Amy Parker grew up with super health-conscious parents who provided her with a healthy diet and active lifestyle. But they also didn't vaccine her and she was sick all the time as a kid.
As healthy as my lifestyle seemed, I contracted measles, mumps, rubella, a type of viral meningitis, scarlatina, whooping cough, yearly tonsillitis, and chickenpox. In my 20s I got precancerous HPV and spent six months of my life wondering how I was going to tell my two children under the age of 7 that Mummy might have cancer before it was safely removed.
This is the part that really gets to me: Parker wasn't vaccinated but was given so many antibiotics for her childhood illnesses that she became immune to them! [Hair-tearing-out noise]
My two vaccinated children, on the other hand, have rarely been ill, have had antibiotics maybe twice in their lives, if that. Not like their mum. I got so many illnesses requiring treatment with antibiotics that I developed a resistance to them, which led me to be hospitalized with penicillin-resistant quinsy at age 21 -- you
21-youknow, that old-fashioned disease that supposedly killed Queen Elizabeth I and that was almost wiped out through use of antibiotics.
Update: Slate has corrected the passage above, taking out the part about Parker's resistance to antibiotics. It now reads:
My two vaccinated children, on the other hand, have rarely been ill, have had antibiotics maybe twice in their lives, if that. Not like their mum. I got many illnesses requiring treatment with antibiotics. I developed penicillin-resistant quinsy at age 21 -- you know, that old-fashioned disease that supposedly killed Queen Elizabeth I and that was almost wiped out through use of antibiotics.
People do not develop antibiotic resistance, microorganisms do. I regret the idiotic error and tearing out my hair. (thx @chrismize)
Tags: Amy ParkermedicinevaccinesWatch this demo. Ignore the silliness and focus on the quality and content of this demo. To me, this is a huge step forward in bringing forward thinking technologies from the lab and niche apps into the mainstream. The interesting stuff comes in at about 1:20. The app is called Playroom and is built-in to the PS4. The down side is that it requires the PS4 camera (a $60 add-on).
The cynics among you will dismiss this as a ploy to sell the camera (the Xbox One equivalent is included in the box). Perhaps. But no matter the motive, this is still some mighty cool tech.