Posted by Gary Schwitzer in Health care journalism
Just read the headlines:
Magic pill for spine injuries: blue M&Ms?
Rocky Mountain Independent
Blue Food Dye Treats Spinal Cord Injury?
Ivanhoe
M&M’s, Gatorade May Hold Key To Treating Spinal Cord Injuries
WDIV-TV Detroit
Common, safe blue food dye may treat broken spines
Reuters
Perhaps the best because it emphasizes RATS in the headline:
Blue Dye Halts Worsening Paralysis in Animal Study
U.S. News & World Report – (a HealthDay News story)or
Blue Food Dye Helps Rats With Spinal Injuries-But Also Turns Them Blue
Discover Magazine
Perhaps the worst, because it actually puts the word “cure” in the headline:
Can blue M & Ms cure paralysis?
Chicago Tribuneor
The Blue Dye in M&Ms Cures Spinal Injuries
Popular Science
Add to these the recent awful stories on paralysis and spinal cord rehab by ABC and CBS and you can only feel empathy for those suffering with these problems who are jerked around by sensational headlines and sometimes by the stories that follow.
The CNN piece actually stated that the blue change was “temporary”, which makes sense. No one wants to go around as Nightcrawler or Mystique from X-Men lore…although if it means walking again…
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Overall, this was an easy-to-follow summary. But there was a clear difference between this and a competing Boston Globe story, which did a better job offering context and analysis.
This Boston Globe blog post gave its audience a more thorough understanding of an emerging approach to virtual colonoscopy than the Wall Street Journal.
Longer, but overall not any better, than the coverage from the competing LA Times story. Not thorough enough to explain what this preliminary research actually means for readers–which is not much at this point.
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Lindsey Slattery posted on July 29, 2009 at 10:34 am
I saw that story on CNN as well, with a picture of a cute little white rat with blue ears and nose. The fact that it was tested on rodents was downplayed so much in the CNN piece, they only mentioned the word “rodents” or “rats” twice. Plus, I am sure turning a deep shade of blue will be especially acceptable to a human patient as long there is a chance that their spinal injury could be improved.
Wow.