Mason had his first immunizations.

A few days ago Cindy drove Mason to the local health unit.

She walked into the nurse's office and chatted about breast feeding and babies. The nurses like to talk.

The nurse pulled out three long needles and jabbed them into Mason's leg.

He screamed.

The nurse advised tylenol or advil. Then they waited in the office for another 15 minutes or so and chatted, while the nurse watched Mason out of the corner of her eye to make sure he didn't have an allergic reaction.

Cindy brought Mason home where he was grumpy all day and demanded that you walk around while holding him. He screamed the instant you sat down.

The body heals itself.

Whenever I hear things like:

"Your body naturally heals itself."

"Your body is wise."

"You can't fool your body."

I think, really? If our bodies naturally heal themselves then why for 99% of human history did we die of sickness in our 30s?

All we ate was organic food and we still got sick and died young.

We exercised all day performing manual labour and we still died young.

We had natural medicines and tons of faith in God and we still got sick and died young.

Today we live longer than ever. We've eradicated many horrible diseases. We have the best quality of life in all of human history...

And yet the media still tells us every day how we're getting sicker and fatter and more unhealthy.

All of this does not compute.

It doesn't make any logical sense. It would be like if, during the next 20 years, humans grew to be 12 feet tall and all these giant humans talked about was how short they were and how they were shrinking and how bad it was that they were getting smaller. It makes no sense.

The problem with medical tests.

Here's why you shouldn't put much stock into medical tests.

Example 1:

Let's say that you are an average couple and you want find out if your child-to-be will have Down syndrome. The doctor tells you that there is a test with 95% accuracy. You take the test, and it's positive for Down syndrome. Now, how worried should you be?

To begin with, the chances were approximately 1 and 500 that your child has Down syndrome. This means that out of every 1000 people born, 2 will have Down syndrome.

Now let's give these thousand people the test mentioned above, which is 95% accurate. It turns out that 50 will be tested positive for Down syndrome. But we've just seen that only 2 actually have Down syndrome. This means that they're still only a one out of 25 chance that your child has Down syndrome, which is only 4%.

In other words, if you are a typical pregnant couple, and you take a medical test for Down syndrome which is 95% accurate, and you test positive for Down syndrome, there is a 96% chance your kid does NOT have Down syndrome. Does that make sense?

Example 2:

Let's say that you already have a child with Down syndrome, and therefore the chance is 1 in 100 that your next child will have Down syndrome. You take the test mentioned above and it comes out positive.

(This means that for every 100 people tested, there will be five false positives, and one true positive. This means your chances of having a child with Down syndrome would be one out of five, or 20%.)

In other words, if you are a couple in a high-risk category, and you take a test for Down syndrome which is 95% accurate, and it comes out positive, there is an 80% chance your child will NOT have Down syndrome.

Now how valuable do these medical tests sound?

I haven't come across people who trust the swine flu vaccine.

When did we stop trusting vaccines?

I've only come across a few people who've said categorically that they're going to get the swine flu vaccine.

(Mind you, I haven't asked a lot of people - so this is very small sample. Still, with the eradication of small pox and other old fashioned diseases, you'd think people would WANT to get vaccinated from swine flu.)

Part of this distrust toward vaccines has been because of the faulty science of the purported link to autism.

People also say stuff like, "I never get sick and as soon as I got the flu shot, I caught the flu." They're suggesting that the flu shot either gave them the flu or made them more susceptible to the flu.

A few weeks back my Mom sent me an article that basically said the scientists developing the vaccine are bumbling idiots who have no idea what they're doing.

And you can read lots of articles that say things like, "The swine flu vaccine in the 1970s killed more people than the flu itself."

Okay, but how many people did it save?

No vaccine is 100% effective. And all vaccines carry risks. But - the benefits far, far outweigh the risks. Or so I'm told.

I don't know anyone who has smallpox.