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Reporting on Masturbation-Cancer Link Is Wrong
Tweet Share on Facebook April 23, 2008 Comment (17)Recent reporting you may have read on the health effects of masturbation is wrong. I don't mean morally; I mean journalistically. PlanetOut reported on Monday that "BBC News reported on Wednesday" that masturbating frequently may reduce a man's risk of prostate cancer. Masturbating may or may not affect one's cancer risk, but the only BBC report I can find on the subject is dated July 16, 2003—and it contains statistics that are identical to those cited by PlanetOut. (For what it's worth, that day was indeed a Wednesday, according to this online tool.)
Moreover, the Australian organization named by both news outlets, the Cancer Council Victoria, does not appear to have any recent press release on masturbation or ejaculation, though it does have one dating to July 2003. (A phone call to the Cancer Council, placed at 4:27 a.m. local time, went unanswered.) A search of PubMed.gov, a database of published medical studies, turned up only one study about ejaculation (and one letter to an editor) coauthored by Graham Giles, the researcher quoted by PlanetOut.
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Space Station Crew Crash-Lands; Hawking Talks
Tweet Share on Facebook April 22, 2008 Comment (3)"Ballistic re-entry" is a pleasant-sounding euphemism for what happened to Russia's Soyuz spacecraft on Saturday, but from press accounts like this one by MSNBC, it sounds as if the capsule basically crash-landed. What sort of questions does this incident raise for the safety of continued space exploration?
In other space exploration news, accomplished astrophysicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking stated last night that life probably exists on other planets but that it may not be intelligent enough to communicate with us. "Primitive life is very common, and intelligent life is fairly rare," he said, according to the Associated Press. "Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth."
Hawking endorsed human exploration of space, saying, "If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before."
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Other Problem Plastics: Bisphenol A Isn't the Only Concern
Tweet Share on Facebook April 18, 2008 Comment (5)Bisphenol A, a major ingredient in polycarbonate plastic that's also used to preserve canned foods, is getting lots of bad publicity this week. But polycarbonate isn't the only kind of plastic that has health experts concerned; plasticizers called phthalates make some of them nervous, too.
Some scientists and parents have been worried for years about these chemicals (pronounced THAL-ates), which make certain plastics like vinyl pliable and are also used as solvents in cosmetic products. Groups like Greenpeace have been calling for bans of vinyl pacifiers and toys for at least a decade. (And here I thought toxic toys were the recent problem!)
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Cialis Side Effect: Erection Drug Overdose Linked to Stroke
Tweet Share on Facebook April 8, 2008 Comment (130)Can a man OD on an ED drug? Yes, according to doctors in Rome who treated a patient after he popped two of the pills at once. Their case report links the 70-year-old man's intracerebral hemorrhage, a kind of stroke, to his decision to take 40 milligrams of tadalafil (Cialis)—twice the dose he had been prescribed and four times the standard dose of that erectile dysfunction drug. He took the pills, they write in today's issue of Neurology, "1 hour before onset of his acute headache and...his symptoms worsened moderately during his sexual intercourse."
It's just a single case, of course, so it doesn't prove cause and effect. And the doctors who treated and released the man identified only three previous medical reports that have linked ED drugs to intracerebral hemorrhage, suggesting that it is an extremely rare side effect. Still, those reports have implicated both sildenafil citrate, which is the active ingredient in Viagra, and vardenafil, which is in Levitra. So, none of the three drugs in that widely used class of ED medications is off the hook.
Moral of the story: One dose, good. Two, too many.
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How STRADIVARIUS Will Play on Doctors' Minds
Tweet Share on Facebook April 2, 2008 CommentClever acronyms abound in the world of medical science. Some trials bear names like AVIATOR, SHOCK, and AWESOME and not just because researchers like showing off their verbal virtuosity. A couple of years ago, a study—called ART in Medicine, naturally—showed that acronym-named studies get cited more frequently than studies of equal quality that don't have catchy handles. An upshot of that favoritism is that doctors may overlook some important medical findings while giving others more than their fair share of attention. That bias, in turn, could harm the practice of medicine by partially divorcing it from the evidence.
Against that backdrop, it's with mixed emotions that I call your attention to today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, in which Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and his colleagues report the results of the, uh, STRADIVARIUS trial. That whopper stands for the "Strategy to Reduce Atherosclerosis Development
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Earth Seizes the Spotlight Saturday Night
Tweet Share on Facebook March 28, 2008 Comment (3)I'm eagerly awaiting the 8 o'clock hour of this Saturday evening, which has been dubbed Earth Hour, as I recently reported. The dimming of lights for one hour in more than two dozen cities around the world is an elegant protest against wasted energy and light.
I welcome after-the-fact reports and comments from readers in all participating cities. What was your Earth Hour like?
For more on light pollution, check out the Thinking Harder homepage on the topic.
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What Viagra's Birthday Means to Men's Health
Tweet Share on Facebook March 27, 2008 Comment (116)I had the dubious distinction last year of being mocked (in absentia) on national TV by Jay Leno, who for some unimaginable reason found it amusing that a guy named Harder had written a news story about flaccidity.
Headline jokes aside, erectile dysfunction is a serious matter, and not just because it can threaten the health of a marriage. More than just a sexual problem, ED is often a sign that a man's life is at risk. That was the point of my report last year, and the evidence behind it has only grown stronger. On this day, the tenth anniversary of Viagra's regulatory approval by the Food and Drug Administration, I decided to look anew at that evidence. (If you're more interested in the drug itself than in the condition it treats, check out these five things about the blue pill that you might not know.)
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Endangered: Should More Species Get the Label?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 25, 2008 Comment (1)The Washington Post's front page on Sunday carried a story on the sluggish expansion of the list of endangered or threatened species since President Bush took office. Under the current administration, the list has grown by 59 species, in every case following a request by environmental activists rather than being initiated by government officials. In the past two years, not a single species has been added.
By comparison, 231 species gained such protections under the first President Bush, who served a single term. And in 52 of those cases, according to the Post, it was administration officials, not just activists, who requested the status change. The difference between father and son is far more striking than the disparity between Bush the elder and President Clinton, whose administration extended protection to 521 species over two terms of office.
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Close Encounters of an Unfamiliar Kind
Tweet Share on Facebook March 18, 2008 Comment (14)Reading Gene Weingarten's column in the Washington Post Magazine Sunday, I saw myself in the proverbial mirror—and I almost didn't recognize the face staring back.
In "Losing Face," Weingarten shares his self-diagnosis of mild prosopagnosia: "I have trouble recognizing and remembering faces," he writes. I long ago came to the conclusion that I, too, have this condition. I've never asked a doctor about it, but many a friend has been dumbfounded by my inability to recognize a given actor from one movie to the next. And more than a few acquaintances have been perplexed or offended when I've failed to recall their name on a second—or third, or fourth—meeting.
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Light Pollution: Burning Earth at Both Ends
Tweet Share on Facebook March 14, 2008 Comment (38)Welcome to U.S. News & World Report's homepage on light pollution and its effects. As you may have read in our magazine story, "Turning Out the Lights," the night is not the same as it once was. For a dramatic illustration of artificial light, check out our new "Light Pollution" photo gallery.
As a society, we are addicted to artificial light. We illuminate our homes and offices, our roads and car dealerships, our Christmas trees and cell towers, and even the architectural flourishes on buildings and bridges. Artificial light is essential to modern urban life and, as of this year, half the world's population is urban. Yet scientists and medical experts are beginning to recognize darker aspects of lighting the night, including harm to wildlife and human health—not to mention wasteful energy use.
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