Excerpted from NHS Choices

Full Article Here

By Dr Alicia White

If you’ve just read a health-related headline that has caused you to spit out your morning coffee (“Coffee causes cancer” usually does the trick), it’s always best to follow the Blitz slogan: “Keep Calm and Carry On”. On reading further, you’ll often find the headline has left out something important, such as, “Injecting five rats with really highly concentrated coffee solution caused some changes in cells that might lead to tumours eventually. (Study funded by The Association of Tea Marketing)”.

The most important rule to remember is: don’t automatically believe the headline. It is there to draw you into buying the paper and reading the story. Would you read an article called, “Coffee pretty unlikely to cause cancer, but you never know”? Probably not.

To avoid spraying your newspaper with coffee in the future, you need to analyse the article to see what it says about the research it is reporting on. Bazian (the company I work for) has appraised hundreds of articles for Behind The Headlines on NHS Choices, and we’ve developed the following questions to help you figure out which articles you’re going to believe and which you’re not.

Does the article support its claims with scientific research?

Your first concern should be the research behind the news article. If an article touts a treatment or some aspect of your lifestyle that is supposed to prevent or cause a disease, but doesn’t give any information about the scientific research behind it, then treat it with a lot of caution. The same applies to research that has yet to be published…

Click here to continue the full article.

The study will be measuring a child’s ability to spot the differences between two images on a computer screen and point out what is missing. This study is approved by the London Ethics Committee, with the approval of the British Psychological Society, and under the umbrella of Middlesex University, Dubai.

The study can be concluded in three sessions of thirty minutes each, and may be conducted in the participant’s home or learning/therapy center, in any of the emirates.

Guidelines for the children’s abilities are as follows. Parents who are interested, or who have further questions may contact:

Eleanore Coulthard
Psychology Department – Middlesex University Dubai
+971 50 655 2753 EC507@mdx.ac.uk

At this stage, Eleanore is in the process of identifying a large enough sample of Autistic children to make her study viable.

1. Aged between 7-12 years old
2. Diagnosed with Autism based on established criteria (DSM-IV)
3. No co-morbid conditions – e.g. Epilepsy
4. Normal vision (or corrected with glasses/ lenses)
5. Familiar and not-averse to working with Computers

• Able to sit down in front of a computer for ~30 minutes
• Able to use buttons on a keyboard to express whether they have noticed a change in the visual scene, i.e press the space bar when they notice a change in the picture
• Able to verbally or non verbally express where the change occurred,  i.e. point to the part of the screen that has changed.

6. Familiar with working with Computers

The makers of antipsychotic drugs Risperdal and Invega are facing a series of lawsuits after boys taking the drugs grew breasts as large as ‘D’ cups.

The patients who were prescribed the antipsychotics for conditions ranging from attention deficit disorder to Tourette syndrome and disruptive behavior, experienced quick weight gain and breast growth to the tune of a size 38D, in some cases, the lawsuits say.

Because of the weight gain, the boys’ lawyer says their doctors may have overlooked the seriousness of the breast growth. Now many of the boys will require surgical breast removal.

The lawsuits accuse the manufacturers of Risperdal and Invega of negligence and fraud and say that the companies did too little to make people aware of the drugs’ potential side effects.

Risperdal is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat autism in addition to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Invega, a similar drug, is approved for the treatment of schizophrenia…
To read more click here.

Risperdal is also indicated in rapid weight gain and the development of diabetes. For more detailed information, see A Word of Caution About the Use of Risperidone.

“In 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist at London’s Royal Free Hospital, published a study in the prestigious medical journal Lancet that linked the triple Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism and bowel disorders in children. The study — and Wakefield’s subsequent public statements that parents should refuse the vaccines — sparked a public health panic that led vaccination rates in Britain to plunge.

Wakefield’s study has since been discredited, and the MMR vaccine deemed to be safe. But now medical authorities in the U.K. have also ruled that the manner in which Wakefield carried out his research was unethical. In a ruling on Jan. 28, The General Medical Council, which registers and regulates doctors in the U.K., ruled that Wakefield acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” during his research and with “callous disregard” for the children involved in his study.”

…

“The panel also criticized Wakefield for failing to disclose that, while carrying out the research, he was being paid by lawyers acting for parents who believed their children had been harmed by the MMR jab.

The panel’s ruling follows a refutation of Wakefield’s research from the scientific community. Ten of 13 authors in the Lancet study have since renounced the study’s conclusions. The Lancet has said it should not have published the study in the first place, and various other studies have failed to corroborate Wakefield’s hypothesis.”