Abortion, Text Messaging and Free Speech

Verizon changes course on censoring text messages after it becomes the focus of a front-page article in the New York Times.Like a lot of other advocacy groups, NARAL wanted to keep in touch with like-minded folk by allowing them to sign up for short text messages. But when the abortion-rights group talked to Verizon about setting up such a service, the telecom giant balked. Abortion is just too

Let Them Eat SCHIPs

Nobody likes to read boring stories, which is why most of us skip articles about healthcare policy. Unless, of course, they have to do with children, especially sick children.And so the avalanche of recent news articles and blog posts about the current fight between Congress, the Adminstration and various states of the Union over the State Children's Health Insurance Program have made for

What Do Colds Have to Do With Obesity?

Not much. It's silly season again with all the reports that a viral infection may make some fat cells fatter. Some journalists--or their editors--apparently couldn't resist headlines that suggest that you can "catch obesity." No doubt visions of anti-fat vaccines are dancing in their heads.Here's a clunker, by Roger Highfield, Science Editor of the U.K.'s Telegraph: "Being Fat May Be Catching, A

Lead Kills Whether in Toys or Jewelry

Say what?! It's against the law to put lead in toys but the U.S. still does not ban lead in jewelry. Lead-containing trinkets are particularly dangerous if swallowed since that can lead to acute lead poisoning, resulting in seizures, brain damage and even death.Under growing public pressure, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is now considering adopting a ban on lead in children's

On the Road

There's going to be little or no posting for most of the rest of July. I'm heading off to South Africa in a few days, courtesy of the Kaiser Family Foundation, for a traveling seminar on HIV/AIDS. After that, I'll do some of my own reporting and traveling. I'll try, if I can, to post while on the road, but no promises.So, in the meantime, check out some of my favorite health blogs:Aetiology Just

What's a Few IQ Points Between Sisters?

Just because you can measure that something is different doesn't necessarily mean that you've learned anything meaningful. That's my take on the latest study that purports to show that, as a group, first-born children tend to have a slightly higher IQ or intelligence quotient than their younger siblings. The IQ difference, reported in the research journal Science, was only 2.3 points (where 100

Drug-Resistant Bugs Much More Common

Antibiotic-resistant infections are ten times more common than previously thought, according to a new study from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control & Epidemiology (Chicago Tribune). And you don't have to be an inmate in a jail or a hospital patient to be at risk. Although jails and hospitals have been hot spots in the past, dangerous super bugs like methicillin-resistant

More Sloppy Headlines on Parkinson's Disease

What's wrong with these headlines--one from HealthDay News and the other from ABC News Radio?First Gene Therapy Trial Effective Against Parkinson's and New Parkinson's TreatmentA reasonable person would conclude that there's a new treatment involving gene therapy for Parkinson's disease. In fact, the study in question, which was just published in the research journal Lancet, was not even designed

Incarcerex Spoof Parodies Drug Ads

Nothing like a parody to highlight the very stylized way pharmaceutical advertising evokes our anxieties. Whatever you think of the war on drugs, this video spoof touting the made-up drug Incarcerex nails the images and tones commonly used to hook consumers.Want more? Check out last year's video on "motivational deficiency disorder" from Australia. A clever spoof that's almost too subtle about

Consider the Source

Why do scientists hate journalists so much? They're counting the ways over at Tara Smith's Aetiology blog. She definitely struck a nerve with her post asking fellow academics how they handle press requests. Lots of vitriol in the responses, especially about being misquoted (understandable) and a strong belief that journalists mostly stand in the way of good communications.I have a quibble or two

Condom Ads Don't Fly at CBS, Fox

Check out trojanevolve.com for the condom commercial that Fox and CBS think is too unseemly for your innocent eyes and ears. Although both networks had previously accepted ads that highlighted a condom's ability to prevent the transmission of the AIDS virus, according to The New York Times, they balked at airing a commercial that focused on a condom's ability to prevent pregnancy.Okay, so the

Vaccines, Autism and Conflicts of Interest

The Boston Globe was far too subtle in disclosing Paul Offit's conflict of interest in a recent op-ed piece about vaccines, according to Ed Silverman, a New Jersey journalist who blogs about the pharmaceutical industry at Pharmalot. The Globe described Offit as the inventor of a particular vaccine but didn't make it crystal clear that as such, he would stand to lose financially if an upcoming

Covering Global Health Meeting

I'm in Washington, D.C., attending the annual meeting of the Global Health Council. I'm giving a talk at the media luncheon tomorrow. (Update: here's a link to my talk on covering global health news.)Will post more items from the conference on my other blog, www.globalhealthreport.com (The link was broken earlier but now it's fixed.)

Super Bug Rages Through Chicago

Paying attention to poor people's health is not just a worthy humanitarian goal, it could also save your own life or that of someone you love. Judith Graham has a chilling story in the Chicago Tribune about how a drug-resistant skin rash is spreading rapidly through the poorest parts of Chicago. Caused by the methicillin-resistant staph aureus (MRSA) bacteria, the rash is potentially fatal--

Nieman Fellows in Global Health are Named

I'm pleased to report that yours truly, Christine Gorman, has just been named one of three Nieman Foundation Fellows for Global Health Reporting at Harvard University for the class of 2007-2008. The other two global health journalists are Ran An (China) from China Newsweek and Andrew Quinn (United Kingdom) from Reuters.We'll be joining 27 other Nieman Fellows who will be exploring such

Warning on Tomatoes and Prostate Cancer

Photo: C.P. Storm/Creative CommonsBad news: lycopene, an anti-oxidant found in large quantities in tomatoes, doesn't prevent prostate cancer.Worse news: Beta-carotene might actually increase the risk of developing an aggressive form of prostate cancer, according to a study published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention.So men can stop stuffing themselves with tomatoes in

Warning on Vitamins and Prostate Cancer

Men who take too many vitamins may (or may not) increase their risk of developing an aggressive form of prostate cancer, according to preliminary evidence published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Of the dozen or so articles I've read about the study, the best is by Liz Szabo in USA Today.Right up front, Szabo lets you know that even if the suggested link turns out to be true,

Stupid Headline Award (Oral Sex Category)

The "award" for worst headline of the week goes to The Register in the U.K. for its recent article titled "Oral sex could be more dangerous than cigars." This craven attempt to titillate readers deliberately mis-characterized the results of a recent study about oral cancer in the New England Journal of Medicine.Making matters worse, Lewis Page, the author of the Register piece, goes on to say

Cigarette Ads Snare Teens as Well as Adults

We all believe we are more immune to the effects of advertising than we really are. That's one of the reasons why ads for cigarettes work so well. Never mind the ads in magazines or the so-called product placement of cigarettes in movies. A study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine showed that even the display ads found in stores increase the chances that younger teenagers who

Trace Amounts of Melamine May Be in Fish, Too

And now we learn that farmed fish may have been fed melamine-contaminated meal. This is quickly shaping up to be the worst food scandal since the the "mad cow disease" debacle of 1996.We keep learning a lot more than we wanted to know about how domesticated animals are fed.Ten years ago, the general public discovered that cows were fed cows' brains as a matter of course. Now we're learning all

Vigorous Exercise: More Real-Life Examples

Andy Ness from the University of Bristol in England has pointed me to some more real-world examples of vigorous, as opposed to mild or moderate, exercise: hiking, rowing, dancing, bicycling 10 to 16 mph.You can find more examples of vigorous exercise at the Healthful Life website, published by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.Ness recently co-authored a scientific paper that

Businessman Arrested in Pet Food Scandal

With the arrest by the Chinese government of a local businessman for allegedly contaminating pet food ingredients with the industrial chemical melamine, the current food safety scandal has taken another turn--from the assumption of accidental contamination to growing evidence of deliberate behavior, from contamination of pet food to possible contamination of human food.Ever notice how a

How To Think About Hormones and Dementia

How old a woman is when she takes supplemental hormones may determine whether it helps to protect her against developing dementia later in life, according to a new analysis of data from the Women's Health Initiative that was presented at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting in Boston.Readers of this blog will immediately note the "Mighty May" and will mentally rewrite the news as "

Is Sleeping in Bed Harzardous? Not!

Most people die in bed, the NIH's Dr. Jacques Rossouw said yesterday while the two of us were waiting to participate in a media panel on communicating complicated nutrition science. That doesn't mean that beds are hazardous to your health.We were talking about how easy it is to draw the wrong conclusion from studies that detect a link or association between two different--and yet objectively

Seminar: How the Press Covers Nutrition

Interested in how the media covers nutritional issues? I'll be one of the panelists this Sunday afternoon at a session of the big Experimental Biology annual meeting in Washington, D.C.Not sure if any of it will be available on the Web, but I'll be sure to summarize the experience in a future post. Later Sunday evening, I'll be accepting an award from the American Society for Nutrition for my

Connecting the Dots on Food Safety

The best health articles, like the one Ariana Eunjung Cha wrote in the Washington Post Wednesday on the ongoing pet-food crisis, typically touch on the theme that you can't be healthy in isolation. What others do affects how healthy you are, just as what you do affects others.Eunjung Cha connects the dots that link "food safety in China" to "food safety in the U.S." through the story of the

Just What is Vigorous Exercise or Play?

Ever since a March study highlighted the importance of moderate-to-vigorous play in keeping children from becoming overweight or obese, several readers have wondered how to decide what exactly is moderate or vigorous exercise.The simplest method, if you don’t have an actigraph or access to a physiology lab, is the talk test.If you can easily sing while exercising, that’s a light level of

Ethanol or Gasoline: Which is Better for People?

What's good for the planet may not be so great for people, according to a Stanford University comparison of the health effects of gasoline and ethanol. Atmospheric Scientist Mark Jacobson performed a complex computer simulation that determined that if more cars ran on ethanol--which is supposed to reduce the number of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere--there would be a small but significant

Focus on Domestic Violence in Virginia Tech Shooting

Students, journalists and others are asking why more warning wasn't given after the first shooting at the Virginia Tech campus took place Monday morning. A few hours later, more than 30 people were dead. The response by university officials tells us a lot about how domestic violence is perceived across the U.S.Here's how Sue Lindsey of the Associated Press put it: Virginia Tech President Charles

Nail-Gun Injuries Triple: How Much Does it Matter?

Injuries from nail guns--those handy high-powered tools that propel nails into wood and, unfortunately, other objects like your body more easily than a hammer--have tripled among do-it-yourselfers over the past sixteen years, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control. And just so you wouldn't have to guess about the numbers, Dan Childs of ABC News reported that that means visits

Do Blogs Influence People in High Places?

And if so, can they work for positive change in social and government policy? Or are they just another echo chamber for scandal, gossip and rumor?Those are some things I'll be talking about at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on April 24, 2007. The event is being sponsored by Forum One Communications, a tech-saavy communications-and-strategy firm in Alexandria, Virginia.Here's the

Genetic Tests Not Helpful for Predicting Heart Disease

There's no proof that most of the genes that researchers have linked to an increased risk of heart disease do in fact cause heart disease, according to a comprehensive new analysis of the data, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). This conclusion deserves a lot more attention than it's getting in the mainstream media because it reveals one of the major

Choosing Between A Healthy Diet And A Weight-Loss Diet

The word "diet" is the source of a lot of confusion in health stories. Sometimes it's about restricting your food intake to lose weight. Other times, it's about your regular food habits and their effect on your health. And sometimes it's about both. Not knowing the difference could lead you to an early grave.A couple examples: a recent UCLA study concludes that dieting to lose weight leaves most

Sloppy Headlines on Parkinson's Disease

Here's a catchy headline that's guaranteed to get your attention: "Smoking and Caffeine May Protect Against Parkinson's Disease."It was written by the good folks at the Duke University press office. But it does a disservice to anyone who has Parkinson's disease, or cares for or loves someone with the neuro-degenerative condition.To make matters worse, it gave journalists permission to use

Gone Fishing

Will be posting again on April 9.

Update on Elizabeth Edwards

From the American Cancer Society:"The survival statistics on the American Cancer Society Web site and in Cancer Facts & Figures apply to a woman who presents initially with a stage IV breast cancer, not a woman who has a recurrence after primary treatment. The outlook for a woman who walks into the doctor's office with metastatic disease is significantly worse than for a woman, like Mrs Edwards,

Price of Contraceptive Pill Soars on Campus

Prices for birth control pills on college campuses are doubling and tripling thanks to a complex change in Medicaid rules.Justin Pope of the Associated Press has done a little digging and found the reason why the price of birth control pills has gone up on college campuses. As he explains:"The change is the result of a chain reaction started by a 2005 deficit-reduction bill that focused on

Using Customized Search to Target Original Documents

I've created a customized search engine that favors results from original documents in medical journals, government sites and a few carefully selected (and labelled) blogs. Give it a try--it's on the right-hand side of this blog (used to be in the upper-right corner). I think you'll find it returns top-quality results with fewer distractions.Using a regular search engine often brings up sites

Breast Cancer: What Betty, Nancy And Now Elizabeth Have Taught US

See update below.Democratic Presidential hopeful John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth today announced that her breast cancer has returned and spread, or metastasized, to her bones. While most media outlets considered the political implications of such news, it's important to consider the human consequences as well.Elizabeth Edwards, 57, has Stage IV breast cancer. The average five-year

Lots of Juice Linked to Obesity

We're constantly being bombarded by messages about health--like this photo I snapped of the side of a truck, advertising the POM brand of fruit juices and tea. Notice how the "O" in POM is shaped like a heart. Must be good for you--right? After all, fruits are good for you; they're full of anti-oxidants and all that good stuff.But fruit juices are also full of calories. Sixteen ounces of POM (480

The Stress of Writing About Stress

Now it can be told. Back in January when I wrote "Six Lessons for Handling Stress" (TIME issue dated Jan. 29, 2007), I was under a tremendous amount of pressure myself. I knew layoffs were coming and I was seriously considering leaving the magazine to pursue other projects.So I actually used the tips I was researching to try to keep myself sane. I can tell you that the three I found most helpful

Vigorous Play Keeps the Pounds Off

Are fat people fat because they don't exercise enough? Or do they not exercise enough because they are fat? These questions are actually tougher to answer than you might suppose, as a study from the U.K. in the open-access journal PLoS: Medicine makes clear.Investigators found that moderate to vigorous physical activity in a group of 5,500 12-year olds was associated with a lower risk of obesity.

How Doctors Think

And now for a bit of shameless self-promotion. My review of "How Doctors Think," a new book by Dr. Jerome Groopman of Harvard Medical School, is in the current issue of TIME Magazine (the one with a photo-shopped image of Ronald Reagan crying).I don't recommend many books but this one is definitely worth your time. It looks at the kinds of mental traps or cognitive errors that can lead a

This Blog is Banned in China!

The ban may not extend to all of China and there are ways to get around it, but what a surprise this morning when I typed the url "www.thehealthmediawatch.com" into the search box on greatfirewallofchina.org, a new website that allows you to check if sites are censored in China.The message I got back was "Your URL is Blocked!"Was it something I said? Or just the fact that I want my readers to be

Black Men, Tuskegee and Prostate Cancer

Difficulties getting health care, not lack of information or education, explain why black men fall behind on treatment for prostate cancer, according to a new study in the research journal Cancer. Distrust of medical personnel, while significant, was also not a factor.Whenever journalists try to explain why black people often distrust doctors in the U.S., someone is bound to bring up the

Seeing is Not Necessarily Believing

People trust television over what they read in print. Is that because they have the illusion of witnessing the event firsthand--as opposed to relying on someone else's description? And yet we know images can be manipulated just as much as words--and I'm not talking about faking here. Camera angles, music, production values and the like influence our perceptions as much as the adjectives, verbs

Why Do You Trust The Web?

A British study suggests that web users looking for medical information avoid many high-quality sites in favor of those with a more personal look and feel. But doing that could prove harmful to your health. Drug companies often have the most accurate information about their products and stodgy government sites are typically worth their weight in gold.Readers of this blog may get the impression

Why Chocolate is Not a Health Food--Sigh

I've always loved chocolate--especially dark chocolate. But the recent flurry of stories that chocolate could be some kind of wonder food leaves a bad taste in my mouth. This falls into a category of stories that journalists love to report and consumers love to read: Hey, what you think is bad for you is actually good. (And let's not forget another closely related category: what you think is good

Who Is Really Behind Your Health News?

It's official. Video news releases are now contaminating health news as well.VNRs (also called "fake news spots" and no, we're not referring to Comedy Central's news spoofs) are pre-packaged videos that are made to look and sound like a television station's own news spots but that have been produced entirely by outside organizations like PR agencies, non-profit groups and other institutions.Trudy

Atkins vs. Ornish vs. Real Life

The best recap I've read of the new study showing that women who tried to follow the Atkins diet lost slightly more weight in the course of a year than those who stuck with three other diet plans comes from Denise Gellene at the Los Angeles Times. In it she zeroes in on this salient fact:Lead author Christopher D. Gardner, a Stanford University assistant professor of medicine . . . said he

How to Be Healthy in an Unhealthy World

Always be on the lookout for the unwritten messages in health. At first glance, this ad for Special K from a New York City street corner looks like just a promotion for a breakfast cereal. But it's really also pushing personal responsibility. Your health is in your own hands. You've got to make the resolution to be healthy. And if you're not healthy, it's your own fault.Trouble is, it's very hard

Sex Sells--Just Don't Talk About It

We have no trouble watching glamorous women suggestively stroking gleaming automobiles in television ads. So explain to me why doing something about a sexually transmitted disease that causes cancer is so controversial.A new vaccine against the most dangerous strains of the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV)--which is the ultimate cause of nearly all cases of cervical cancer--is now available and some

Why 68 Vitamin Studies Are Better than None

Not all scientific studies are created equal--a fact that most reporters don't make note of in their stories. The recent study from Europe that concludes that taking vitamins may be harmful to your health is a perfect case in point.It's not really a new study--in the way most of us think of studies. The investigators, lead by Dr. Goran Bjelakovic of Denmark, did not recruit thousands or hundreds

Concussions May--Or May Not--Be Bad For You

The mighty "may" strikes again. This time Dr. David C. Viano, of the National Football League's research committee on concussions, used a form of the word to hedge a dubious argument that concussions suffered by high school football players may not be as serious a health concern as is generally thought.Here's the relevant section from a New York Times article by Alan Schwarz (March 1, 2007):. .

Vitamins May--or May Not--Shorten Your Life

Lots to chew on in a recent study that concludes that taking vitamin supplements may shorten your lifespan. Look at how much is hanging on that single word “may.” Vitamins may shorten your life--or they may not. The researchers and the journalists writing about the study are definitely hedging their bets.The closer you look at health stories, the more you realize that “may” and other hedge words

How Money Affects Results in Breast Cancer Studies

Breast cancer studies funded by pharmaceutical companies are more likely to report positive, or beneficial, results than those funded by government or non-profit organizations, according to a new report in the Journal Cancer. That doesn't necessarily mean that the results are wrong, as Amanda Gardner points out in the Washington Post. You would expect drug companies to have a better track record

More on Vitamins and Pregnancy

One of the hardest parts about writing health stories is figuring out what to leave out. Last Friday I wrote a post that focused on prenatal vitamins and the risk of pediatric cancer. Although the vitamins reduced the risk of some cancers by 50 percent, I calculated that that was not a huge change because the absolute risk of getting cancer in childhood is so low."But isn't taking vitamins during

Vitamins Reduce Cancer Risk--Relatively Speaking

A new study shows that women who take multivitamins and folic acid during pregnancy reduce the chance that their baby will develop some childhood cancers by almost 50%. Your first question on reading this should be "50% of what?"In other words, you want to know what the absolute risk of developing pediatric cancer is. Then you can figure out whether a 50% reduction (the so-called relative risk)

Treating Herpes May Prevent HIV Transmission

Everyone takes shortcuts--even medical researchers. That's not necessarily a bad thing. After all, where would we be if Christopher Columbus hadn't decided to take a shortcut to Asia? Hmm, maybe that's not the best example.The point is that the best health-and-science journalists, like Alice Chang of the Associated Press, tell you right away when scientists are taking shortcuts.Chang reported on

Premature Babies and Happy Endings

Readers sometimes wonder whether journalists allow their politics or their advertisers to influence how the news is covered. But I've noticed a different bias over the years in coverage about extremely premature infants. Call it the bias in favor of a happy ending.Take, for example, the opening sentences from Monday's article by Erika Beras in the Miami Herald under the headline "Miracle Baby

Women and Heart Disease

You've got to understand risk if you want to stay healthy. Why do women fear breast cancer more than heart disease? As a group, women have a 4% chance of dying from breast cancer vs. a 38% chance of dying from heart disease. But because women are less likely than men to develop heart disease in their 40s, they (and their doctors) often assume they don't need to worry too much about cardiac

Autism Gene Is Found--Or Is It?

Headlines are often major sources of error. The Canadian Press just ran a story under the banner "Autism Gene Found." Trouble is, if you read the CP story, or the scientific study in Nature Genetics on which it was based, it's clear that no single gene--or even collection of genes--for autism has been found. Instead, researchers scanned genetic samples from 1,400 carefully selected families with

Welcome!

We learn a lot about our health from the media--books, magazines, television, radio and the Internet. But you can't always trust everything you read, hear or see. I should know. I've written about health and medicine for more than 20 years--mostly at TIME magazine. This blog is aimed at evaluating health stories in the media, identifying the good, the bad and the ugly and helping you to be a