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