GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: Junk food will make you blind!!!!

domingo, 8 de septiembre de 2019

BioEdge: Junk food will make you blind!!!!

BioEdge: Junk food will make you blind!!!!

Bioedge

Junk food will make you blind!!!!

by Michael Cook | 7 Sep 2019 |

^{Photo by Miguel Andrade on Unsplash}

The headline in the sober pages of the Annals of Internal Medicine was irresistible clickbait: “Blindness Caused by a Junk Food Diet”. It was only a letter reporting the plight of a single “fussy eater”, but it was reported around the world.

Since starting secondary school, a teenager had consumed a limited diet of chips, crisps, white bread, and some processed pork. By the time the patient's condition was diagnosed at the Bristol Eye Hospital, he had permanently impaired vision. According to a press release, “Further investigation found the patient had vitamin B12 deficiency, low copper and selenium levels, a high zinc level, and markedly reduced vitamin D level and bone mineral density.”

This was grist for the mill of every worried mother and every dietician. Nearly all articles in the media featured a box overflowing with chips (French fries, for American readers).

But as Gary Schwitzer, of HealthNewsReview.org, pointed out, this was yet another example of bad public relations colluding with bad reporting. It was not a “study”, but merely a single case.

He asked Dr Chioma Ihekweazu, an expert on health communications. She said:

The link established here is tenuous because the patient didn’t keep any type of food record. The researchers based their diagnosis on the patient’s descriptions of the types of foods he ate over several years. Dietary recall is notoriously unreliable when asking people to remember what they ate beyond the span of a few days, let alone several years.
Additionally, environmental exposures and other lifestyle factors that could have contributed to the patient’s vision loss were left largely unaddressed. The authors reported that the patient denied use of alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs but teens aren’t always forthcoming about their substance use, especially in the presence of their parents.
What we’re left with is a particularly dramatic example of the consequences of a poor diet based on a single patient and a lot of speculation.

So the dramatic story is just an anecdote – not forward warning of a tsunami of blind “fussy eaters”. Health journalists tend to believe that one swallow does make a summer. It’s wise to be sceptical when they tout miracle cures – or apocalyptic disasters.

Michael Cook is editor of BioEdge

Below is an article about a 73-year-old Indian woman who has just given birth to twin boys. This is a story which used to fly onto the front page, but is now a bit ho-hum. To stir media interest, we need to break through the next barrier. “Centenarian gives birth to twins, say Indian doctors” – now that would be newsworthy, I think. At least the first centenarian would.

The ho-hum factor may account for the fact that few questions were raised about obvious ethical issues involved in septuagenarians giving birth.

First of all, it is obviously reinforcing a sexist stereotype – that a woman is useless unless she has children. Furthermore, despite reassuring words from the doctors, it is a serious risk to the mother’s health.

Second, the children of a 73-year-old mother will soon be orphans. In fact, their father had a stroke on the day after they were born. No one seems to be thinking about their welfare and their future. They are just status symbols for their parents and the doctors.

Why did the doctors cooperate? For the money? For the fame? It strikes me as completely unethical.