Category: – Western Medicine

Jane Hansen and Junk Food Journalism – My Meal with the Media

Liane Mandalis
by Liane Mandalis

I first met Jane Hansen when she approached my daughter and I in a shopping mall in 2013 to take part in a story she was compiling for the Sunday Telegraph on babies. We appeared in the feature: ‘100 babies born in 100 days’ not long after.

A year later her colleague Claire Harvey interviewed me as part of a follow up feature looking at the first year of life for this group of babies and their families. I was told that these responses would appear in a similar format to the original article, again in the Sunday Telegraph. Jane Hansen then called wanting some more details regarding what I had said to Claire about vaccination.

Confused by her piqued interest, I explained it was nothing more than a change of heart from what was initially an extremely anti vaccination stance to a more open one. I explained that I had come to the awareness that immunisation was not the ‘big, bad thing’ that I originally thought it to be and that there was a lot of fear mongering and misinformation in our community from both sides. Continue reading “Jane Hansen and Junk Food Journalism – My Meal with the Media” →

From Resistance to Embracing Western Medicine

by Angela Perin, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Up until a few years ago, I had been a strong supporter of alternative medicine and its various modalities, including ‘new age’ or ‘spiritual’ therapies and techniques. In fact, I considered alternative medicine to be the answer, or to hold the primary solutions and methods to healing illness and disease. When an illness or condition presented with myself or within my family, this is what I turned to, and actively pursued.

Although I grew up with some understanding and use of Western Medicine (to the extent that I did have occasional visits to the local community nurse and saw a doctor on a handful of occasions during my childhood), it was not a big part of my awareness or experience. In my late teens through to my early 20’s, and as a general outcome of my immediate family taking more of an interest in health, I began to become more interested in alternative medicine and therapies (which included general lifestyle changes such as the incorporation of organic food, supplements, regular exercise etc.). Continue reading “From Resistance to Embracing Western Medicine” →