Sniffing out the latest diabetes news
Woof woof woof! It’s me – Neville the Newshound! Bringing you all the latest diabetes news and views from the comfort of my basket.
I have covered my general contempt for the media’s reporting of diabetes before but, having nothing particularly interesting to report at the moment, thought I would mention the NHS’s “Behind the Headlines” website.
Essentially, it picks through the excrescence of the popular press finding, like sweetcorn chunks, the health stories of the day. It then proceeds to take them apart and find out what the truth and medical fact is behind each report. There’s a whole section devoted to diabetes, which just goes to show how often diabetes is reported (or, more commonly, misreported) in our daily papers.
Typically, it goes like this. You’re forwarded a headline from the Daily Mail or Express by a friend on Facebook who knows you’re pancreatically challenged, accompanied by some gibberish like “I saw DIS & thawt of U. U’re cured @ last!”
A day or two later and the latest Behind the Headlines email pops into your inbox with full and detailed coverage of the article, showing you that it only works in mice and the research might come to fruition in tens year’s time. Hurrah. You then post a link to your friend, only to receive the response “I wz only trying 2 hlp – I thawt U mite b intRStd. I’m unfriending you, U ba*d”.
Rinse and repeat with the next headline.
Link: Behind the Headlines
Sounds like a perfect way to get rid of unwanted friends who haven’t made sufficient effort to understand the intricacies of my pancreas. Thanks Neville.
Thanks Neville! It’s a pretty useful service for debunking the irritating nonsense that guffed out in the press which puts back the general understanding of diabetes by decades. Not that I ever get a bee in my bonnet about diabetes-related reporting or anything.