"When many cures are offered for a disease, it means the disease is not curable" -Anton Chekhov
''Once you tell people there's a cure for something, the more likely they are to pressure doctors to prescribe it.'' -Robert Ehrlich, drug advertising executive.
"Opinions are like sphincters, everyone has one." - Chris Rangel
Small Things Considered: Watch out for those rubber ducks (requires subscription). They may look innocent, but they have as many germs as an Asian bird:
It is widely documented that toys, particularly shared toys (such as those in day-care centers and doctors' waiting rooms), can be reservoirs of infection. It is also well established that polluted water is an important reservoir of infection of many kinds. A neighbor of mine, a toddler, had diarrhea due to giardia infection, and one of the antecedent events was the swallowing of several gulps of stagnant water squeezed from a bath toy in an outdoor wading pool.
There's also this experience from an Australian pediatric cancer ward.
