Item on Billy Rubin’s Blog – “Media Overstatement on a Slow News Day” :
Right now one of the lead stories at the NY Times website deals with a potential new “miracle drug” called SRT-1720. With heavy emphasis on the scare-quotes. The article’s title, “Drug Is Found to Extend Lives of Obese Mice,” might be generating a huge buzz on the obese mouse circuit, but beyond this, I’m puzzled as to why this story is given such prominence in the Paper of Record. You could even argue that the story is barely worth running at all, even if placed deep in the science section of the website.
Bottom line is that this is a very preliminary study of an experimental drug. Studies like this are a dime a dozen, and it turns out that lots of fascinating things can be done in mice, but most of the time those fascinating things either don’t work in humans, or end up having unacceptable risks compared to the benefits. I don’t mean to belittle the experiment–it sounds very exciting–but I’m not sure that it’s ready for primetime among laypeople just yet. Could it be part of a bigger article talking about strides that science is making in the field of aging? Sure: that’s what the TV show NOVA is about, among other forms of popular science media. But there ain’t no miracle drug coming down the pike that’s going to extend the lives of obese people by 44 percent. So time to bury the story.
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A lot of interesting workshops are happening now at the #NBCCSummit! @garyschwitzer, the publisher of @HealthNewsRevu, is discussing new cancer research news. #BeBold
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