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 "