same age as vaccinated children. There have also been studies that have looked at partially vaccinated children (who are considerably more common than completely unvaccinated children), and have attempted to correlate incidence of autism with number of vaccinations. No such correlation has been found

Mercury has now been gone from virtually all vaccinations for more than 5 years, with no evidence of decline in autism incidence, so the mercury hypothesis is no longer taken seriously by researchers in the field. Frankly, the mercury hypothesis was never particularly tenable, because the symptoms of autism do not really resemble mercury toxicity.

Yes, of course I'm aware that 72 hours, or even 2 weeks, after vaccination is a short time, but I was trying to keep the numbers conservative. If the diagnosis (or, if you prefer, the initial awareness of symptoms by the parents) occurs more than a month after vaccination, then the likelihood that the apparent correlation with time of vaccination is illusory, and actually due to chance, is greatly increased. Let's expand the "window" to 2 months (8 weeks) after vaccination. Then by the same simple arithmetic, we would expect purely by chance that over 600 children per year would have begun to exhibit autistic symptoms within this period after vaccination. If you allow 16 weeks, then the number will be over 1200, and so forth.

This explains why even a large number of anecdotal reports is not considered meaningful to those who understand the arithmetic of coincidence.

Intuition can seem very compelling, but it is not always reliable. Intuition is subject to the illusion of causality in much the same way that the eye can be tricked by optical illusions. Our minds are built to seek causality, and to perceive unusual events with proximity in time as related, even when they are actually coincidental. If an animal becomes ill after eating a particular food, it will avoid that food thereafter, even if they illness occurred by chance. If you have ever experienced this personally, you know that telling yourself that the illness probably occurred by chance will not shake your intuitive aversion to the "bad" food. So I understand and sympathize with the tendency of parents to seek some recent cause to explain why their child developed autism, and to seize upon vaccination with unshakeable conviction. It is because of this vulnerability of the mind that scientists have developed mathematical analysis to help them to avoid this kind of error.

Hah, thanks for the laughs.

I wanted to mention that homosexuality is not as "biologically stupid" as one might expect. A remarkably large number of gay/lesbian couples raise children*, and many of those are biological, though there's also an argument that adoptive parents benefit evolution of the whole species if not the parents in particular. Here's an article where the partnered lesbian author had a child with an also-partnered gay friend. Raising the kid is apparently mostly the mothers' job, but the guys do stuff too: "It's ironic to us that I'm legally classified as a single mom when our daughter has an abundance of parents."

*See this report from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is the mainstream American pediatrician's professional organization. It's slightly old; the data below is based on the 2000 census. Some relevant bits:

* ...the number of same-gender unmarried-partner households was 594691 in 2000 [ed: significantly undercounted; probably higher today too]
* Nationwide, 34.3% of lesbian couples are raising children, and 22.3% of gay male couples are raising children (compared with 45.6% of married heterosexual and 43.1% of unmarried heterosexual couples raising children).
* Six percent of same-gender couples are raising children who have been adopted compared with 5.1% of heterosexual married couples and 2.6% of unmarried heterosexual couples.
* Although adoption is commonly thought to be the only way that gays and lesbians become parents, there are many paths to parenthood. Some have biological children from past heterosexual marital and nonmarital relationships, and some pursue surrogacy arrangements or undergo in vitro fertilization or alternative insemination with donor sperm.

By the way, that report is extremely pro-gay marriage. Any time I hear a "think of the children" argument against gay marriage, I think of the pediatricians who studied the issue in depth and concluded that it is not only unharmful but indeed helpful to children to allow gay marriage.

CONCLUSIONS. Delayed cord clamping at birth increases neonatal mean venous hematocrit within a physiologic range. Neither significant differences nor harmful effects were observed among groups. Furthermore, this intervention seems to reduce the rate of neonatal anemia. This practice has been shown to be safe and should be implemented to increase neonatal iron storage at birth.

source: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/117/4/e779

For our son we picked "Lotus Birth": don't cut the cord at all but keep the child + placenta together for the time it takes. As for jaundice: it's common (as far as I know) for children to be a little "yellow" after birth. Exposure to a little sun light helps to break this down. Don't let your personal experience cloud your judgement, nor don't Google selectively.

Also, co-sleeping is not as deadly as you tried to make out in your other reply: SIDS happens as often in a cot, and I don't see you panic about a cot. Also, don't mistake co-sleeping for falling drunk or drugged in bed on top of your child, or sleeping on the sofa. See also: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/16/sudden-infant-death-syndrome-children?INTCMP=SRCH

Google "Jaundice", which can be a result of dumping too much blood into the kid.

That's the carp you hear from doctors who are unwilling to change the way they have always done things..
It's just that there is no study showing that. On the contrary. While there is no significant increase of jaundice, delayed clamping might lead to healthier babies a few months later and might give the baby a boost right after birth.

The effect of timing of cord clamping on neonatal venous hematocrit values and clinical outcome at term: a randomized, controlled trial.

Delayed Cord Clamping in Very Preterm Infants Reduces the Incidence of Intraventricular Hemorrhage and Late-Onset Sepsis: A Randomized, Controlled Trial

Late vs Early Clamping of the Umbilical Cord in Full-term Neonates

My suggestion:
read up on delayed cord clamping (decent sources, like parent-to-be-books from your local library written by MDs and maybe medical journals) and include it in your birth plan. With the money saved from cord blood banking buy something like this binary Infant Bodysuit

Is there any instance in which a person, as a newborn, had cord blood stored, and then used their own cord blood later in life?

I see that it has since actually been done once. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/119/1/e296

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/126/2/214.full

Not that will really satisfy anyone, because it doesn't come to a conclusion you like.

True. As I pointed out, lots of deadly poisons can be tolerated in extremely low doses. Strychnine and arsenic come to mind, for example, if you didn't like the more commonplace example of chlorinated water.

There are very few things that are not toxic at some dose.
Even pure water is toxic at sufficiently high dose.

False. Read the research again. "Quite rapidly" is when you pee out asparagus stench an hour after eating some. 120 days is not even slightly "rapid".

I've read the research. Elimination half-life of ethyl mercury is under a week. It is quite clear that it is rapid enough that bioaccumulation of mercury in vaccines is not a concern (which is the only way the exceedingly tiny amounts present in vaccines could conceivably pose any risk)

Still, if you like drinking small amounts of toxins, be my guest! It's extremely unlikely to do you any harm; people do it every day all over the world.

It's pretty much impossible to avoid. As noted above, water itself is toxic at sufficiently high doses even when absolutely pure. And of course, alcohol and formaldehyde (components of fruit juice) are toxic at high doses. With the use of highly sensitive assays, pretty much every toxic compound known to man, including mercury, can be found in drinking water at some level.

Glad you read the chapter!

By video game tech standards, it's pretty dated (2003), and they suspect that's part of the limited effect size. Looking for violence effects from games that involve killing the grey blob with your blue blob (a not-too-uncharitable description of 8-bit gaming) created a lot of earlier studies with a more limited effect size. It's less obviously relevant to real life than film or TV footage of real people committing much more realistic-looking violence. That's NOT the same thing as finding no effect--just a diminished effect. They provide citations to the best, most relevant lit to that point.

I'm not a violence effects researcher specifically (though I did my PhD at a school where everyone learns a lot about this work, and I’ve done a good bit of reading since then), so I'm not sure how estimates of effect size have changed over time. That said, the quality research in the last decade has only cemented findings of a causal effect with real-world significance. The experiments continue to provide further evidence of a causal link, and the correlational and longitudinal studies continue to find that these effects take place in the real worldnot just in laboratories.

Here is a not-necessarily-definitive list of a few more recent studies that are video game specific and come to the same conclusions:

1. Anderson, C. A., Gentile, D. A., & Buckley, K. E. (2007). Violent video game effects on children and adolescents. New York: Oxford University Press.

Obviously, buying or borrowing and reading a whole book is overkill. This contains a shortened version of the same findings:

2. Video Game EffectsConfirmed, Suspected, and Speculative: A Review of the Evidence
Bartlett, Anderson, & Spring (2008), Simulation & Gaming 42(1).

http://sag.sagepub.com/content/40/3/377.abstract

Here’s a relevant quote:

Aggressive behavior. Many methods and tools are used to measure aggressive behavior (see Bushman & Anderson, 1998; Ritter & Eslea, 2005, for a review of laboratory-based methods). Methods used to assess aggressive behavior range from observations of children at play (e.g., Schutte, Malouff, Post-Gordon-Joan, & Rodasta, 1988) to reports by oneself, teachers, parents, and peers (e.g., Anderson et al., 2007, Studies 2 and 3), to standard laboratory paradigms (e.g., Konijn, Nije, & Bushman, 2007). Results using these and other measures show strong support for the causal relationship between violent video game exposure and aggressive behavior. Overall, experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal studies have all found that exposure to violent video games leads to increased physical aggression (for comprehensive reviews, see Anderson, Berkowitz, et al., 2003; Anderson & Bushman, 2001; Anderson et al., 2004; Anderson et al., 2007). (p. 382)

3. Longitudinal Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggression in Japan and the United States
Anderson et al. (2008), Pediatrics 122(5). [Speaking of publication quality, the 2009 ISI citation analysis ranked Pediatrics as the 3rd most-cited of the 94 included journals in the pediatrics category.]

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/122/5/e1067

This is a longitudinal study of both US and Japanese youth. A significant result was found in these real-world conditions (for those of you who would dismiss experimental studies as failing to establish results that matter in the real world).

4.Correlates and Consequences of Exposure to Video Game Violence: Hostile Personality, Empathy, and Aggressive Behavior
Bartholow, Sestir, & Davis (2005), Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31 (11).

http://psp.sagepub.com/content/

Cannabis is an effective and non-toxic analgesic. Every medicine cabinet should have some cannabis extract for general aches and pains, insomnia, stomach upset, and many other mild ailments.

Many other mild ailments.. uh huh, like boredom? Never mind that it's habit forming as hell. ;) (And also never mind that the GP specifically mentions safety during pregnancy... lol).

Are you implying it's unsafe to use during pregnancy? Cannabis has been used for thousands of years, often as the sole analgesic given to the mother during childbirth. And guess what? It doesn't cause harm to the mother or fetus/baby. Don't take my word for it though - check out this study:

A total of 2964 infants was studied. At birth, 44% of the infants tested positive for drugs: 30.5% positive for cocaine, 20.2% for opiate, and 11.4% for cannabinoids. Compared to the drug negative group, a significantly higher percentage (P less than .05) of the drug positive infants had lower weight and smaller head circumference and length at birth and a higher percent of their mothers were single, multigravid, multiparous, and had little to no prenatal care. Within the first 2 years of life, 44 infants died: 26 were drug negative (15.7 deaths per 1000 live births) and 18 were drug positive (13.7 deaths per 1000 live births). The mortality rate among cocaine, opiate, or cannabinoid positive infants were 17.7, 18.4, and 8.9 per 1000 live births, respectively.

I realize that ONE study doesn't mean a whole lot, but those are pretty impressive results. Certainly something that needs to be looked into more. As for me - I use cannabis for everything from a headache to PTSD. Why? Because it WORKS. APAP, Ibuprofin, and other NSAID's have never been able to curb my headaches. I'm not certain about all NSAIDs, but I know APAP has been shown to cause liver damage. Why would I choose to use something that doesn't work and causes liver damage, when I can use a safe, effective medicine? As for the irritability, anxiety, nightmares, poor appetite, etc you talk about in another post - yes, I do experience those symptoms when I cease cannabis use. However, those are symptoms of PTSD rather than "withdrawal" symptoms.

Citations please? Someone has been watching too much Fidel Castro or something.

Really? You're not going to spend like thirty seconds on Google and consider your lack of familiarity with common knowledge to be a valid debating point? Your choice.

Food insecurity:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/101/1/e3
http://www.frac.org/html/hunger_in_the_us/hunger_index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/opinion/18wed2.html
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/129/2/510S

Medical coverage:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States
(Just follow the damned links.)

Education:

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnces.ed.gov%2Fpubs2005%2F2005021.pdf&rct=j&q=comparison%20of%20education%20in%20the%20united%20states%20to%20other%20countries&ei=9d-KTIjRBISdlgeC7KmsCQ&usg=AFQjCNHg2XP3uyuKjnED6uGl91FHXaS17g&cad=rja

I should also mention that the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration per capita on the planet, but I'll let you look that one up yourself.

-FL

That should be about the limit of technology your toddler should be exposed to. The American Academy of Piedeatricts actually discourages parents from letting kids under 2 watch television. I'm sure computers are the same.

A toddler aka my son is exposed to technology at least 5 hours a day. that includes an iPad, iPod (touch) TV, various computers & iPhones. ........ with no aftereffects!

That should be about the limit of technology your toddler should be exposed to. The American Academy of Piedeatricts actually discourages parents from letting kids under 2 watch television. I'm sure computers are the same.

There are absolutely no gay marriages that can build a proper family.

Really? Reality is disagreeing with you.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/peds.2009-3153v1
http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/parenting.aspx

If you can read German or Spanish, here's a couple more
1
2

I can link some more if you like.

ok please show me any scientific body of evidence that supports that vaccines cause autoimmune diseases.
I don't think you'll find any reputable sources. A vaccine is merely supplying your immune system with an antigen to provide immunity in the future. By your logic, any immune response, from anyting, might cause autoimmune diseases. You sound like you like Jenny McCarthys idiotic rantings.

This article backs up my point of view.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/111/3/653

Typically when people state "it is well known" about anything, it's that they have no citations for their point of view.

Worst case, it'll cause a stoke leading to paralysis or possibly death, best case, it'll actually be as good as for my back.

FTFY

Thanks to sFurbo below for the links:

Adverse effects of spinal manipulation: a systematic review

Adverse Events Associated With Pediatric Spinal Manipulation: A Systematic Review

Fuck... "plastic surgery" suggests my motivation was cosmetic. Not!

Cosmetic or not, with no real medical reason, you are altering someone's appearance. And as for the idea preventative surgery to remove an unnecessary piece of the body, why not take out his tonsils as well? That can be done without major surgery, which you obviously cannot do with the appendix.

"Amputation"? Seems like yet another charged word.

"Amputation is the removal of a body extremity by trauma or surgery"
[...]
"The word amputation is derived from the Latin amputare, "to cut away""

Foreskin certainly looks like an extremity to me. It's not very large, true. And it's attached to an extremity, but if you get the distal phalanges removed, it's still an amputation, and it's an extremity attached to an extremity (the finger), attached to an extremity (the hand), attached to an extremity (the arm).

But let's look at what the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics says on the subject:
Page 4: "and amputation of the foreskin"

But hey, doctors always use charged words that aren't the proper description of their procedure. That's why they call it baby-murder instead of an abortion.

There have been corresponding declines in the diagnosis of mental retardation.

If anything there has been a huge increase. They just call it different things - autism, down syndrome, middle management, liberal arts...

There have been corresponding declines in the diagnosis of mental retardation.

Where the heck do you live, Alaska? The temperature inside a parked car in many locales can soar well over 120 F in direct sunlight with the windows raised. In fact, 150-200 F has been recorded. And cracking the windows open 1.5 inches does essentially NO GOOD AT ALL.

Summer Temperatures Make a Car a Potential Oven
American Physical Society: Temperature Rise And Heat Buildup Inside A Parked Car
Direct measurements documented
Pediatrics: Heat Stress From Enclosed Vehicles: Moderate Ambient Temperatures Cause Significant Temperature Rise In Enclosed Vehicles

...isn't it a medicinal fact that they reach puberty earlier than say.. 20 years ago?

Eh... its a hypothesis. There is strong evidence that in the U.S., girls begin puberty earlier than a generation ago, as measured by breast development or change in height, but their first periods are not earlier [2001]. And while environmental and social factors may have an effect, these are small compared to individual variation [2003], and there does not seem to be a change in onset of puberty in Europe. A sure way to delay puberty, though, is to be malnourished.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/118/1/349 provides an in depth study. that took all of two minutes to find via google, if the hordes of anecdotal reports over time have not been high in your conciousness.

Scroll about halfway down to the PSYCHOSOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GAY AND LESBIAN PARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN section, and you'll find that children raised in such contexts are normal, normal, normal across the board. they quote study after study after study looking for problems and finding none, none, none and none.

Just recently a bill was passed to stop a chemical from being put into children's toys, however there is no evidence that it is actually harmful in that amount. And is being replaced with new chemicals that could be just as bad, if not worse.

You're probably talking about pthalates, a common plasticizer. Their ban was enacted just two days ago. (Feb 10th)

There are compelling arguments for their ban from infant toys.

You can't exactly buy a few dozen infants well-controlled LD50 testing, let alone long-term developmental monitoring. Welcome to science.

Hurray for progress! I feel a much stronger bond to infants than I do to a plastic formulation, so this seems like progress to me. That being said, you can rip my BPA containing Nalgene out of my cold dead fingers.

You get finger/foot printed at birth. The FBI recommends it. Not sure if it is mandated by law, but it could be on a state/local level - if not on a fed level. Great if your kid gets kidnapped.

This reference is over 20 years old, but at that time only New York state required footprinting for newborns. Hospitals often take footprints so they can identify babies if they get mixed up, but the efficacy is questionable. If you have a new source showing that finger- or foot-printing of newborns is required in any other state, please, present it.

Certainly if a permanent record of an infant's fingerprints is made and given to the police or FBI, that would be a significant incentive toward home birth.

As long as the police are not giving this to my insurance company so they can deny me insurance then I am down for it. I don't break the law.

You never break the speed limit? Never had a beer before the age of 21? Never made love in an unsanctioned way (better check your local laws on that!)? Never made a copy of a CD for a friend? Never "forgot" to mention that $20 gift on your income tax forms?

We all break the law.

And the law can change tomorrow. If a law were passed that required all Americans of Iraqi ancestry to report to concentration camps tomorrow - as it did for Japanese Americans in the 1940s - I hope that you would resist it in every way that you could.

Never, never, never, never confuse following that law with doing what's right.

Did I mention that I have a two-month old? Sorry if I made the world more stupid, but I had about five minutes in between changing a diaper and going to work. I figured I could either spend an hour digging the journal articles we found out of a drawer where they've sat for 6 months and then typing them in verbatim, or I could just summarize what we found. Sorry that the latter option wasn't enough. Luckily my beautiful daughter keeps me happy and prevents flaming on my part. Here are a few journal articles and other info:
Cord Clamping and Intraventricular Hemorrhage
Cord Clamping and Postnatal Cerebral Oxygenation
Cord Clamping and Iron/Anemia
I would post more, but I would rather go and play with the kid.

Did I mention that I have a two-month old? Sorry if I made the world more stupid, but I had about five minutes in between changing a diaper and going to work. I figured I could either spend an hour digging the journal articles we found out of a drawer where they've sat for 6 months and then typing them in verbatim, or I could just summarize what we found. Sorry that the latter option wasn't enough. Luckily my beautiful daughter keeps me happy and prevents flaming on my part. Here are a few journal articles and other info:
Cord Clamping and Intraventricular Hemorrhage
Cord Clamping and Postnatal Cerebral Oxygenation
Cord Clamping and Iron/Anemia
I would post more, but I would rather go and play with the kid.

Did I mention that I have a two-month old? Sorry if I made the world more stupid, but I had about five minutes in between changing a diaper and going to work. I figured I could either spend an hour digging the journal articles we found out of a drawer where they've sat for 6 months and then typing them in verbatim, or I could just summarize what we found. Sorry that the latter option wasn't enough. Luckily my beautiful daughter keeps me happy and prevents flaming on my part. Here are a few journal articles and other info:
Cord Clamping and Intraventricular Hemorrhage
Cord Clamping and Postnatal Cerebral Oxygenation
Cord Clamping and Iron/Anemia
I would post more, but I would rather go and play with the kid.