Explanation: This news story introduces readers to arthroscopy as a treatment for hip pain. It explains what the procedure does and the theoretical basis for its potential benefit. But the story fails to mention costs or potential harms, and cites expert testimony in lieu of evidence. In brief:  Costs and Harms: The story mentions neither. Although harms appear to be uncommon, readers should have some sense of their relative frequency and severity. Evidence: the story says that hip arthroscopy can “fix” acetabular labral tears and femoroacetabular impingement. And yet it fails to describe the quality of the evidence to support this claim. There are virtually no high-quality clinical studies to support the treatment. The story also mentions that diagnostic imaging can be unreliable, and suggests that some doctors can pinpoint the diagnosis better than others. But recent literature reviews show that standard diagnostic techniques in use today (imaging and clinical examination) can not accurately or consistently identify the source of pain in people with hip complaints. Readers should understand that when diagnostic techniques are imprecise, people may receive treatments they don’t need or not receive treatments they do. Quantification of Benefits: The story provides no quantitative estimate of benefit in the short or mid term. A surgeon contends that in the long term, “hip arthroscopy may be a way of delaying or even possibly preventing hip arthritis.” News stories should carefully evaluate such claims. In the April 2009 issue of Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, editor Richard Brand,MD, concludes a commentary by saying, “While current [hip arthroscopy] procedures clearly relieve pain and restore function and to a lesser degree restore motion in large portions of patients, we do not know whether these procedures will delay the development of osteoarthritis in middle age and beyond.” (Clin Orthop Rel Res 2009;467:605-7)    Sources: The story quotes two surgeons who perform a substantial number of hip arthroscopies. Testimony from a trusted independent source who is not an advocate would add balance.

The story does not mention the cost of hip arthroscopy or other methods to treat labral tears and femoroacetabular impingement (FAI). The story provides no quantification of benefit. The anecdotal evidence of long-term benefit provided by one surgeon–that “hip arthroscopy may be a way of delaying or even possibly preventing hip arthritis”–is controversial, and viewed with skepticism by many experts. (Clin Orthop Rel Res 2009;467:605-7)  The news story fails to mention potential harms of hip arthroscopy. A recent review suggests the rate of complications for all indications is “generally less than 1.5%.” (Clin Orthop Rel Res 2009;467:760-8) Various sources suggest complications include: scuffing of the articular cartilage and chondral surface from instrument breakage and inadequate distraction (separation of the femoral head from the hip socket); iatrogenic dislocation; nerve damage (sciatic, superior gluteal, lateral femorocutaneous); removal of too much labral tissue; removal of too much bone, thus weakening the bone and causing a fracture; damaging the blood supply to the femoral head, leading to avascular necrosis; temporary numbness of the perineum or foot (a distraction neuropraxia); and scrotal necrosis. Although an expert says that the procedure is meant to prevent future arthritis, this is not quantified; without good data on people who did not have the procedure, it is conceivable that arthroscopy could promote arthritis. The story does not mention any evidence or attempt to describe the quality of the scientific literature on this topic. A recent systematic review described the quality of the literature in this area as “limited.” The authors found no clinical trials and no studies with a prospective design that investigated treatment for labral tears and femoracetabular impingement. (Arthroscopy 2008;24:1135-45) The story does note that imaging is unreliable, and suggests that some doctors can make the diagnosis in spite of these limitations. But recent reviews have pointed out that the standard diagnostic techniques used today are not reproducible and can not accurately or consistently identify the source of pain in people with hip complaints. (Clin Orthop Rel Res 2009;467:666-75; Arthroscopy 2008;24:1013-18)  Hip pain can be very uncomfortable and occasionally disabling. The story does not over hype the problem or medicalize a normal human variation. Although it suggests that labral tears “can lead to osteoarthritis,” it doesn’t provide a complete picture of the natural history: do the symptoms ever go away on their own, even if the pathology doesn’t? In addition, there is no mention of how common the problem is and how many of these procedures are now being performed. The story includes interviews with two surgeons who perform a substantial number of hip arthroscopies. But the story should also include testimony from a trusted independent source who is not a proponent. The story briefly mentions rest and physical therapy, and implies that they do not work, but it is hardly a balanced discussion. Also, the story does not mention open surgical procedures, the historical “gold standard,” which can also restore the normal clearance that separates the femur and hip socket. There is no discussion of the relative benefits of the newer procedure compared with the options–and no mention that there do not appear to be any clinical studies comparing treatments. The news story explains that orthopaedic surgeons are performing increasingly more hip arthroscopy procedures, and are taking increasingly more courses to learn how to do them. Readers are likely to correctly infer that the procedures are commonplace in some centers around the U.S. and less common in others. The story provides accurate information on the novelty of the treatment and its growth in popularity over the past 15 years. The story cites two sources and does not appear to rely solely or largely on a news release.


Locks of Love sells most donated hair for profit and charges ailing children exorbitant amounts for wigs.

Explanation: The charity auditing page Charity Navigator rates Locks of Love favorably, with a total score of 92.7 points out of 100. On the aspect of accountability Locks of Love scored 92 out of 100, with more than 92% of the charity’s expenses allocated to program costs. Less than 7% of expenses went to administrative costs and salaries, and CEO Linda Borum’s most recently listed salary (for fiscal year 2015) was a modest $64,866.

In 1997, a longtime sufferer of alopecia areata founded the now popular charity Locks of Love to provide children who suffer from hair loss due to medical conditions with high-quality wigs and hairpieces. And since at least 2005, Internet-based rumors have circulated claiming that the vast majority of hair donated to Locks of Love is resold to make commercially-vended wigs, that the charity provides very few free hairpieces relative to the volume of hair donated each year, and that most of those wigs aren’t made actually available to children with cancer. Many critics have claimed that children lucky enough to receive wigs were charged exorbitant prices and made to endure a rigorous screening process:  Today I got a HUGE surprise! As I was preparing our Baby Girl Shiloh’s hair to send to Locks of Love some of my wise friends informed me that they charge patients for their hair and not to give them Shiloh’s hair. Me: I asked, “patients with cancer? That we are donating hair to?” Friends: “Yes! Could charge them $1000.00.” So I just called and talked to Locks of Love and sure enough they charge people for the hair that is being donated to them!! Me: “Y’all charge? People with cancer? My 9 year old is giving u her hair!” Lady: Well, depending on how much money the family has …” Me: “Wow. Thanks, have a great day!” Recently I cut off a little over 11 inches of my hair and was interested in donating it to an organization who would make good use of it. Hair donation is important because it costs approximately $1,800 for a complete hair replacement. Locks of Love is one of the most popular groups for hair donation but after research I was highly disappointed. They use less than 1/3 of the hair they receive from donations. They should not be considered a charity but a for-profit business because they do not give hair to those in need, they SELL it. Not only do they make children pay for their wigs, but they make them jump through hoops just to receive one. They are known to deny wigs to children with dim prognosis’ because they would not get enough use from the wig. I looked for other organizations after reading about Locks of Love. Pantene Beautiful lengths is a non-profit charity that accepts hair 8″ and longer for donation, their hair replacements go to adults. Wigs for Kids is another private non-profit group that specializes in hair replacements for children. Doing your research before donating anything is extremely important because you don’t want to help empower corrupt “charities”  Before examining such rumors, we have to consider the scope of a charity like Locks of Love. Hair donation charities have a primary function of raising money and providing hairpieces to people who suffer from chronic hair loss, but their secondary purpose is rather unique: while contributing to most other charities requires available cash, Locks of Love enables anyone who can grow healthy hair to contribute. Because of the relatively low barrier to participation, Locks of Love and similar charitable entities remain popular among children and youth groups seeking to engage in good works. While hair donation is a particularly accessible form of charitable service, the ease of contributing has triggered skepticism and the fear that well-intentioned kids are being hooked and crooked for their good deeds. In the March 2015 Facebook post quoted above, the author claimed that Locks of Love only used a third of donated hair to craft wigs and sold the remaining two thirds to commercial hairpiece makers. Locks of Love themselves say that as much as 80% of donated hair isn’t used to make hairpieces directly, but according to that organization and the wigmaker with whom they work, most donated hair cannot be used because it does not meet the necessary criteria for making hairpieces: But although charities have been highly effective at stirring the passions of donors, they have been less successful at finding a use for the mountains of hair sent to them as a result. As much as 80 percent of the hair donated to Locks of Love, the best known of the charities, is unusable for its wigs, the group says. Many people are unaware of the hair donation guidelines and send in hair that is gray, wet or moldy, too short, or too processed, some of which is immediately thrown away. Even hair that survives the winnowing may not go to the gravely ill, but may be sold to help pay for charities’ organizational costs. Locks of Love sends the best of the hair it receives to a wig manufacturer, Taylormade Hair Replacement in Millbrae, Calif., which weeds through the selection still further, rejecting up to half. “We hate throwing it away but ultimately we have to clear the place out,” said Greg Taylor, the president and owner of Taylormade. “There is a disparity between the hundreds and hundreds of braids and ponytails and the number of hairpieces we’ve produced.” The interview quoted above (which took place in 2007) made mention of the sale of hair to keep the charity running. However, such an admission is not necessarily suspect. As explained earlier, the charity functions in part to convert a resource nearly all can provide (hair) into a usable product for children in need. If that need is aided by selling some donated hair to fund manufacturing costs and the charity’s organizational needs, the charity’s primary goal (acquiring and providing hairpieces to children) is still being served. Locks of Love’s web site addresses the matter of wig costs to recipients, noting that hairpieces are provided free to families who lack the means to purchase them. For others, the hairpieces are available on a sliding scale of prices depending upon their ability to pay: “We provide hairpieces and repairs free of charge or on a sliding scale based on the financial need of those responsible for the children.” Also at issue is the matter of who the primary recipients of wigs are. One aspect of rumor states that children with cancer were not primary candidates for Locks of Love, another thing the charity itself has frequently explained: Most of our recipients suffer from alopecia areata. Others have experienced hair loss from radiation therapy and chemotherapy, severe burns or trauma, and various other genetic and dermatological conditions. While those looking to donate hair may prefer their donations help cancer sufferers, Locks of Love was founded by and operates primarily for sufferers of alopecia. This focus of the group does not constitute any subterfuge or lie by omission, as some rumors insinuated. The Locks of Love FAQ also addresses the sale of hair: Hair that is short, gray, or otherwise unusable will be sold to help offset manufacturing costs. Locks of Love DOES NOT throw hair away unless it is wet and moldy or not bundled in a braid or ponytail when it is received. Earlier rumors about Locks of Love claimed that the organization failed to account for a vast quantity of donated hair:  Human hair, especially Caucasian hair, is a valuable commodity. And Locks of Love admits it does sell some of the hair, it just can’t say how much. “We can’t figure out where that goes,” said Kent Chao. He runs Nonprofit Investor, a watchdog group that analyzes charities from a business perspective for potential investors. So they are more detailed than your typical charity watchdog. But when he made those requests to Lock of Love, Chao said, “They indicated that Locks of Love does not count, track or keep lists of any hair donations they receive.” “The missing pieces of information are actually fairly significant,” said Marc Owens, the former director of the tax-exempt division of the IRS. He said the charity’s 990 tax filings show a “program service revenue” of nearly $580,000. But there is no explanation or breakdown. “There are just so many omissions, that it’s hard to say for certain that any of the data on the return is accurate,” he told KPIX 5. However, a number of factors were elided in that report. The value of donated hair when applied to actual hairpieces provided to children relied on a projection, not actual processing and manufacturing costs. Also, Locks of Love must account for their incoming and outgoing expenses each year in tax filings. If the group truly trafficked heavily in black market hair, significant discrepancies would arise in their accounting books. Despite the organization’s admitted lack of record-keeping in respect to hair received (for which there is no clear monetary value), any significant revenues from the sale of hair would have appeared on their ledgers as income.


More than 100,000 women in Texas "have attempted to self-induce abortion in the past year alone.

On the opening day of the Virginia General Assembly, abortion rights advocates held a news conference to urge lawmakers to sign a "statement of intent in support of women’s health and rights." Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, said it’s time to stop an avalanche of abortion restrictions that have been approved in Virginia and across the nation during the past five years and that she said are threatening women’s health. "Recently, research out of Texas revealed that due to the rapidly declining number of women’s health centers in that state, over 100,000 women - 100,000 women - have attempted to self-induce abortion in the past year alone," Keene said. "This is what happens when you shame and degrade women," she added. "You encourage hateful, violent rhetoric and attack the fundamental rights of women." We wondered whether her jaw-dropping figure - more than 100,000 Texas women in one year attempted self-abortion - is correct. Keene referred us to a November 2015 report by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Texas, a research group that focuses on the impact of the state’s reproductive laws. The organization conducted a survey of 779 Texas women ages 18 to 49 in December 2014 and January 2015. When the participants were asked whether they "ever" tried to end a pregnancy on their own, 1.7 percent said yes. The researchers were concerned that some of the women might not be willing to admit they’ve tried to self-abort. So they also asked each participant whether her best friend "ever" tried to end a pregnancy by herself. The response: 1.8 percent said they were "sure" their best friend had done so, and another 2.3 percent "suspected" that had happened. The researchers concluded that the proportion of Texas women who have tried to self-abort falls somewhere between the 1.7 percent who said they did so and the 4.1 percent who said they either were sure or suspected their best friend had tried. That converts to somewhere between 100,000 and 240,000 women ages 18 to 49 in the Lone Star State. Again, this is an estimate of the women who tried "ever" in their lives to self-abort. Keene makes a significant error in saying the research shows that more than 100,000 of the incidents occurred "in the last year alone." The timing is important, because a number of pro-abortion groups are linking the study’s figure to a series of abortion restrictions Texas enacted in 2013. The state banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy; required abortion clinics to meet the same standards as hospital-style surgical centers; and mandated that a doctor have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility where he or she performs abortions. "Definitely, the timing of most of the self-induced abortions is not connected to the legislation," said Daniel Grossman,who headed the research team. He told us he plans to continue surveying Texas women. "To make any estimate whether self-abortion goes up because of these laws will take years to study," Grossman said. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge from reproductive rights groups that the laws block constitutional rights to an abortion. More than half of the 41 abortion clinics in Texas have closed since 2012, just before the legislation was introduced. The researchers noted that self-abortion rates are likely to be higher in Texas than in the rest of the nation, in part because of its shared border with Mexico where Misoprostol, a drug that effectively can end pregnancies, "is often available in pharmacies without a prescription." Other methods reported by those who said they knew someone who attempted a self-induced abortion included herbs or homeopathic remedies; getting hit in the stomach; using alcohol or illegal drugs; and taking hormonal pills. Our ruling Keene said that "due to the rapidly declining number of women’s health care centers" in Texas, more than "100,000 women have attempted to self-induce abortion in the past year alone." She’s wrong. The study to which she refers estimates that between 100,000 and 240,000 Texas women ages 18 to 49 attempted to self-abort at some point in their lives. We don’t mean to diminish that finding; it suggests a lot of women have put their health in danger. But lumping the women’s efforts into the "past year," Keene inaccurately places the blame for all self-abortion attempts on restrictions on abortion clinics that Texas passed in 2013. We rate her statement .


New Jersey, Pensions, 13th District GOP slate,

When it comes to reducing the size and scope of government, three New Jersey Republicans claim they’re on the right path to accomplishing that goal. Assembly members Declan O’Scanlon and Amy Handlin, and state Sen. Joe Kyrillos, representing the 13th District, touted those reforms and others in a campaign flyer sent out for last week’s primary election. The flyer highlighted less spending, less government, more prosperity and standing up to the Internal Revenue Service as evidence of their efforts. The trio won their primaries Tuesday. But one claim under the heading of less government intrigued us: "New Jersey’s once-broken pension system is now solvent." The underfunded pension system that set off a political firestorm two years ago when Gov. Chris Christie and the Legislature ordered higher employee contributions and suspended Cost Of Living Adjustments for beneficiaries is solvent? In pension terminology, the part of the claim is correct. But the state pension system was once broken? That’s debatable. Let’s explain, starting with solvency. Some dictionaries define solvency as the ability to pay debts – and O’Scanlon and others say New Jersey has enough money in its pension funds to cut checks every month for retirees and have those checks clear. New Jersey’s pension reforms also will help keep the system more sustainable, O’Scanlon said. In addition to the temporary suspension of COLAs and increased employee contributions, New Jersey has increased the pension eligibility requirement for new hires and increased the salary timeframe on which retirement benefits are based. An improving stock market, as well as the state ramping up annual payments into the system until reaching full contributions starting in 2018 will help, he said. Two pensions experts we spoke with agreed with O’Scanlon’s assessment of solvency and emphasis on the state’s pension reforms. "If you have enough money to pay benefits in the short term or in the foreseeable future, to the extent that plans have enough cash on hand to pay benefits for the next 10 or 13 years, it’s solvent," said Jean-Pierre Aubry, assistant director for State and Local Research at the Boston College Center for Retirement Research. "A pension fund is solvent if it is able to honor its obligations," said Keith Brainard, research director for the National Association of State Retirement Administrators in Washington, D.C. "If they can pay their pension liabilities they would be considered solvent." New Jersey is able to pay its pension obligations, so it’s solvent. But was it once broken, as the mailer claims? "We would define broken as unquestionably heading on the path to insolvency," O’Scanlon said. "You couldn’t continue on the path we were going and end up with a sustainable system," he added. Either we were going to have bankruptcy or we were going to have massive tax increases to cover the obligation. With the reforms we did we now brought it in to solvency. It’s on a completely different path since the reforms." But O’Scanlon also admitted that the state has always been able to pay its pension obligations. If that’s the case, the system was never broken. Now let’s look at pension funding levels. Each of the state’s five open pension accounts is funded well below 80 percent, which Aubry said is a threshold that has come to mean "adequate." The state's total underfunded liability was $47.2 billion as of July 1, 2012, according to an annual report on the state's pension fund. The state’s Public Employees Retirement System account was at 49.1 percent funding as of July 1, 2012; teachers, 59.3 percent; police and firefighters, 51.5 percent; state police, 71.2 percent; judiciary, 46 percent. Aubry and Brainard both said 80 percent funding is an oft-cited threshold of whether pension accounts are "healthy." "Eighty percent has come to be recognized by practitioners as an adequate funding level," Aubry said. "The notion may be that at 80 percent funded you do have enough money in the pension fund to pay benefits for the foreseeable future, but the underfundedness basically helps battle the push for increase of benefits." Brainard said looking at funding ratios is just one metric of determining the health of a pension fund, "but it’s not the be-all, end-all." "The objective should be to reach full funding but there’s nothing necessarily wrong with being underfunded," Brainard added. "The issue is whether funding the plan is causing fiscal stress for the plan sponsor -- making the contributions to ensure that the benefits can be paid." Bill Quinn, a state Treasury Department spokesman, said New Jersey’s underfunded liabilities will flatten out and stop growing as the state puts more money into the pension fund each year as required by the reforms. Our ruling  A primary campaign flyer from Assembly members Declan O’Scanlon and Amy Handlin, and state Sen. Joe Kyrillos last week claimed, "New Jersey’s once-broken pension system is now solvent." O’Scanlon said ‘once broken’ refers to the state’s pension system being on a path to insolvency or bankruptcy without major reforms – but admits the state has always been able to pay its pension bills. If the system was once broken, those bills wouldn’t have been paid. Furthermore, O’Scanlon and experts told us that a pension system being able to pay its obligations means the system is solvent. We rate this claim . To comment on this story, go to NJ.com.


Clinton associate Vince Foster shot himself three times in the back of the head to avoid testifying against Hillary Clinton.

Explanation: Yes, the bullet was never found. (Foster died in a wooded park.) Yes, the Clinton White House was sometimes slow to release information or took steps that at times raised suspicions, such as removing from Foster’s office files concerning an Arkansas real estate deal. But that was all examined, dissected, discussed, investigated two decades ago — and found to be not material. The fifth probe lasted three years — and still found nothing.

Politics Conspiracy Theories, brett kavanaugh, clinton body bags, clinton body count

No matter how many times conspiracy theories are disproved, they never die. Witness the return of a decades-old canard holding that Vince Foster, a longtime friend and associate of Bill and Hillary Clinton, did not commit suicide in 1993 (contrary to the findings of multiple investigations), but instead was murdered by the Clintons “because he knew too much.” Since the mid-1990s, Foster’s name has held a place of prominence on the viral list of “Clinton Body Bags,” a constantly growing roster of Clinton contacts who supposedly died under “mysterious circumstances.” Like the theory that Foster didn’t really kill himself, the rest of the “Body Bags” list has been discredited time and time again. The Vince Foster theory persists because it has a partisan fan base. While campaigning for the presidency, Donald Trump lent it credence during a 2016 interview in which he called the circumstances of Foster’s death “very fishy,” the Washington Post reported: “He had intimate knowledge of what was going on,” Trump said, speaking of Foster’s relationship with the Clintons at the time. “He knew everything that was going on, and then all of a sudden he committed suicide.” He added, “I don’t bring [Foster’s death] up because I don’t know enough to really discuss it. I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don’t do that because I don’t think it’s fair.” The rumor cropped up in September 2018 in the form of a meme shared by two hyperpartisan Facebook pages, Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children and Cold Dead Hands:  The timing was curious. “On this date in 1993,” the meme says, “Vince Foster went to Fort Marcy Park and shot himself 3 times in the back of the head to avoid testifying against Hillary Clinton.” But Foster committed suicide in July of that year, not September. After some searching, we found that the meme had been previously posted on 20 July 2018, when that part of the claim, at least, would have been accurate. The decision to re-share it in September 2018 (assuming there was any thought behind it at all) may have had to do with the fact that the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had just run into a roadblock in the form of an accusation of sexual assault by a woman who said Kavanaugh groped her at a party in the 1980s. The most likely explanation for bringing up Foster would seem to be that it was meant to divert attention from a Trump-related scandal to a Clinton-related scandal, but there’s a complication: Kavanaugh led the investigation of Vince Foster’s death by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in the mid-1990s, an investigation that confirmed (ironically, in this context) Foster’s death was indeed a suicide. Kavanaugh has been condemned, on the one hand, for reopening an investigation that had already been concluded by a previous independent counsel, Robert Fiske, and “tormenting” Foster’s family (in the words of liberal pundit Paul Begala) on the basis of rumors that the Clintons were somehow involved in his death. But Kavanaugh’s involvement has also given rise to a strange new addendum to the conspiracy theory in far-right circles, namely that in exonerating the Clintons he helped cover up wrongdoing on their part. Right-wing pundit Andrew Napolitano gave voice to this accusation during a Fox News Channel appearance: You remember Vince Foster who killed himself in the White House? How did his body get from the White House to Fort Marcy Park? Who was the prosecutor in charge of figuring out how his body got there? Who was the prosecutor that exonerated Hillary and the thugs that moved his body? A young Brett Kavanaugh. Whatever the motivation behind its re-sharing, the meme got almost everything wrong. What’s true is that Foster killed himself in 1993 (although it was in July, not September), and that he did so in Fort Marcy Park in Virginia (not, contrary to Napolitano’s claim, in the White House). But the sarcastic claim that he “shot himself three times in the back of the head” (implying that it wasn’t really a suicide) is a fabrication. Every investigation to date has found that he shot himself once, in the mouth, with his own handgun. The implication that his death was connected to an expectation of his giving testimony against the Clintons is equally false. Foster, who was a White House deputy counsel at the time, was distraught over accusations of malfeasance involving the White House Travel Office, and he had sought treatment for depression prior to his suicide. Foster consistently maintained that the Travel Office scandal was baseless. As the Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler wrote: Yes, there is a fringe minority of people who will believe in just about every conspiracy theory. There are hacks who believe that Foster died in the White House and that his body was moved. There was even a member of Congress who fired bullets into a cantaloupe (or was it a watermelon?) in an effort to prove that Foster was killed. But there were also five official investigations into Foster’s death, conducted by professional investigators, forensic experts, psychologists, doctors and independent prosecutors with unlimited resources.


Explanation: Glenn Beck warns that in 1970s, flu shots caused neurological problems

National, Health Care, Pundits, Glenn Beck,

Radio and talk show host Glenn Beck has said he doesn't want to share his personal take on whether he will immunize his family with the H1N1 vaccine — the stakes are too high either way to give a personal opinion, he says — but he and some of his guests have repeatedly raised concerns about the safety of the vaccine. On his radio show on Oct. 8, Beck said, "You don't know if this (the H1N1 vaccine) is gonna cause neurological damage like it did in the 1970s." Beck refers here to a concern often raised by vaccine opponents, so we decided to give the claim some scrutiny. It is rooted in a 1976 swine flu outbreak at Fort Dix in New Jersey, which resulted in the death of a U.S. soldier. President Gerald Ford initiated a massive immunization effort that resulted in some 45 million Americans getting a swine flu vaccine. The flu never went beyond Fort Dix, and the immunization program was halted, but among those who got the vaccine, more than 500 people got a rare neurological illness called Guillain-Barre Syndrome, an auto-immune disease that affects the nervous system and can cause paralysis. Two dozen people died from it. Understandably, many Americans grew wary of flu vaccines, particularly since the swine flu never materialized outside Fort Dix. But was the flu vaccine really responsible for all those people developing Guillain-Barre? In 2003, the Institute for Medicine commissioned a medical panel, called the Immunization Safety Review Committee,  to look into it. The issue is complicated by the fact that Guillain-Barre can be triggered by all kinds of influenza. So how much was the vaccine to blame? The panel  concluded  that "the evidence favored acceptance of a causal relationship" between the 1976 swine flu vaccine and Guillain-Barre in adults. However, the panel concluded that in the nearly 30 years of administering the seasonal flu vaccine since then, there was no proof that the vaccines had caused any more cases of Guillain-Barre, or any other neurological diseases, for that matter. "The evidence was at most weak that the vaccine could act in humans in ways that could lead to these neurological problems," the panel concluded. So what about the risk of the H1N1 vaccine now? Doctors say the track record of seasonal flu vaccines shows the new one is safe. "The vaccine was made essentially the same way vaccines have been made for the last 30 years," said Dr. Marie C. McCormick, a Harvard University professor who chaired that 2003 committee. Concerns about neurological issues with the H1N1 vaccine "are not based on the evidence we have at hand today," McCormick said. In addition to studies conducted by the five pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the H1N1 vaccine, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has conducted clinical trials on more than 4,000 people, and the only side effects recorded so far amount to little more than sore arms and stuffed-up noses. Still, that's a relatively small sample, too small to ferret out any possible connection to Guillain-Barre, which in 1976 was recorded in just 1 in every 100,000 people who got the vaccine. There's no denying that the swine flu vaccine in 1976 appeared to contribute to an outbreak of Guillain-Barre, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. But to raise that specter without talking about the ensuing 30 years needlessly stokes fears, he said. Since that 1976 experience, Osterholm said, the seasonal flu vaccine has been administered to 100 million to 250 million people a year worldwide, and there's been no evidence it caused anyone to get Guillain-Barre or any other neurological disorder. "At this point, we have no reason to believe it will," Osterholm said. "This vaccine was made essentially the same way we made the seasonal flu vaccines for more than 20 years. You have to put it into context." Put it this way, he said: His 31-year-old daughter is 6 months pregnant and works with children, and he is eager for her to get the vaccine. "That's about as objective as I can get," he said. Patricia Quinlisk, medical director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, said the only difference between the H1N1 vaccine and the regular seasonal flu shot is that it targets a different viral strain. In fact, had H1N1 showed up earlier, she said, it would have been included in the seasonal flu vaccine package. But by the time it appeared in May, the seasonal flu vaccine was already being made. Quinlisk also cautioned not to put much stock in the fact that the 1976 vaccine targeted swine flu, and the H1N1 has often been called the swine flu. The H1N1 is actually combination virus, mixing the typical swine flu with avian flu and typical human influenza. Can scientists give a 100 percent guarantee that no one getting the H1N1 vaccine will develop neurological problems? No, she said. There haven't been enough trials to definitively rule that out. "But do I think it's safer to get the vaccine than to risk getting the flu? Yes," she said. "If the H1N1 vaccine becomes available to me, I'm going to take it." That risk-reward ratio is markedly different than in 1976, she said. Then, the flu never spread beyond Fort Dix. "The H1N1 is here," she said. "It's a pandemic." We should also note that taking the H1N1 vaccine is being encouraged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, both of which say the track record of seasonal flu vaccines over more than two decades suggest the H1N1 vaccine will be safe and effective. Beck is correct in that scientists say that in 1976, the swine flu vaccine likely caused Guillain-Barre in a very small number of adults. But Beck's statement lacks important context. The 30-year track record of seasonal flu vaccines strongly suggests the new H1N1 vaccine won't cause neurological damage. Without noting that the H1N1 vaccine has been manufactured in essentially the same way as the seasonal flu shot that has been used by hundreds of millions of people — without any established link to neurological problems — ends up misleading by omission. And so we rule Beck's statement Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to .


NFL players protesting police brutality are doing so because they have many children with different women, leading their families into lives of crime.

Explanation: Lewis, who is an NFL analyst for Showtime, said in September 2017 that the Baltimore Ravens (his former team) almost signed Kaepernick to a contract, but were put off after the quarterback’s girlfriend posted a picture of Lewis and Steve Bisciotti juxtaposed with a still from the movie Django Unchained showing Samuel L. Jackson’s slave character mourning his owner.

In October 2017, a Facebook post seeking to link protests against extrajudicial killings by police to single-parent families appeared and made the usual rounds. The post misrepresents “taking a knee” demonstrations — in which National Football League players kneel during the national anthem in order to bring attention to police brutality, and which were originated by former San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2016 and continued into 2017 — by tying them to several players who have been retired for years: Children raised in fatherless homes, especially black children, are far more likely than children raised in two parent homes to engage in criminal behavior and thus, have contact with police. Ergo when they father a child with a woman to whom they are not married – or at least living with – they are contributing to the problem against which these football players are taking a knee. If you look at many of these players’ records on out-of-wedlock children, you find that they are contributing significantly to the problem against which they are protesting. For example, Antonio Cromartie has 12 children by 9 different women. Apparently the NFL had to shell out $500,000 before he could even play football for them. Travis Henry has 11 children by 10 women, Willis McGahee has 9 children by 8 women, Derrick Thomas has 7 children by 5 different women, Bennie Blades has 6 children by 6 women, Ray Lewis has 6 children by 4 women and Marshall Faulk has 6 children by 3 women. Before these guys take a knee they should take a good look in the mirror. It appears that their problem is not the knee. The post contains several false claims: The post’s premise rests on the theory that growing up in a single-parent household can be a predictor of criminal activity. According to a 2003 study by the Center for Law and Social Policy: Research indicates that, on average, children who grow up in families with both their biological parents in a low-conflict marriage are better off in a number of ways than children who grow up in single-, step- or cohabiting-parent households. Compared to children who are raised by their married parents, children in other family types are more likely to achieve lower levels of education, to become teen parents, and to experience health, behavior, and mental health problems. And children in single- and cohabiting-parent families are more likely to be poor. This being said, most children not living with married, biological parents grow up without serious problems. But that argument has come under question. In 2012, University of Maryland sociology professor Philip Cohen noted: Violent crime has fallen through the floor (or at least back to the rates of the 1970s) relative to the bad old days. And this is true not just for homicide but also for rape and other assaults. At the same time, the decline of marriage has continued apace. Looking at two aggregate trends is never enough to tell a whole story of social change, of course. However, if two trends going together doesn’t prove a causal relationship, the opposite is not quite as true. If two trends do not go together, the theory that one causes the other has a steeper hill to climb. In the case of family breakdown driving crime rates, I don’t think the story will make it anymore. Not one of the players named in the post is currently active in the NFL. Terricka Cromartie said in an Instagram post in October 2016 that her husband’s employment was terminated because he kneeled during the national anthem before a game, much like Kaepernick “took a knee” as part of his demonstrations. (Cromartie subsequently deleted her post.) Faulk, who is currently an analyst for the NFL Network, has also expressed support for Kaepernick, saying: The problem that I have with it is, they think it’s civilians against the cops. It’s not about that. It’s [that] lives are being lost and someone needs to be held accountable and that’s all Kaepernick was talking about. It doesn’t matter what color you are — it just happens to be that what he’s talking about specifically was black people. On 24 September 2017, Faulk also criticized President Donald Trump for saying that NFL franchise owners should fire players who took part in any protest: Right now, there’s not anything good that I can say that would shine a light on this to help the situation. I find myself kind of perplexed by that situation, because normally I have something to say that could right the situation and make it better. I just believe that it’s sad that our President lacks the moral compass on things to say and things to talk about when we have so much going on in our country. You want to attack people for expressing themselves and their freedom in this country and you say things like suggesting what an owner should do to a player for just exercising his right to protest peacefully. I really do not know where to go with this and where we are going and why this is where it is right now.


Whale snot, bat sex win 2010 IgNobel spoof prizes.

Explanation: Researchers who used a remote-controlled helicopter to collect whale snot, documented bats having oral sex and showed that swearing makes you feel better when you stub a toe were among the winners of spoof IgNobel prizes on Thursday.

A remote-controlled helicopter used by researchers to collect whale blows is seen in a handout photo. REUTERS/Diane Gendron/Handout The prizes, meant to be both humorous and to encourage scientific research, are given every year by the Journal of Improbable Research as a whimsical counterpart to the Nobel Prizes, which will be awarded starting next week. IgNobels also went to researchers who found that wearing socks outside shoes can prevent slipping on ice and that organizations would fare better if managers were promoted randomly. Former winners of the real Nobel prizes hand out the prizes at a ceremony held at Harvard University in Massachusetts. “There are four winners from Britain this year,” said Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals and architect of the IgNobels. “The British Empire had a rough 20th century. Maybe this is the best sign that the empire is surging back to prominence.”   Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse and Agnes Rocha-Gosselin of Britain’s Zoological Society and Diane Gendron of Instituto Politecnico Nacional in Mexico won an engineering IgNobel for a new way to study respiratory diseases in whales. “The technique involves flying a remote-controlled helicopter above a whale as it surfaces and catching the whale blow in petri dishes attached to the underside of the helicopter,” they said in a statement. A team of Chinese researchers led by Min Tan of Guangdong Entomological Institute and including Gareth Jones of Britain’s University of Bristol won a biology IgNobel for scientifically documenting oral sex between fruit bats. "Our observations are the first to show regular fellatio in adult animals other than humans," they wrote in their paper, published at www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007595. Oil spill researchers Eric Adams of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Scott Socolofsky of Texas A&M University and Stephen Masutani of the University of Hawaii, along with BP Plc, won a prize “for disproving the old belief that oil and water don’t mix.”   Other winners:   — Simon Rietveld of the University of Amsterdam and Ilja van Beest of Tilburg University in the Netherlands for discovering that asthma symptoms abate with a roller-coaster ride. — Alessandro Pluchino and colleagues at the University of Catania in Italy for showing mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random. — Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Future University Hakodate in Japan and colleagues for using slime mold to route railroad tracks. — Lianne Parkin and colleagues of the University of Otago, New Zealand for demonstrating that people slip and fall less often on ice if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes. — Richard Stephens and colleagues of Britain’s Keele University for confirming that swearing relieves pain. — Manuel Barbeito and colleagues of Fort Detrick in Maryland for demonstrating that microbes cling to beards. An economics prize was given to the “executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar for creating and promoting new ways to invest money.”   The awards ceremony can be seen here


The Baucus health care bill would require taxes on medical devices such as X-ray machines, female condoms, HIV tests and surgical needles.

Explanation: Conservative blogger says proposed tax could hit wide array of medical devices

Republicans often complain that the Democratic health care bills would impose a heavy tax burden on Americans. So when the Senate Finance Committee began considering a tax on medical devices — including some modest devices such as enema kits and breast pumps — it was no surprise that conservatives would use the tax to rally opposition. Initially, the Finance panel was planning to subject all medical devices to the tax. (Technically this would be a tax on companies that make devices, based on their market share, rather than an excise tax on individual units.) But an outcry that it would lead to "tampon taxes" and "Q-tip taxes" led the committee's chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., to shift course. He decided to apply the tax rules based on the three medical device categories determined by the Food and Drug Administration. These categories align roughly with how complex and risky the devices are. When the bill was unveiled on Sept. 16, 2009, Baucus said it would exempt items labeled Class I by the FDA, things such as enema kits and elastic bandages. Those items, which account for 47 percent of all devices, are often inexpensive and are defined as "present(ing) minimal potential for harm to the user" by the FDA. But critics continued to argue that including all Class II devices — which rank between Class I and III in complexity and risk — would still mean imposing a tax on a host of inexpensive items that could ultimately be passed on to consumers. So Sept. 22, 2009, Baucus exempted from the tax all Class II items costing less than $100. (Class III items — the 10 percent that "sustain or support life, are implanted, or present potential unreasonable risk of illness or injury" — have always been subject to Baucus' proposed tax.) This eased the attacks somewhat, but not entirely. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., offered an amendment to eliminate the tax altogether, but on Oct. 1, 2009, it failed by a 10-13 vote. Then, on Oct. 7, 2009, blogger Meredith Jessup on the conservative Web site TownHall.com cited work by a  Washington Times  columnist to show a wide range of items that she said would still be taxed despite Baucus' revision.   " Washington Times  columnist Amanda Carpenter has looked into the matter and found that new moms who want to use a powered breast pump to bottle milk for their babies will have to pay this excise tax," Jessup wrote. "These pumping devices, Carpenter points out, typically retail for more than $100. In addition, other items used by both men and women — including 'pacemakers, ventilators, X-ray machines, powered wheelchairs and surgical needles — will be taxed too.' ... So what else is on this list of items to be taxed? Lots of things, including dentures, fetal cell-screening kits, female condoms (I'm surprised there aren't angry 'feminists' taking to the streets over this one), tests for syphilis and HIV, hip, knee, ankle and breast prosthetics, dialysis catheters, mammograms and sickle-cell anemia tests." We found many other conservative bloggers have made similar claims. We turned to the FDA's Web site to determine which items would be subject to the tax. We found that the following items would still be subject to the current version of the proposed tax, either because they're rated Class III or because they're considered Class II and cost more than $100: powered breast pumps; tests for HIV; pacemakers; ventilators; X-ray machines; powered wheelchairs; hip, knee, ankle and breast prosthetics; and dentures. Many dialysis catheters are rated Class III, and the female condom is Class III. (Male condoms are Class II — go figure.) Assuming Jessup meant "mammography machines" rather than "mammograms," then you can add that to the list as well. It's a bit more complicated to determine the taxability of the remaining four that Jessup mentioned. Tests for sickle-cell anemia and syphilis are both categorized as Class II, and a Web search turned up prices well below $100 per test, suggesting that both would be exempt. Meanwhile, most surgical needles are rated Class I or Class II, and the one fetal-cell screening kit rated by the FDA is considered Class II; for both the needles and the fetal-cell kit, we were unable to find price quotes on the Internet. Based on this information alone, these products would seem likely to avoid the tax. However, congressional aides said that the final details about what's covered and not covered remain to be written. One possibility is that all Class II items that are generally sold directly to hospitals or doctors' offices, rather than to consumers directly, could be subject to the tax, even if they cost less than $100. Most likely, the Treasury Department would be responsible for providing final guidance — perhaps even a list of specific items — on which items fall into which category. So it's possible the four items above could eventually be hit by the tax. So Jessup is correct about most of the items she cites: They would be subject to the tax. A few others she cites would not fall under the committee's latest definition for the tax, but the practical details of the bill right now are not yet settled, so it's possible that they will be taxed eventually. We should also add that the tax may not necessarily be included in the final health care bill that will be crafted from the various versions in different committees. But for now, the provision remains part of the Senate Finance bill.


A video shows the liquid from a can of BANG Energy bursting into flames.

Explanation: BANG told us in response to our query that: “It was a hoax. The user who made the video poured lighter fluid in the can. There are multiple videos online debunking that one video.”

Are BANG brand energy drinks flammable? In December 2018, internet hoaxers fostered that notion by spreading videos supposedly showing people lighting the beverage on fire. Although we haven’t been able to determine the exact source of these videos, a few examples of these clips can be glimpsed below: Y’all keep drinking them #Bang energy drinks pic.twitter.com/BKEQrc7qaa — 🇲🇽COME SEE US 🇺🇸 (@SeahawkValdez) December 17, 2018   Although the videos may appear at first glance to show the drinks are flammable, a few red flags contained within them indicate the fiery displays are merely a hoax. In the first video, the clip starts with the camera focused on a can of BANG energy drink. The viewer witnesses the can being opened, but before its contents are poured onto the ground, the can disappears from view for seconds. It’s likely that a second can pre-filled with a flammable liquid such as gasoline or lighter fluid was swapped in for the original can during this brief interlude. The second video uses an even lazier (but equally deceptive) trick. Instead of showing the viewer an unopened can of BANG before swapping it out with a second can, this clip starts with a can that was already opened before the camera even started rolling. Again, it’s likely this can was filled with a flammable liquid and not BANG energy drink. A number of the brand’s fans have posted their own “experiments” to YouTube in order to debunk this rumor. YouTubers Pleeka, Lil’ Bones Leo, Brooke Curtis, Growing Pains, Angrytexan Green, Jesse Walker, and Dustin Orman all posted videos documenting their unsuccessful attempts to light a BANG energy drink on fire. We’ve chosen to highlight the following video from Toby Dunnagan because it shows a can of BANG energy drink being opened, poured, and held to a flame all in one continuous shot without any aspect of the claim leaving the frame:


There is a growing body of evidence that radiation in excess of what the government says are the minimum amounts you should be exposed to are actually good for you and reduce cases of cancer.

Explanation: Ann Coulter says exposure to low levels of radiation is good for you, reduces cancer risk

National, Nuclear, Pundits, Science, Ann Coulter,

As news broke last week that Japan's nuclear disaster may result in low levels of radiation wafting all the way to the U.S., political pundit Ann Coulter wrote a column arguing that too much is made of exposure to low levels of radiation. In an appearance on Fox's O'Reilly Factor on March 17, Coulter argued some exposure to radiation may actually be good for you. "There is a growing body of evidence that radiation in excess of what the government says are the minimum amounts you should be exposed to are actually good for you and reduce cases of cancer," Coulter said. Before you go sticking your head in the X-ray machine, a little perspective is in order here. While there are scientists who subscribe to the theory that low levels of radiation can have beneficial health effects -- it's called hormesis -- it is still an outside-the-mainstream opinion. "There is not a shred of evidence that radiation is good for you," said Eric Hall, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University in New York City. As for hormesis, Hall said, "No one in the mainstream believes it." Said Fred Mettler, a radiation expert at the University of New Mexico: "Ms. Coulter -- who I find very enjoyable -- might be better sticking to political opinions." Mettler, the U.S. representative for the United Nations committee on the health effects of radiation, pointed us to a chapter on hormesis from his book, Medical Effects of Ionizing Radiation. In the book, Mettler calls hormesis "a concept that is controversial at best." "Early studies in the United States seemed to suggest a hormetic effect, or at least there were areas of higher radiation background that had lower cancer incidence," Mettler wrote. In particular, Mettler cited the work of T. D. Luckey, professor emeritus at the University of Missouri, Columbia, School of Medicine, who argued in multiple studies that evidence shows "a significant decrease in cancer mortality rates of lightly exposed humans." Mettler cautioned not to read too much into such studies, however. "In addition to variability in populations, statistical uncertainties, potential bias factors, and chance, on one hand there will be instances in which there was less effect than predicted," he wrote. "This is all understandable without invoking a unifying hypothesis of hormesis." Owen Hoffman, a radiation-risk expert at Senes Oak Ridge Inc., a center for risk analysis, said that studies show low levels of radiation might eliminate some cancer but initiate others. "Certainly radiation kills cells and can stimulate immune responses," Hoffman said. "Thus it is possible for precursors of cancers, which are produced in the absence of above-background radiation exposure, might be eliminated through the processes of cell killing and immune response activation. But radiation exposures, even at background levels, can also initiate, promote new cancers and accelerate the manifestation of cancers that would occur in later life in the absence of exposure." Hoffman also pointed to the work of Dr. Charles Land of the National Cancer Institute, who "has shown in several of his recent publications that there is considerable uncertainty in the estimation of radiation risk. In his work, he does not give much credibility to the possibility that radiation induces a protective or beneficial effect. On the other hand, he concludes that even if some credibility could be given to the possibility of a threshold or beneficial effect of radiation exposure at low doses and low dose rates, the biological and epidemiological evidence that new cancers may be initiated or promoted by radiation exposure cannot be completely ruled out." "At present," Hoffman said, "carefully conducted epidemiological evidence does not support the presence of such beneficial effects in human populations that have been carefully monitored and followed up over time." In her blog post, Coulter cited the work of Bernard L. Cohen, a physics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, who "compared radon exposure and lung cancer rates in 1,729 counties covering 90 percent of the U.S. population. His study in the 1990s found far fewer cases of lung cancer in those counties with the highest amounts of radon -- a correlation that could not be explained by smoking rates." We e-mailed Cohen and asked him about Coulter's statement. "Word for word, what she says is correct," Cohen responded. "It could go further and say that no other confounding factors (like socioeconomics, geography, etc., 500 were explored) can explain the results. However, my study was designed to test the assumption that the danger of radiation is simply proportional to the radiation dose, which is the only evidence that low-level radiation may be harmful. My conclusion was that that assumption is false. "Whether low-level radiation is protective against cancer, a theory called hormesis, is debated in the scientific community," Cohen said. "There is evidence on both sides." So where does this leave us? We are not rating whether hormesis -- or as Coulter put it, the theory that exposure to low levels of radiation is actually good for you and reduces cases of cancer -- is correct. Reputable scientists disagree about that. We're rating whether Coulter was correct in saying there is "a growing body of evidence" that radiation in excess of approved exposure levels may be beneficial. There is a small but growing body of research to back up those claims. But the fact is that the mainstream of the scientific community has not embraced the theory. They point to limitations of those studies and argue the research falls well short of scientific evidence. Coulter failed to present this counter-weight, the opinion shared by the majority in the scientific community, which doesn't buy into -- and in many cases outright rejects -- the idea that low levels of radiation can have beneficial health effects and reduce the risk of cancer.


Social worker sentenced to jail for having sex with patient.

Explanation: A former social worker at a suburban Chicago mental health center has been sentenced to 180 days in jail after pleading guilty to a sexual misconduct charge involving a patient with a disability.

Sexual misconduct, Elgin, Mental health, Chicago, Health, General News

Christy Lenhardt’s plea entered Friday stems from an investigation into allegations she engaged in sexual misconduct between November 2014 and July 2017 with a patient at the Elgin Mental Health Center. The (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald reports the 55-year-old Lenhardt was also ordered to register as a sex offender. The patient who was involuntarily committed to the facility after being found not guilty by reason of insanity for what authorities said was an attack on a police officer sued Lenhardt. That lawsuit and one filed by a second patient that makes similar allegations are pending.


Allergy treatments enter a new era — with a focus on stopping reactions before they start

Explanation: The headline on this story from STAT promises to highlight a “new era” in allergy treatment built around the idea of preventing histamine and other immunologic explosions in our bodies’ mast cells and basophils before they start. What it delivers is something less–updates on efforts at immunologic therapies that are way short of popping up at the pharmacy anytime soon–and more: an eye-opening look at how Big Pharma and Big Science are investing Big Money in a potentially huge worldwide market for treatments that probably won’t do much better than antihistamines, epinephrine and allergen-avoidance. Parents curious about these forthcoming treatments–including very pricey immunotherapies–are likely already wondering if they’ll be affordable, yet the story skirts any discussion of pricing. But readers who stick with the piece to the end will learn something about the intentions and operations of the medical/pharmaceutical industrial complex, and that’s a good thing. Stories that describe new allergy treatments are likely to have mass audiences, including parents who are hopeful they can ease their child’s severe food allergies. But will any of these treatments pan out, and one day be widely available and/or affordable to the masses? It’s too early to say, and the story may raise some false hopes for not reining in some of the excitement with more about the realities of drug development.

Although the story cites the hundreds of millions of dollars of investment made by drug companies and research institutions, it doesn’t address the potential costs of some newly developed commercial products, including one in stage 3 clinical trials that (literally) encapsulates bits of peanut protein designed to offer desensitization to peanut allergy. The approach has long depended on what the article calls the “home brews” of food allergy “concoctions” and injections that have been compounded and prescribed by allergists for decades. Nor does it mention the cost of a biologic made by Genentech that already is on the market for a form of asthma and is likely much more expensive than antihistamines and even the notorious Epi-Pens that would compete for an expanded market. The story also mentions Xolair, but does not mention the cost of this drug, which is quite prohibitive. Although the article finally does get to the point that biologics, immunologics, and quicker ways to achieve desensitization may not — for many patients — work better than golden oldies like antihistamines, the story could have, but didn’t, make any attempt to pin down what kinds of patients and how many of them might need or want the newer drugs, which are at best mostly years from being available. Particularly for the new-style food-desensitization therapies under development, the article explains potential (and even deadly) risks associated with them and it alludes to some of the downsides of immunotherapies (“allergy shots,” for instance) that can take months or years to work. But it says essentially nothing about the potential or actual adverse effects of a DNA vaccine under development, noting only that it “hypothetically decreases the risk for adverse events.” The article does a fairly good job of describing some of the hypotheses involved in the development of new or updated treatments, but it doesn’t offer enough information about the research underway. For example, we’re given no information about the status of the research on using the immunotherapy drug Xolair for food allergies combined with allergy desensitization therapy. No mongering: the prevalence of allergies is high and, according to some sources, rising rapidly in the developing world as well as in the U.S. The article casts a pretty wide net of sources, including interviews with allergy researchers at Stanford and at Mass General Hospital in Boston, as well as investigators with drug companies. There is acknowledgment of the possibility that the new treatments may not work any better than older ones for many patients. The story would have been stronger if it had done more head-to-head comparisons of effectiveness. The article, admirably, makes clear that movement through the new drug pipeline is likely to be slow for most of the newly envisioned therapies. The article makes clear that the some of the proposed “new era” treatment are actually old wine in new bottles–commercial versions of things allergists have been hand-tailoring to their patients for years. And it does examine some novel twists in describing the development of a DNA vaccine, and the expanded use of a relatively new “biologic” drug that exploits the immune system’s weaknesses and strengths. However, it could have been stronger at pointing out that nothing here is really brand new. The article was certainly not based on a single news release.


Shingles Vaccine Looks Like a Safe Bet for Seniors: Study

Explanation: This story about a study of how the shingles vaccine performs in regular clinical use does a nice job of putting the pros and cons of the vaccine in a larger context. We also applaud how this story addresses the potential harms of the vaccine. This story reports both the relative risk reduction (55 percent) and absolute risk reduction (from 13 to 6 cases per 1,000 people per year), but we wish it had told readers that 71 people would have to be vaccinated in order to prevent one shingles attack. We encourage broader use of this sort of statistic about the number of people you need to treat in order for at least one person to benefit. However, like the other stories, this one does not tackle the limitations inherent in this sort of observational study. Shingles is a terribly painful condition caused by the chicken pox virus. It often reemerges late in life. Although a large clinical trial demonstrated that a vaccine could reduce the risk of shingles attacks and postherpetic neuralgia under idealized conditions, things are often different in the real world. This study of actual clinical experience adds an important perspective on the effects of the vaccine, but stories about this sort of study need to clearly address the limitations of observational trials and the ways that bias and confounding factors can muddy the results. Finally, the take-home message here is a clear need to promote shared decision-making between caregivers and patients on this issue, because this is not a slam dunk must-do vaccine.

The story reports that the vaccine can cost a couple of hundred dollars and that cost can put the vaccine out of reach for some people and that even people who could afford it may decide it is not as high a priority as other health care items. Interestingly, while other stories about this study touted the finding that vaccination cut the risk of shingles by more than half, this story points out that compared to many other vaccines, a 55 percent reduction in relatively risk is a weak performance. The comment from one individual that the vaccine is “better than nothing” also helps readers put the benefits into perspective. The story does include endorsement of vaccination and descriptions of the terrible pain shingles attacks can inflict. It also points out that this study provides information about a reduction in the risk of serious eye problems caused by shingles that was collected by the clinical trial that led to the vaccine’s approval. The story reports the absolute annual shingles attack risk figures of 6.4 per 1,000 among the vaccinated participants versus 13 per 1,000 among those not vaccinated. We would have like to also see the story mention that the results indicate that about 71 people need to be vaccinated to prevent one from suffering a shingles attack. And since the story reported relative risk reduction statistics for ophthalmic herpes zoster cases, it should have also told readers the absolute numbers. The story should have pointed out that the study looked at a limited time span and that the researchers can’t say whether the effects of the vaccine persist through later years. That’s an important caveat, since a 60-year-old who had chicken pox as a child is at risk for a shingles attack for the remaining decades of life. If the vaccine cuts the risk of attacks in half, but only for the first few years after vaccination, then the lifetime reduction in risk would be much smaller. Also, the final quote from an expert saying “the benefit, I think, is overwhelming” may overpower all the statistics, leaving readers with an unbalanced summary of the benefits of this vaccine. So, while overall the story had a mixed performance on this criterion, we’ll give it a satisfactory score. This story briefly refers to this vaccine providing protection against shingles “without many side effects.” While many stories would stop there (if they even acknowledged the potential for side effects), this report goes further to include the comment from an independent source that “I think it’s a very good vaccine, and it’s a safe vaccine, but obviously there needs to be continuing surveillance of usage of the vaccine to make sure there are no adverse effects that are seen in one in a 100 million cases versus one in five or 10,000 people.” The story highlights the value of studying how the vaccine works in routine clinical use, rather than merely doing clinical trials under idealized conditions. It also notes that the people who were vaccinated “were more likely to be white, female and in better overall health than the unvaccinated people.” However, the story does not explain why these differences might be important to determining how much confidence to place in the study results. There should have been more attention to the inherent weaknesses and limitations of this sort of observational study, especially since the researchers called attention to potential sources of bias and their attempts to take those factors into account. The story accurately describes the population for which shingles vaccine is recommended. It specifically notes that the vaccine is not recommended for people with “leukemia, lymphoma, HIV or an allergy to any ingredients in the vaccine.” It also includes comments about people discussing their eligibility for vaccination with a doctor. The story would have been better if it had more clearly told readers that most people do not have lasting effects after a shingles attack. This story includes more than one independent source. The comments from these sources add valuable perspective on this study and the larger context of shingles vaccination. The story reports that the Kaiser Permanente health plan funded the study. However, it does not tell readers that some of the researchers have received funding from vaccine companies for other studies or consulting. While it may seem that the decision to vaccinate is a simple yes or no matter, this story does a nice job of expanding the question to include other vaccination priorities. It includes comments that point out that shingles, while terribly painful, is not contagious or life-threatening… and that considering the high cost of the shingles vaccine, it may be reasonable to place a higher priority on other vaccinations. The story does readers a service by addressing some of the real world choices people face, rather than merely considering a single intervention in a vacuum. The story reports that the vaccine has been available since 2006. The story reports that this is the only approved vaccine to reduce shingles risk and that it has been available since 2006 in the United States. It also makes clear that this study provides information about how the vaccine performs in the real world, as opposed to the idealized conditions of a clinical trial. The story does not appear to rely on a news release.


108 mins that stunned the world: Russia honors Gagarin.

Explanation: His 108-minute flight into space 50 years ago set new a horizon for humanity and overnight turned a farmworker’s son named Yuri Gagarin into one of the century’s heroes.

A visitor looks at a wall of photographs of cosmonauts on display during the opening of an exhibition at the Memorial Museum of Astronautics in Moscow, April 8, 2011. REUTERS/Alexander Natruskin But half a century after his exploit captured the world’s imagination and fueled a space race with the United States, Russia has found it necessary to release top secret archives to counter persistent rumors that Gagarin was later murdered on the orders of jealous or paranoid Soviet rulers. “Gagarin once said: ‘To me my whole life seems to be one perfect moment,’” recalled veteran Soviet space journalist Vladimir Gubarev earlier this month. The 27-year-old’s single Earth orbit on April 12, 1961 was one of the Soviet Union’s most enduring Cold War victories and is proudly remembered today, especially in the cosmonaut town that is the heart of the nation’s space program. Star City, the world’s oldest space-flight training center, resembles in many ways a shrine to the first man in space, whose premature death in a mysterious plane crash seven years after his flight cemented a poster-boy status. Visitors on a rare open day were greeted by a lone statue of Gagarin dominating the snowy paths between worn buildings scattered behind a perimeter fence in a pine forest outside Moscow like some isolated university campus. A mural of the national hero leads into a small museum hall filled with memorabilia: Gagarin’s orange-brown space suit, gifts from foreign dignitaries and a room that painstakingly re-creates his office as it was on the day he died. One striking photo shows Gagarin’s round orbiter, scorched from its fiery descent, lying in a field in Russia’s central Saratov region, where he was famously offered milk and bread by an astonished farmworker moments after landing. Conspiracy theories abound that he did not die in a plane crash, but was murdered on the orders of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev for an unspecified offence or disloyalty to the party. In an apparent bid to quash such whisperings about Gagarin’s death ahead of the anniversary, the archives declassified by post-Soviet Russia last week shed new light on the crash. The documents show a Soviet probe concluded that Gagarin had most likely lost control of his jet after swerving sharply to avoid a weather-forecasting balloon, archives official Alexander Stepanov was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying. Gagarin’s maiden orbit nearly ended in disaster. “For 10 whole minutes of his flight, he thought he was dead,” said Gubarev, who knew Gagarin as a young fighter pilot. “The flight was absolutely heroic. It was unimaginably difficult. People thought a man might go crazy in space,” he told Reuters. When Gagarin’s Vostok-1 capsule hit the atmosphere on re-entry, the cables hooking the descent module to the service module failed to separate. The craft shook violently before they burned loose and Gagarin was sucked down by gravity. He experienced G-forces — the force of gravity on a body — two to three times steeper than those felt by today’s astronauts. “When I dream now, it is mostly nightmares about the descent,” said veteran cosmonaut Georgy Grechko, 79, who worked as an engineer on Gagarin’s space capsule. “When the craft re-enters the thick levels of the Earth’s atmosphere, it burns. The flames tear at the craft. It rolls and the coating melts. It’s scary.”   A letter Gagarin drafted to be sent to his family in case he died was among the documents declassified last week, and offered a glimpse into the steely-eyed courage of the young pilot. “I trust the hardware completely. It will not fail. But it can happen that a man trips at ground level and breaks his neck. Some accident may happen,” the letter previewed by opposition paper Novaya Gazeta said. “If it does... do not waste yourself with grief. Life is life, and nobody is safe from being run over by a car.”   The 19 candidates selected for the Vostok-1 flight were all test pilots, unafraid of speed, and slight enough in build to fit into the tiny 2m-wide (6ft) capsule. The Soviet-era charm of Gagarin’s humble roots may have favored him over others, including his backup Gherman Titov. Born in the village of Klushino, some 150 km (95 miles) west of Moscow, his father was a carpenter and his mother a milkmaid. The family was forced to live in a tiny mud hut when the village was burned down during the German occupation in World War Two. “Yura (Gagarin) was a very quick learner. He assimilated everything new. His mind was stellar,” Gubarev said. Gagarin sung Soviet hymns during the last checks, strapped atop the 30m-high (98 ft) rocket that would blast him into space from the long-secret Baikonur cosmodrome on the Kazakh steppe. “Poyekhali! (Let’s go! ),” he cried, in a phrase that has become synonymous with Gagarin in Russia. “The most emotional moment was when we heard he was walking and waving; his arms and legs were whole. We understood in one sigh that our five to six years of hard work had paid off and we had achieved something huge,” Grechko said. The United States responded 10 months later, when John Glenn made the first U.S. orbital flight.


Eroding trust in vaccines leaves populations vulnerable, global study finds.

Explanation: Trust in vaccines - one of the world’s most effective and widely-used medical products - is highest in poorer countries but weaker in wealthier ones where skepticism has allowed outbreaks of diseases such as measles to persist, a global study found on Wednesday.

France has the least confidence of any country in the world in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, with a third believing that vaccines are unsafe, according to the study. While most parents do choose to vaccinate their children, varying levels of confidence expose vulnerabilities in some countries to potential disease outbreaks, the study’s authors said, recommending that scientists need to ensure people have access to robust information from those they trust. Public health experts and the World Health Organization (WHO) say vaccines save up to 3 million lives every year worldwide, and decades of research evidence consistently shows they are safe and effective. But to achieve “herd immunity” to protect whole populations, immunization coverage rates must generally be above 90% or 95%, and vaccine mistrust can quickly reduce that protection. “Over the last century, vaccines have made many devastating infectious diseases a distant memory,” said Charlie Weller,  head of vaccines at the Wellcome Trust health charity, which co-led the Wellcome Global Monitor study. “It is reassuring that almost all parents worldwide are vaccinating their children. However, there are pockets of lower confidence in vaccines across the world.”  The spread of measles, including in major outbreaks in the United States, the Philippines and Ukraine, is just one of the health risks linked to lower confidence in vaccines. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, false rumors about polio vaccines being part of a Western plot have in recent years hampered global efforts to wipe out the crippling disease. The study, led by Wellcome and polling company Gallup, covered 140,000 people from more than 140 countries. It found 6% of parents worldwide - equivalent to 188 million - say their children are unvaccinated. The highest totals were in China at 9%, Austria at 8% and Japan at 7%. Seth Berkley, chief executive of the not-for-profit GAVI vaccine alliance, said the report showed a “worrying number of people” questioning vaccine safety. But by focusing on the “vocal minority” who refused to vaccinate, it was easy to forget that the vast majority trusted vaccines and the science that underpinned them. The study also found that three-quarters of the world’s people trust doctors and nurses more than anyone else for health advice, and that in most parts of the world, more education and greater trust in health systems, governments and scientists is a also sign of higher vaccine confidence. In some high-income regions, however, confidence is weaker. Only 72% of people in North America and 73% in Northern Europe agree that vaccines are safe. In Eastern Europe it is just 50%. Heidi Larson, director of the vaccine confidence project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, worked with researchers on this study. She said it “exposes the paradox of Europe” which, despite being a region with among the highest income and education levels, also has the world’s highest levels of vaccine skepticism. In poorer regions, trust levels tend to be much higher, with 95% in South Asia and 92% in Eastern Africa feeling confident that vaccines are safe and effective.


Study finds Americans are eating more - and more often.

Explanation: Americans may be cutting back on super-sized meals, but waistlines continue to expand from more frequent eating, according to a study released on Wednesday.

People line up to buy food at a fast food restaurant in Harlem in New York December 16, 2009. REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly The number of daily meals and snacks consumed by U.S. adults rose to 4.8 in 2006 from 3.8 in 1977, according to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers who examined surveys of daily eating habits over a 30-year period. In the top 10 percent of those surveyed, the number of daily meals and snacks rose to seven from five. The analysis also found that although the size of meal portions has stabilized in recent years, but the number of total calories consumed is rising. By 2006, the end of the period studied, Americans were consuming 570 more calories per day than they did in the late 1970s. A chief culprit behind the calorie gain: Americans now consume 220 more calories daily from sugar-sweetened soft drinks than they did in the 1960s, the study found. The study is thought to be the first to examine the combined contribution of changes in portion sizes, the caloric level of foods, and eating frequency on people’s total calorie consumption. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and the findings appear in the June 2011 issue of the journal PLoS Medicine. Kiyah Duffey, a postdoctoral fellow at the UNC Interdisciplinary Obesity Center and one of the study’s authors, said large portion sizes drove the rise in calories during the early part of the study period. “Around the time people became aware of the portion sizes, we see a decline in the portion sizes they are consuming,” Duffey told Reuters. “It really seems that in the last couple of decades, it is the number of eating occasions that is driving this change.”   A proliferation of food availability and a decline in regular mealtimes may be fueling the pattern, Duffey said. “People aren’t sitting down to three meals anymore,” she said. “We sort of think about eating all through the day.”   Some sources of dieting and health advice say frequent eating in small doses revs up the metabolism and controls hunger, and is a healthier way of eating than three big meals. Duffey said what matters is what and how much you eat over the course of the day rather than how often you eat. “Don’t eat seven times a day if what you’re eating is a salty snack or a pizza,” she said. “If you’re going to do that, reach for an apple instead.”


Explanation: This story tries to explain a new analysis of many studies of cardiovascular and stomach bleeding problems caused by painkiller use. Although the background material for the article is complicated, this article is less helpful to a reader than it ought to be. Without presenting how often the events like heart attack, stroke, heart arrhythmias or kidney disorders occur, it is not possible for an individual to evaluate how much concern it causes them. Although these are serious risks and individuals thinking about or currently taking these medications should consider them, the article did a a poor job of clearly delineating treatment options. There is confusion about the various risks and how they differ among the available treatment options. Though the article mentioned sticking with a drug which hasn’t caused problems in the past, waiting seven years after FDA approval before trying a new medication, using naproxen plus an acid-reflux drug (without specifying the class that is most successful in this role) and recommending use of ‘pain ointments’, it did a poor job of clarifying how a given individual should assess these options and how they apply to themselves.

There was no information about the costs of the various treatment options, though this was not the focus of the article. However generic NSAIDS, such as naproxen, are much less expensive than name brand NSAIDs, such as Celebrex and Mobic, and this could have been mentioned. The biggest problem with this article is that there was no framework for the estimate of the size of the risks, only that there were gastrointestinal, cardiovascular and renal risks associated with the use of these medications. Quantification of the risks in relative and absolute terms would have been valuable to the reader. While clearly mentioning some disease risks which are elevated with long term or high dose use of NSAID medications, the article failed to provide fair balance about the benefits that these medications can confer. In this story, the perspectives on benefits and harms were switched. The benefits discussed in the article were about the harms associated with some NSAID use, with the benefits being about using other meds instead. This was unsatisfactory because the article failed to provide a context about how often these harms are experienced. With respect to harms, the article failed to discuss the benefits of taking the meds in question and so would include the harms associated with not taking those medications. The article failed to mention anything about these and so was given an unsatisfactory. The article explained that the newest reports on the risks associated with use of NSAID medications were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. And the story briefly mentioned the nature of the analysis: “New reports on painkiller risks, based on reviews of dozens of studies including hundreds of thousands of patients…” This article presented some information about risks associated with the medications without providing how often these adverse events occur. The reader is left with a sense that the adverse events are very common when in fact, they are not. For example, kidney dysfunction was observed in less than 1% of patients taking any of the specific NSAID medications studied. The article included some confusing quotes from experts in the field. Recommending “If something has helped you in the past and you haven’t experienced an adverse reaction with it, stay with that drug” seems to contradict the recommendation from the FDA (web-link provided at the end of the article) about the chance of heart attack or stroke associated with NSAID use which increases “with longer use of NSAID medicines.” Another expert recommended that “patients should wait seven years before trying a new drug” when one of the drugs for which there are newly observed heart risks, diclofenac, has had FDA approval from at least 1996 and is well over that seven year waiting period. The article quoted experts; it is just that what the experts had to say was confusing and the story could have interpreted better. The article did a poor job of clearly delineating treatment options. There is confusion about the various risks and how they differ among the available treatment options. Though the article mentioned sticking with a drug which hasn’t caused problems in the past, waiting seven years after FDA approval before trying a new medication, using naproxen plus an acid-reflux drug (without specifying the class that is most successful in this role) and recommending use of ‘pain ointments’, it did a poor job of clarifying how a given individual should assess these options and how they apply to themselves. Many of the medications mentioned in the article are commonly prescribed medications which have been approved for use by the FDA. This article basically summarizes the adverse reactions that have been documented to date with the use of NSAID medications and in particular, the subset set of NSAID medications which are exclusively COX-2 inhibitors. It is clear that these are not novel treatments. Does not appear to rely exclusively on a press release.


Flood waters rise, eight killed as Florence dumps 'epic' rain on Carolinas.

Explanation: Tropical Storm Florence dumped “epic” amounts of rain on North and South Carolina as it trudged inland on Saturday, knocking out power and causing at least eight deaths as flood waters that have devastated many communities kept rising.

Florence’s intensity has diminished since it roared ashore along the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast on Friday as a hurricane. But its slow march over the two states, crawling west at only 3 miles per hour (6 km per hour), is expected to leave large parts of the region deluged in the coming days, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said late Saturday. “This system is unloading epic amounts of rainfall, in some places measured in feet and not inches,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper told a news briefing. His state has already endured record rainfall, with much more forecast to come. Rivers will continue to rise days after the rain has stopped, he said. “This is a hurricane event followed by a flood event,” said South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster. With flood waters advancing rapidly in many communities, around 50 stranded people had been airlifted out by helicopter in North Carolina, said Petty Officer Michael Himes of the U.S. Coast Guard. More than 26,000 hunkered down in shelters. Numerous roads were closed, and authorities warned of the risk of landslides, tornadoes and flash floods, with dams and bridges in peril as rivers and creeks swelled. As of Saturday, about 676,000 homes and businesses were without power in North Carolina, along with 119,000 in South Carolina. North Carolina officials said there had been at least seven storm-related fatalities in the state, with unconfirmed reports of a further three deaths. South Carolina authorities reported one death. The White House said President Donald Trump approved making federal funding available in some affected counties. Trump, who plans a visit to the region next week, tweeted his “deepest sympathies and warmth” to the families and friends of those who had lost their lives. (GRAPHIC: Hurricane Florence to pummel U.S. Southeast for days - tmsnrt.rs/2oZFKSb)  At 2300 EDT (0300 GMT), the NHC said Florence had maximum sustained winds of 40 miles per hour (65 km), and was slowly drifting westward over South Carolina. The center said the storm would dump as much as 40 inches (102 cm) of rain along coastal areas of the Carolinas, as well as up to 10 inches in southwestern Virginia. In Fayetteville, a North Carolina city of about 210,000 people about 90 miles inland, authorities told thousands of residents near the Cape Fear River and Little River to get out of their homes by Sunday afternoon because of the flood risk. “If you are refusing to leave during this mandatory evacuation, you need to do things like notify your legal next of kin because the loss of life is very, very possible,” Mayor Mitch Colvin said at a news conference. “The worst is yet to come,” he added. The storm made landfall on Friday near Wilmington, a city of about 120,000 squeezed between North Carolina’s Atlantic coastline and the Cape Fear River. On Saturday, its streets were strewn with downed tree limbs and carpeted with leaves and other debris. Electricity remained out for much of the city, known for its historic mansions, with power lines lying across roads like wet strands of spaghetti. Near the Sutton Power Plant in Wilmington, coal ash leaked from a Duke Energy landfill. The site lost enough material to fill around two-thirds of an Olympic-sized pool, the company said in a statement, adding that it did not believe the incident posed a risk to health or the environment. Officials had warned before the storm that the rains could risk tainting waterways with murky coal ash and toxic hog waste. Florence has already set a North Carolina record for rainfall totals, exceeding that of Hurricane Floyd, which struck  in 1999 and caused 56 deaths. Floyd produced 24 inches of rain in some parts of the state, while Florence has already dumped about 30 inches in areas around Swansboro. In New Bern, about 90 miles northeast of Wilmington at the confluence of two rivers, Florence overwhelmed the town of 30,000 and left the downtown area under water. Some area residents described a harrowing retreat as the storm hit. “It was pitch black and I was just scared out of my mind,” said Tracy Singleton, who with her family later drove through torrential rain and high winds from her home near New Bern. South Carolina authorities said law enforcement officers were guarding against looting in evacuated areas, while Wilmington set a curfew on Saturday evening in response to looting in one area. As the United States dealt with Florence, a strong typhoon tore across the northern tip of the Philippines, wrecking homes and triggering landslides before heading toward Hong Kong and China.