Posted by Gary Schwitzer in Health care journalism
For the second time in a week (maybe it’s happened more and we fortunately missed it), the New York Daily News has copied animal research stories in the London Daily Mail and spread the excitement about possible human uses across the ocean.
Yesterday, the NYDN touted “a new cream that promises instant anti-impotence with no side effects.”
We’re talking about a study in 10 rats.
Supposedly the cream “succeeded” in 9 of them, although how anti-impotence “success” was measured in rats was not described.
Even if this had been about 10 people we would have shrieked, as if we’d seen a mouse.
Last week, the NYDN headline was: “Coming soon! The mind-cleansing drug that helps you forget all your bad memories”
We weren’t told what kind of animals nor how many benefited from this approach.
Maybe they were elephants, who supposedly never forget. Now THAT would be news!
Treatment for advanced ovarian tumors may lengthen survival, but questions still remain, despite the story’s emphasis on “promising” and “new hope.”
As with the HealthDay story on this research that we reviewed, readers of this story get a good dose of caveats and cautions along with the suggestions that electrical brain stimulation might someday “have implications” for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
The readers of this story and the other one we reviewed by Reuters are likely to understand that electrical brain stimulation could have some memory effects, but it’s a long way from becoming a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
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