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Past Featured
Scams
Ovarian
Cancer and CA-125 Screening
from About.com's Urban Legends site
This harrowing e-tale, which has been circulating since 1998,
is purportedly by a woman who claims her late stage ovarian cancer could
have been diagnosed earlier by CA-125 testing and urges screening for all women,
regardless of age.
This falls under one of my favorite topics, Urban Legends. The internet
offers vast new opportunities to spread these modern myths and other
misinformation like never before. (full
article)
By the way, the story of the "exploding
toilet" is going around again. I think I heard this one as a
kid....
Antiperspirants cause
breast cancer!!!
An email that has been circulating for several years claims that
antiperspirants cause breast cancer, either through a toxin in the
antiperspirant itself or the deleterious effects of inhibiting one's own ability
to "sweat out toxins" (a medieval concept currently promoted by some
alternative care practitioners)
Click here
for The Mayo Clinic's Health Oasis answer.
Click here
for About.com's Urban Legends and Folklore article, which also provides some
other interesting links.
Hair
Analysis Seen Unreliable for Health Diagnosis
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Head hair analysis is an unreliable tool to
diagnose overall health and nutrition and should be viewed with skepticism by
the public and ignored by physicians, researchers said on Tuesday.
...Nine U.S. laboratories promote mineral analysis of hair as a
diagnostic tool, and the public spends nearly $10 million a year on the tests
that study authors Debra Gilliss of the California Department of Health Services
in Oakland and Sharon Seidel of Impact Assessment Inc. concluded were worthless.
...They recommended that doctors not use hair analysis to
evaluate patients' exposure to environmental hazards or to assess nutritional
issues. They also urged public health and consumer protection agencies to warn
the public about the tests' unreliability. (full
article)
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