By now it should be clear that few things set me off more than shoddy media coverage of medical issues, particularly when important caveats are either omitted or distorted. Today's Globe and Mail (our national newspaper!!!) had a sensational front-page report on a study presented at a recent meeting by one of my colleages, which tripped every outrage switch in my head.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-few-less-weeks-in-the-wom...

Since the study has not yet appeared in print, there is not even an opportunity to see full results or be reassured by an appropriate peer review. Though these comments won't appear in print, I will feel better if given an opportunity to ventilate. So here goes!

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Kidney transplant donor sources - expanding the options and the debate

I can’t help but noticing that World Kidney Day came and went last week, and two items in particular caught my attention. In the New England Journal of Medicine (March 12, 2009), Rees and colleagues described a “chain of 10 kidney transplants initiated by a single altruistic donor (i.e. a donor without a designated recipient)” (1). This single act of generosity provoked a chain reaction whereby patients with willing but incompatible donors “swapped “with others in "paired transplant programs", the end-result being 10 kidney transplants over a period of 8 months. According to the authors of the report, their goal was to “highlight the potential of this strategy” of living donor recruitment. 



Journal of Theoretical Biology vs. People magazine: controversy, scandal, and newborn gender ratios

References:
1) Delbaere et al. 'Should we adjust for gestational age when analysing birth weights? The use of z-scores revisited. Human Reproduction 22:8 2080-83
2) Wilcox. The Perils of Birth Weight—A Lesson from Directed Acyclic Graphs, Am J Epidemiol;164:1121–112
3) Hernandez-Dıaz S, Schisterman EF, Hernan MA. The birth weight ‘‘paradox’’ uncovered? Am J Epidemiol;164: 1115–20.
4) Tu et al. Growth, current size and the role of the 'reversal paradox' in the foetal origins of adult disease: an illustration using vector geometry. Epidemiol Perspect Innov.3: 9.

Somali Piracy – Can Law of the Sea be an issue in child health?

Just last month, I was saddened to read several news reports describing how illegal overfishing by foreign fleets has severely depleted fish stocks within the national waters of Sierra Leone and Namibia. Apparently, declining harvests there have meant that once prosperous local communities are starving and fisherman can no longer feed their own families. According to some estimates, even fisher-families have had to cut back from three protein meals per day to one, with predictable consequences for nutrition status, general health and susceptibility to the usual gamut of childhood illnesses.

I completed my pediatric training in 1989, the same year that the Canadian parliament voted unanimously to eradicate child poverty in this country by the year 2000. At that time, the LICO poverty rate was 15.1% (LICO = low-income cut-off, or the proportion of the population who spend more than 2/3 of their pre-tax income on basic food, shelter and clothing). As of 2006, the rate was still 15.8%, suggesting that we’ve failed to honor our legislative commitment, with 700,000 Canadian children still below the LICO threshold. Lest I be accused of exaggerating, we do even worse by other metrics, such as the low-income measure (LIM, or the proportion living on less than half the median income), which saw 1.6 million (23.1%) of Canadian children living below the poverty line.

Is the Advanced Market Commitment (AMC) a good model for technology transfer, and why we should care?

Background link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_market_commitments

A couple of weeks ago, our local newspaper ran a rather indignant editorial on the subject of gasoline price fixing, with the unambiguous title “Price fixing is bad no matter who does it”, a sentiment I happen to whole-heartedly endorse. It did however remind me of a related story that may be even closer to home for members of this list, since it touches on important public health issues and how theyʼre dealt with in the popular press. It also highlighted --- to my non-journalist eyes at least --- a rather disturbing lack of editorial consistency. Since the related story is currently makings its tangled way through the courts in several countries with members on this list, I was curious as to how well the media were covering it in other jurisdications.