Now they generally recommend not using a microwave for baby food, because people too often would forget to stir it before feeding the baby.
There's actually a number of ways to make your parenting life a bit easier if you dig past why you're getting certain bits of advice, then take action based on the underlying facts rather than the resulting "official advice" suitable for parents with an IQ of 90 (and I do not mean that as a joke in the slightest, they are real, and I don't really begrudge the official "advice givers" for the resulting advice). Cough medicine in particular was a real life-saver for us one week when I dug into why we couldn't use it. It turns out that just about the only reason not to give it to your two-year-old is that somebody else ignored the clear directions on the label and either gave them too much or used it on purpose for the sleep-inducing side effect. Solution: Don't do that.
Regarding cough medicine, the issue appears to be effectiveness. Most doctors now recommend honey for babies (older than one) as it actually appears to be as effective. See: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/honey/AN01799
There have also been studies that show that cough medicine may simple have the placebo effect. Unless there are allergies or other conditions, honey just seems like the better choice.
Part of the problem here is that if you type it all out it sounds horrible. In reality, the world is not as dangerous as an Internet debate can make it sound. Type out the full description of what's involved in walking down the stairs and you'll make an emotionally-appealing for banning them ("my god, any one muscle fails to work and you can fall to your death!"), but it has no correspondence to reality. In my judgment, I am not even remotely endangering my kids in the real world. You are welcome to your opinions, but in my opinion turning my judgment over to others is itself not a good judgment.
"There have also been studies that show that cough medicine may simple have the placebo effect."
Right. Kid goes from a hacking cough that kept him awake for three nights straight to fast asleep (and resumed coughing the next day & night, so "he just got better at the same time" isn't on the table either) and it was all placebo, for a kid who can't even talk yet. Sure.
Honey's an interesting thought which I may consider, except that there's no evidence that cough syrup is a problem, except vague nervousness because there haven't been any "scientific studies" on the topic. However I consider the abundant real-world experience that preceded the hand-wringing about it not being "properly" studied to trump it; on the scale of evidence scientific studies are not the highest good, the real world trumps it (which is actually a core tenant of any decent theory of science, any theory of science missing that isn't worth anything), and it was extremely widely deployed for a long time before some people got nannyish about it. If it were noticably bad, we wouldn't have to theorize, we'd know. (At best it can have a small below-the-noise-floor effect; widespread experience can't prove 0 bad effect but it can and does put a rather low upper bound on it.)
(In fact I'm rather strongly of the opinion that there are numerous real-world examples in the field of medicine and nutrition in which science has "studied" itself into wildly wrong beliefs that nobody would have taken seriously but for the failures in the scientific process and the misapplication of its authority, and as much as I love science and wish I didn't have to do this, I've really deprioritized science in this area.)
Stairs are fairly dangerous for some people. Our neighbors child has fallen down their stairs three times, and only on the last one did he even need a trip to the hospital. He'll be fine. And probably between the age of three to 85 he's not in any serious danger of falling again. But that's an aside.
The real point is that many of the recommendations may not apply to you. That's fine, don't follow them (especially when it comes to your child... that's one place where you have extreme flexibility). But they are meant to apply to a large population, and I don't think IQ is the best metric to apply to determine if you're in that population.
Regarding cough syrups, I suspect you are familiar with the various studies, but I'll pass this along for those that aren't: http://www.cfp.ca/cgi/content/full/55/11/1081
From the article:
"The US National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance program reported that OTC CCM preparations were responsible for 7091 visits to emergency departments (EDs) during 2004 and 2005 in children younger than 12 years old. This represented almost 6% of total ED visits related to medication. Of these cases, 66% were due to unsupervised ingestion. A quarter of cases were due to properly administered medications with undesired outcomes. Eight times more children presented with effects of medication errors related to OTC CCMs compared with other medications. While children aged 2 to 5 years represented the largest group in this study, children younger than age 2 had the highest rate of adverse reactions.8 Providing further evidence of the ED burden related to OTC CCMs, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 1519 patients younger than the age of 2 were treated in American EDs in 2005 for problems related to OTC CCMs.
The true prevalence of OTC CCMs in pediatric illness might be underreported. Physicians might not consider the role of such medications in various presentations, such as apparent life-threatening events (ALTEs). Pitetti et al reported 13 out of 274 (5%) patients presenting with ALTEs had evidence of OTC CCM use on toxicology testing.10 This raised concern about the potential role of OTC CCMs in ALTEs and led the authors to conclude that toxicology screening should be performed in all cases of ALTEs. "
In fact I'm rather strongly of the opinion that there are numerous real-world examples in the field of medicine and nutrition in which science has "studied" itself into wildly wrong beliefs that nobody would have taken seriously but for the failures in the scientific process and the misapplication of its authority, and as much as I love science and wish I didn't have to do this, I've really deprioritized science in this area.
Science doesn't have the truth. It has the best theory for the data at the time. But I do think in general that I trust "scientists" more than the mom trying to convince me that SIDS doesn't exist from first principles.
I lived a rough and tumble childhood, and I'm better for it... but that's just lunacy.
Me neither, but I've found that taking fifteen minutes to clearly specify the exact thing I mean has a pretty bad payoff. As shorthand goes, it's fine. This is HN, not a medical journal.
And there's a world of relevant difference between SIDS doesn't exist vs. cough syrup does what it says on the tin. This is another thing that's damned easy to do on the Internet, blur lines between various fuzzy things, but also has no relationship to reality. No, I am in fact not denying the Holocaust by thinking that the evidence suggests that cough syrup actually does work.
That is the exact logic people use to say that vaccines cause autism.
Again, let me reiterate, if it works for you, that's great. There are people who appear to be largely immune to HIV. For them unprotected sex carries little risk of AIDS. But an isolated statement about a single person is only an isolated statement about a single person. That one person has great advice, but its not generalizable w/o more information.
Ah, you're making a critical error, which is frequently made by people. There can't be a control group. This is real life, not a science experiment. It is not possible to life your life in the realm strictly covered by science.
By far the dominant theory from a Bayesian perspective is that the kid had a cough (abundantly demonstrated from evidence), that the thing called "cough syrup" worked as designed, and that once it wore off the cough returned. There is no science here. We can no go back and "rerun" the experiment. The use of science terminology to attack my experience is actually a deep, deep perversion of the principles of science. The tools are completely inapplicable.
Unfortunately, it has become abundantly clear that again from a Bayesian perspective, reading a medical paper about something like cough syrup in toddlers and expecting it to contain Unvarnished Truth is not justified.
I'm not using science to attack your experience. I've tried to say several times, and in many different ways, if it works for you great.
BUT I am using science to say that you haven't made a scientific statement. You've made a statement about your son in a specific instance. That's it. And that's fine. As you say, that's your experience. But that's about all you can say.
(Incidentally, the same appears to be true of Benedryl, for what it's worth.)
I think your detectors for anti-scientific crackpot triggered, which I understand because someone who actually deeply understands science and its limits can accidentally trigger them sometimes where the science is particularly iffy or thinner than advertised.
In any case, lets not be these ladies if our kids ever do have a party together:
http://www.hulu.com/watch/223360/saturday-night-live-corn-sy...
Although if we were these ladies, who would be who?
Hear, hear. There's a highly effective headache medicine called Midrin which has been pulled from the market because the FDA demanded proof that it was effective, and it wasn't profitable enough to be worth doing the studies. It predates the law that required medicines be proven effective (as opposed to just safe), so it was grandfathered...for about four decades. Four decades of patient experience (plus however long it was on the market before that) ought to be enough to say, yes, this stuff does work.
>the real world trumps it (which is actually a core tenant of any decent theory of science,
"Tenet".
Here's something I don't understand. In some cultures, honey is the _first_ thing they give to a newborn. Out of the womb, into the doctor's hand, and the first thing they give the newborn is honey. I don't know why in the US they prohibit honey.
Because unpasteurized honey can contain botulism spores. It's a small enough quantity not to bother an older stomach, but infants can die from it. I guess pasteurized honey is safe, but doesn't taste very good.
My question is: why in the world would you give a newborn infant honey? I can't imagine the logic that says, "hey, a baby just popped out of a vagina, let's get some honey into that sucker, stat!"
Look at the population of India. Do you think the "botulism spores" have caused any damage?
Compare the rates of allergy in the US (for instance) and India. When I was in India, I hadn't even heard of something called "allergy". And in the US, it's all around.
Besides the obvious, "YES!", what effect does your statement have on the fact that American babies have died from botulism spores found in raw honey?
Have you verified that, of Indian infants who died, all were tested for botulism?
I suspect you haven't, and it sounds like maybe you're just ranting about the tangential subject of cleanliness and allergy. But hey, maybe a few dead babies and some hookworm (42.8% infection rate) is better than popping a Claratin.
So the data is not there for an "advanced" country like Canada; what are the chances that there's such data in India?
Do you have any references to back up your _fact_ that babies have died from botulism spores that definitely _came_ from raw honey?
Here's a good paper on infant botulism: http://www.iss.it/binary/publ/cont/ANN_09_20_Fenicia.pdf
From this you'll see that things are not very black and white. It's understanding a relatively rare condition w/ imperfect data.
In fact, some 25% of the population is 89 or below. No reason to treat that as a joke, really.
As always, pay attention to how the child reacts, too.
You still need to stir, because microwaves can heat unevenly.