Taking the Daily Express’ health reporting with a large pinch of salt
WHAT is the cure for High blood pressure. On April 4, 2013, the Daily Express led with “CURE FOR HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE”. The paper had “five easy steps can keep the kill condition”.
Keeping active, slashing salt intake, eating a healthy diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables, cutting down on alcohol and not smoking all cut the chances of developing the deadly condition.
Salt intake. But Joe Willey had already told readers on July 6, 2011:
Salt is safe to eat – and cutting our daily intake does nothing to lower the risk of suffering from heart disease
Posted: 8th, April 2013 | In: Scare Stories, The Consumer | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Daily Mail takes on Mumsnet and loses horribly
HOW media works: Zoe Brennan wants readers of Mumsnet to help her with a story:
I am writing a feature for The Daily Mail about the increase in the number of children being sent to A&E. Figures released earlier this week show an increasing number of youngsters are sent direct to hospital, because GPs are reluctant to treat children. Babies in particular. This means long waits, and inappropriate care. Has your child been sent to A&E with a common infection or minor injury by your GP or NHS Direct? Have you an opinion on this subject, as a parent?
Posted: 25th, February 2013 | In: News, Scare Stories | Comment (1) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Cosmos watch: Earth like planet spotted but Apophis is going to blow us up
FIRST the good news:
“Using publicly available data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have found that six percent of red dwarf stars have habitable, Earth-sized planets. Since red dwarfs are the most common stars in our galaxy, the closest Earth-like planet could be just 13 light-years away.”
Posted: 7th, February 2013 | In: Scare Stories, Technology | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Daily Mail launches Knackers Mothers’ Wine Club day after warning or women ‘killed by alcohol’
THE Daily Mail wants to talk to you about wine. On January 25, the warning was that you women are going to die from drink:
Posted: 7th, February 2013 | In: News, Scare Stories | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Sugar: the latest godawful health scare
IT has to be the Mail reporting this, doesn’t it? But here it is, the shocking news that UK cereals contain more sugar than US cereals.
Breakfast cereals sold in Britain contain as much as 30 per cent more sugar than the same products in the United States.
Posted: 14th, January 2013 | In: Money, Scare Stories, The Consumer | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Warning: This Daily Express story could ‘potentially cause harm to people with cancer’
THE Daily Express has a question: “DO CANCER ALTERNATIVES REALLY WORK?”
Well, if alternatives did work surely people suffering from the hideous disease would use them, no? Or is the medical profession so stubbon and stupid that it does not consider alternative “remedies” in the face of proof that they work? Jane Warren reports:
THE YOUNG mother who disappeared with her seven-year- old son to prevent him receiving cancer treatment for a brain tumour was motivated by an understandable desire not to see him suffer any more than he needs to, says the seven-year-old boy’s father.
After a frantic nationwide search both Neon and Sally Roberts have now been found and the youngster has been temporarily placed in protective care and will be given the emergency treatment he needs.
Posted: 9th, December 2012 | In: News, Scare Stories | Comment (1) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Daily Mail writers cause more children to have accidents
SCARE story of the day appear in the Daily Mail, natch., wherein we are told:
“Playground children having more accidents because parents are too busy playing on their smartphones”
Yep. It’s a story about other parents being bad parents. We love ‘em.
Posted: 24th, November 2012 | In: Scare Stories | Comment (1) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Paedo children warped by the internet are the latest moral panic
HOW do you follow the the BBC-led paedophile witch hunt? If you’re the Daily Mail, you look at children who are paedos. The Mail’s leads with the chilling headline:
Internet porn and the rape suspects aged 10
This is a:
“New fear for young after 24 police forces arrest under-13s for sex crimes in a year.”
Posted: 19th, November 2012 | In: Key Posts, News, Scare Stories | Comment (1) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
David Bowie was right: freed by Hurricane Sandy rats attack New York
HURRICANE Sandy was bad. Can it be made worse? Watch out for the…
RATS!
Lynne Peeples spots rats:
…storm waters from Hurricane Sandy flood rats out of their underground residences, according to Rick Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Milbrook, N.Y.
“Rats are incredibly good swimmers,” said Ostfeld. “And they can climb.” In other words, Sandy is unlikely to knock off the resilient rodents, but rather displace them.
According to Ostfeld, this could result in increased risk of infectious diseases carried by urban rats, including leptospirosis, hantavirus, typhus, salmonella, and even the plague. “One of things we know can exacerbate disease is massive dispersal,” he added. “Rats are highly social individuals and live in a fairly stable social structure. If this storm disturbs that, rats could start infesting areas they never did before.”
Posted: 31st, October 2012 | In: News, Scare Stories | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Climate Change will not mean you die from malaria
ONE of the things we’re often told about climate change is that the increasing heat will bring back malaria. As temperatures rise then the mozzies that carry it will be able to live further north and thus we’ll all die aiieeeee!
Posted: 23rd, October 2012 | In: Global Warming, Money, Scare Stories | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Daily Express says chips give you cancer, fatso (maybe)
SALT? Vinegar? Cancer? The Daily Express leads with “CANCER IN YOUR CHIPS”.
Nathan Rao tells Express readers:
CHIPS served in many fast-food outlets and restaurants could contain a cancer-causing chemical, worrying research reveals.
The picture used to illustrate Rao’s refried news is of a woman smiling broadle as she holds up a chip on a spear, doubtless relived and elated to have snared the quarry before it could infect anyone with cancer (see left).
Scientists have found that the portions enjoyed by millions every day include acrylamide – which has been linked to cancer because of the cooking process.
Posted: 28th, September 2012 | In: Scare Stories, The Consumer | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
From 1976 two Swine Flu films to scare the life out of you
WINTER is coming. And that means swine flu. Be afraid. In 1976, you were very afaird. And Dotty – poor, poor Dotty. Well, she died:
Posted: 26th, September 2012 | In: Flashback, Scare Stories, TV & Radio | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
There’s science, bad science and then there’s the gays and drugs story
THE Daily Mail tells us that the gays are taking more drugs than the rest of us:
Gay people are seven times more likely to take illegal drugs than the general population, a new study conducted over two years has found. And one in five show signs of dependency on drugs or alcohol. The report, conducted by the Lesbian and Gay Foundation (LGF) and the University of Central Lancashire, sampled more than 4,000 people over two years.
Posted: 24th, September 2012 | In: Key Posts, Money, Scare Stories | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Scare stories: King Tut’s moobs did not give him cancer
SCARE Stories: Each week the Daily Mail seeks out new ways for you fall ill and die. This week the Mail made us miserable with:
Monday:
“MINISTER FOR DEATH” – Melanie Phillips profiles Anna Soubry MP
“Are super-size clothes making children fatter?”
“Why do you just HATE some women on sight?”
Posted: 14th, September 2012 | In: Scare Stories | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Climate change will murder 30,000 of you
YOU cannot argue with science. A look at academic research tells us:
Between 2010 and 2099, climate change will cause an additional 30,000 murders, 200,000 cases of rape, 1.4 million aggravated assaults, 2.2 million simple assaults, 400,000 robberies, 3.2 million burglaries, 3.0 million cases of larceny, and 1.3 million cases of vehicle theft in the United States.
Posted: 12th, September 2012 | In: Global Warming, Scare Stories | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Daily Mail scare week: sleep apnea gives you cancer
SCARE stories of the week. Each week the Daily Mail scours research papers and press releases for things that will kill you and /or give you cancer. This week:
Monday:
* “New couples who delay sex longest are happiest”
Ergo: Couples you shag from the off are the unhappiest
* “Killer virus warning for British tourists to Yosemite”
Posted: 7th, September 2012 | In: Scare Stories | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
How much alcohol should you drink a day? The Daily Mail knows
THE Daily Mail is here to help with your alcohol content:
On 7 September 2011, thee news was that two drinks a day was great. Then on May 31, 2012, the Mail told readers that three glasses a week was the limit.
Posted: 6th, June 2012 | In: Scare Stories | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
The truth about the Daily Mail’s poison Nurofen panic
WHEN the Daily Mail thundered”PAINKILLER ‘SABOTAGED – Animal rights protestors suspected of tampering with Nurofen” we blanched. Time to toss away those over-the-counter pain relief capsules. This sounded serious. The Mail added: “‘Saboteur’ puts up to 500,000 powerful anti-psychotic drugs in packets of Nurofen Plus sold in the UK.”
The paper warned us:
“Dangerous anti-psychotic drugs may have been deliberately placed in thousands of packets of Nurofen Plus by animal rights activists, it emerged last night… It is suspected militant activists carried out the sabotage operation with the intention of damaging Nurofen Plus’s makers, Reckitt Benckiser. The company may have been targeted because it tests its products on animals.”
Posted: 29th, May 2012 | In: News, Scare Stories | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
The fat truth about those surgically-implanted al-Qaeda bombs
NEWSWEEK says al Qaeda has an explosives expert called Ibrahim al-Asir. He and some top medics, who might not have taken the Hippocratic Oath, are creating bombs that can be stitched inside suicide bombers. This way, the killers will be able to get past airport scanners. Newsweek fails to say where the tapers will be in these cartoonish bombers, but menstruating woman might not make the most reliable mules.
We are told:
An American government source familiar with the report described it as 15 to 20 pages, single spaced, and replete with schematics and pictures. “It was almost like something you’d see in Scientific American,” the source said. (In military parlance, the bomb is called a “surgically implanted improvised explosive device,” or SIIED.) A diagram with arrows and blocks of text explained the surgical process. “The idea was to insert the device in the terrorist’s love handle,” says the U.S. government source, who declined to be named discussing sensitive intelligence. While it was not clear whether the terror doctors had ever succeeded in implanting explosives in a human being, they had experimented with dogs and other animals.
Fortunately these devices are easier to describe than to detonate. “You would have to have a very unique firing system,” says Borelli. “If it’s a ‘body bomb’ you are going to have to have a way to initiate it from the outside—almost a stent, or something like a pacemaker.”
Posted: 14th, May 2012 | In: Scare Stories | Comments (6) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Spider-Man sticks hamster to cage
TO the home of Kate Meech in Bugbrooke, Northamptonshire, where four month-old Smurf the hamster has eaten a Spider-Man magnet and become stuck to the metal bars of his cage.
Posted: 13th, April 2012 | In: Scare Stories | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Cannabis and the Daily Mail’s schizophrenia scaremongering
WHEN the Daily Mail told its readers “Just ONE cannabis joint ‘can bring on schizophrenia’ as well as damaging memory” back on October 25, 2011, we wondered. Could it be true? Well, no. It wasn’t. A mere five months later, on pril 3, 2012, the Mail wrote:
A report on research by the University of Bristol on 26 October was headlined ‘One cannabis joint “can bring on schizophrenia”.’ We are happy to clarify that, as the article explained, the research on rats found that the active ingredient in cannabis could induce symptoms similar to schizophrenia, rather than schizophrenia itself.
Posted: 10th, April 2012 | In: Scare Stories | Comment (1) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
The Hunger Games gives a Daily Mail writer’s drippy daughter nightmares
MORE signs that the Daily Mail and its online sister is aimed not at reporting news but at fomenting comment and outrage. Shona Sibary took her two daughters to see The Hunger Games. And – yep – it is a corrosive influence on young minds. A scare story is born:
Ever since the moment we stepped out of the cinema, I have quite genuinely been worried sick that they may have suffered lasting emotional scars.
One of Shona’s children cried when “her younger brother once, accidentally, trod on a ladybird”.
Posted: 4th, April 2012 | In: Scare Stories | Comments (6) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Cyclists and rowers die younger than archers and darts players
DAILY Mail Scare Story of Week: Jenny Hope has news that sitting down will kill you.
Stand up if you want to live longer, researchers have warned.
The bed-bound reach for their slippers.
A major study from Australia found sitting down too long increases your risk of dying within three years, even if you are already physically active.
Posted: 28th, March 2012 | In: Scare Stories | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
Using Ashleigh Hall to create a Facebook paedo panic
IN “I posed as a girl of 14 online. What followed will sicken you” Mark Williams-Thomas told Daily Mail readers that he was “shocked by what I encountered when I spent just five minutes on a social networking site posing as a 14-year-old girl”.
Adding:
“Within 90 seconds, a middle-aged man wanted to perform a sex act in front of me.”
How do we know it was middle-aged man? Middle-aged men on Facebook have been known to pose as 14-year-old girls.
…I wasn’t surprised that a vulnerable teenager, Ashleigh Hall, was groomed on Facebook before being brutally raped and killed.
Posted: 26th, March 2012 | In: Key Posts, Scare Stories, Technology | Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
The Killer Shisha tobacco scaremongering blows up in smoke
HOW dangerous are shisha pipes? As No Smoking Day looms, a barage of press releases have gone out wanting that shihsa smoke is a killer.
The Daily Mail is informative:
How an hour spent smoking trendy shisha pipes is as harmful as a HUNDRED cigarettes
Non-trendy ones are just as dangerous. In Singapore, Yahoo says:
Shisha: 200 times more harmful than cigarettes?
The Mail goes on:
But the World Health Organisation has warned that a one-hour shisha session can be as harmful as smoking 100 cigarettes.
Posted: 22nd, March 2012 | In: Key Posts, Scare Stories, The Consumer | Comments (2) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed:RSS 2.0
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