10 Medical Myths That Everyone Should Stop Believing

Identifying practices and theories that were contradicted by rigorous studies.

You might assume that standard medical advice was supported by mounds of scientific research. But researchers recently discovered that nearly 400 routine practices were flatly contradicted by studies published in leading journals.

Of more than 3,000 studies published from 2003 through 2017 in JAMA and The Lancet, and from 2011 through 2017 in The New England Journal of Medicine, more than one in 10 amounted to a “medical reversal”: a conclusion opposite of what had been conventional wisdom among doctors.

“You come away with a sense of humility,” said Dr. Vinay Prasad of Oregon Health and Science University, who conceived of the study. “Very smart and well-intentioned people came to practice these things for many, many years. But they were wrong.”

Some of those ideas have been firmly dislodged, but not all. Now Dr. Prasad and his colleagues are trying to learn how widespread are discredited practices and ideas.

Here are 10 findings that contradict what were once widely held theories.

1. Peanut allergies occur whether or not a child is exposed to peanuts before age 3.

Pediatricians have counseled parents to keep babies away from peanuts for the first three years of life. As it turns out, children exposed to peanuts before they were even 1 year old have no greater risk of peanut allergies.

2. Fish oil does not reduce the risk of heart disease.

This idea did seem logical: People whose diets contain a lot of fatty fish seem to have a lower incidence of heart disease. Fatty fish contains omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 supplements lower levels of triglycerides, and high levels of triglycerides are linked to an increased risk of heart disease. Not to mention that omega-3 fatty acids seem to reduce inflammation, a key feature of heart attacks.

But in a trial involving 12,500 people at risk for heart trouble, daily omega-3 supplements did not protect against heart disease.

3. A lifelike doll carried around by teenage girls will not deter pregnancies.

These dolls wail and need to be “changed” and “cuddled.” The idea was that girls would learn how much work was involved in caring for an infant. But a randomized study found that girls who were told to carry around “infant simulators” actually were slightly more likely to become pregnant than girls who did not get the dolls.

4. Ginkgo biloba does not protect against memory loss and dementia.

The supplement, made from the leaves of ginkgo trees, was widely used in ancient Chinese medicine and still is promoted as a way to preserve memory. A large federal study, published in 2008, definitively showed the supplement is useless for this purpose. Yet ginkgo still pulls in $249 million in sales. Did people just not get the message?

Smart people practiced these things for many, many years. But they were wrong.

5. To treat emergency room patients in acute pain, a single dose of oral opioids is no better than drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen.

Yes, opioids are powerful drugs. But a clinical trial showed that much safer alternatives relieve pain just as well among emergency room patients.

6. Testosterone treatment does not help older men retain their memory.

Some men have low levels of testosterone and memory problems, and early studies had hinted that middle-aged men with higher testosterone levels seemed to have better preserved tissue in some parts of their brains. Older men with higher testosterone levels also seemed to do better on tests of mental functioning.

But a rigorous clinical trial showed that testosterone was no better than a sugar pill in helping older men avoid memory loss.

7. To protect against asthma attacks, it won’t help to keep your house free of dust mites, mice and cockroaches.

The advice from leading medical groups has been to rid your home of these pests if you or your child has asthma. The theory was that allergic reactions to them can trigger asthma attacks. But intensive pest management in homes with children sensitized to mouse allergens did nothing to reduce the frequency of their asthma attacks, researchers reported in 2017.

8. Step counters and calorie trackers do not help you lose weight.

In fact, the reverse is true. Among 470 dieters followed for two years, those who wore devices tracking the steps they took and calories they burned actually lost less weight than those who just followed standard advice.

9. Torn knee meniscus? Try physical therapy first, surgery later.

An estimated 460,000 patients in the United States get surgery each year to fix knee cartilage that tears, often because of osteoarthritis. The tear is painful, and many patients fear that if it is not surgically treated, the pain will linger.

But when patients with a torn meniscus and moderate arthritis were randomized to six months of physical therapy or surgery, both groups improved, and to the same extent.

10. If a pregnant woman’s water breaks prematurely, the baby does not have to be delivered immediately.

Sometimes, a few weeks before a woman’s due date, the membrane surrounding her fetus ruptures and amniotic fluid spills out. Obstetricians worried that bacteria could invade what had been a sterile environment around the fetus, causing infection. Better to deliver the baby immediately, doctors thought.

But a clinical trial found that if obstetricians carefully monitor the fetus while waiting for labor to begin naturally, the fetus is at no greater risk for infection. And newborns left to gestate were healthier, with less respiratory distress and a lower risk of death, than those who were delivered immediately after a break.

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Biden was right. Busing was wrong
   
Jeff Jacoby

"VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN," demanded Kamala Harris in the climactic encounter of last Thursday's Democratic debate, "do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose busing in America then?"

Biden wasn't wrong. The forced busing of schoolchildren for purposes of racial desegregation was a wretched, wrongheaded policy that caused far more harm than good. As a young, liberal Democratic senator 45 years ago, Biden firmly opposed busing, and he was right to do so.

In the days following the debate, the liberal media chorus declared that of course opposition to forced busing was wrong, of course Biden had been on "the wrong side of history," and of course he should acknowledge the error of his ways. A visitor from Mars could be forgiven for assuming that racial busing had been wise and beneficial, and that no reasonable mind could deny it.

Perhaps some history is in order.

On June 21, 1974, US District Judge W. Arthur Garrity issued an order to desegregate Boston's public schools through massive crosstown busing of the city's schoolchildren. It was the first of what would add up to some 400 orders signed by Garrity over the next 11 years, and it had the staunch support of Boston's most important institutional voice of racially enlightened liberalism: The Boston Globe.

Twenty years later, the Globe's support had vanished.

"Busing has been a failure in Boston," the editorial board concluded bluntly in June 1994. "It achieved neither integration nor better schooling." Repudiating the "delusions and pretensions that drove the busing controversy," the Globe called for an end to the "obsessive, dead-end tinkering with racial proportions."

Garrity's orders had convulsed Boston and fueled the ugliest antibusing backlash in the nation. Photographer Stanley Forman won a Pulitzer Prize for The Soiling of Old Glory, a shocking photograph of a black man being assaulted by a white teenager with an American flag outside City Hall. But the damage caused by hoodlums was minimal compared to the damage inflicted on the city by the federal judge.

As scholars Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom wrote in America in Black and White, their sweeping 1997 survey of US race relations, Garrity's desegregation plan was deliberately punitive, meant to humble residents he and his advisers regarded as uneducated and bigoted. "The plan thus paired Roxbury High, in the heart of the ghetto, with South Boston High, in the toughest, most insular, working-class section of the city.... Both neighborhoods already had much more than their share of housing projects, gangs, and street violence. Adding racial friction to the mix did not seem likely to promote more tranquil race relations and a better atmosphere for learning."

No surprise, then, that busing was intensely resented. Some of that resentment manifested itself in racial epithets, riots, and the stoning of buses transporting black children. Gunshots were fired into the Globe's Dorchester newsroom. But by no means were all busing opponents racist, or white.

"Polls taken during the early days of busing show that only bare majorities of blacks favored the policy," Matthew Richer wrote in a 1998 Policy Review essay. Just days before Garrity's decision, black legislators had been pushing for more community control over the schools, not busing. By 1982, a Globe poll found that only 14 percent of black Boston parents still favored busing. The overwhelming majority preferred a free-choice plan, allowing parents to send their children to any public school in the city. In practice, that would have meant schools their kids could walk to.

Busing was disliked so intensely, wrote the Thernstroms in their 1997 volume, above all because parents resented their powerlessness "at the prospect of having their children bused to schools on the other side of town." They had been "accustomed to dealing with a school system that was democratically governed, one in which their opinions mattered. As a result of desegregation suits, basic decisions about how the schools operated were removed from officials responsive to majority opinion and put in the hands of just one person," a federal judge with no educational expertise.

All the turmoil and bitterness busing engendered might be forgivable if it had also produced success in the classroom. But it was a near-total failure. As the Globe conceded in its 20th-anniversary editorial, it achieved neither integration nor better schooling, and turned out to serve no educational purpose.

Busing made everything worse. Public school enrollment plummeted. In Boston, 78 school buildings were closed. In 1970, 62,000 white children had attended the city's public schools — 64 percent of the total. By 1994, only 11,000 white students remained. Before busing began, the average black child in Boston attended a school that was 24 percent white. By the mid-1990s, the proportion was 17 percent. Far from reducing racial isolation, busing had intensified it.

And all for the sake of a delusion — that racial composition makes a meaningful difference in student performance. What has always mattered most is the standards and culture of a school, not the color of the children in its classrooms.

Which is what Biden and other liberal opponents of busing were saying in the 1970s.

"Who the hell do we think we are," Biden fumed to a Delaware weekly in 1975, "that the only way a black [child] can learn is if they rub shoulders with my white child?"

He was right. Biden may have gotten many things wrong over the years, but busing wasn't one of them.

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African woman's foul act with a tub of ice cream in a supermarket has prompted a response from a major ice cream manufacturer

Police say they have identified a woman seen in a viral video licking a tub of ice cream before replacing it in a Walmart supermarket freezer in Texas.

A short video posted to Twitter on the weekend quickly went viral, after it showed a woman licking the top of a full Blue Bell ice cream tub, before resealing it and stuffing it back into the freezer.

A man, apparently filming the video, appeared to be egging the woman on and can be heard saying, “lick it, lick it, lick it.”

The man then urges the woman to “put it back!” as she laughs loudly as she reseals the “Tin Roof” flavoured ice cream and shoves it back into the supermarket freezer.

The nine second video was posted to Twitter with the caption, “What kinds psychopathic behaviour is this?!” and quickly went viral. Since Saturday it has attracted over 11 million views and over 27,000 retweets.

The video attracted a huge amount of outrage and disgust, with users online calling for the ice cream tub to be located, and the woman to be charged for food tampering.

“This not funny in the least! She needs to be charged … especially (because) this likely prompts others to behave ignorantly for ‘hits’,” one woman commented.

“I don’t know if she’s more gross for doing it, or stupid for letting someone take a video and post it,” another person commented.

“This why you should never grab front row products,” another commenter said. “Always three or four rows back.”

Following the incident, Blue Bell responded saying they were working directly with local law enforcement to investigate the incident. In tweets, the company referred to it as “food tampering”.

Earlier today, Lufkin Police in Texas released an update on the case, along with a CCTV image of the alleged ice-cream licker walking through a shopping centre with a man.

Police say they believe they have identified the woman in the viral video, and they intend to charge her.

The search for the tainted ice cream container involved a co-ordinated effort between Blue Bell, who manufacturer the ice cream, and a number of local police districts, Lufkin Police said.

They got two tip offs for San Antonio and Houston, but both turned up nothing. A final tip off from Blue Bell itself, based on the store’s merchandising, led police to a Walmart in Lufkin, Texas.

Here they were able to retrieve the tainted ice cream tub from the freezer.

Police then quickly obtained CCTV, from the store on June 28, showing the woman they believe to be the same woman in the viral video.

Appropriate charges will be filed, according to Lufkin Director of Public Safety Gerald Williamson.

“Our biggest concern is consumer safety — in that regard we are glad to see the tainted product off the shelves,” Mr Williamson said.

“We are recommending that as a precaution Blue Bell remove products from the Lufkin Walmart shelves until our investigation is complete.”

Blue Bell released their own statement, saying the store where the “malicious act of food tampering” allegedly occurred had been identified.

“Our staff recognised the location in the video, and we inspected the freezer case,” a statement from Blue Bell said.

“We found a Tin Roof half gallon that appears to have been compromised. Based on security footage, the location and the inspection of the carton, we believe we may have recovered the half gallon that was tampered with.”

The company have removed every Tin Roof flavoured tub of ice cream from that store as a precaution.

“Food tampering is not a joke, and we will not tolerate tampering with our products,” the company added.

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Masculinity under siege in schools, politics, online

Comment from Australia

Is there a crisis in masculinity? Based on an article by the American Jordan Black, “Masculinity in Menopause: The Emasculating Effects of Fatherlessness and Feminism”, the answer is yes.

Black highlights how, across the Western world, falling levels of testosterone and low sperm counts are contributing to significant changes in how masculinity is defined. Add the impact of so many boys raised without fathers and the global #MeToo movement that gives the impression that all men are inherently violent and misogynist, and it should not surprise that Black concludes: “We are not making men like we used to; in fact, we are not making them at all.”

The same is happening here, where similar forces are at work undermining masculinity and radically redefining what constitutes manhood. As Bettina Arndt says in her book #MenToo, men are unfairly demonised and attacked by radical feminists more intent on winning gender wars than peacefully coexisting.

Even to suggest men’s rights are being undermined is to incur the wrath of the sisterhood. Victorian Women’s Trust executive director Mary Crooks wrote this week in Nine’s The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers: “Men’s ‘rights’ are about treating women as inferior; objectifying them by denying them any personhood. Men’s ‘rights’ are about being able to stalk, harass or abuse women online, on the streets, in the home or at work.”

Another example of this fatwa against men is how every time a woman is attacked or murdered the response is to blame all men and to suggest that violence occurs only because society is patriarchal and misogynist.

After last month’s horrendous murder of Courtney Herron in a Melbourne park late at night, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said women travelling alone should be safe regardless of where they were or what the hour, and that crimes such as this were “most likely about the behaviour of men”.

Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius mirrored the Premier’s views. He said: “This is about men’s behaviour. It’s not about women’s behaviour” — implying that, instead of the act being perpetrated by one demented evil soul, all men were implicated.

When detailing the death of masculinity, Black also says the US education system is guilty of “encouraging feminine behaviour for both genders”.

Feminist Camille Paglia makes the same point when she bemoans “the plight of physically active boys in a public school system dominated by female teachers”.

The Australian school system also disadvantages boys as a result of the feminisation of the curriculum. Research suggests boys, compared with girls, need greater structure and discipline to learn, especially in relation to learning to read, where the ­absence of a phonics and phonemic awareness approach puts them at risk.

Today’s approach to education is more about “care, share and grow”, where teachers facilitate and students self-direct, manage their own learning and where competition is shunned. It’s an approach that favours girls.

Not surprisingly, girls out­perform boys in reading as measured by the National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy, and achieve stronger Year 12 results as measured by the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank. It’s also true that material such as the gender-fluidity Safe Schools program and the Respectful Relationships program being implemented in Australia disadvantage boys, as both present a negative and biased view of masculinity and manhood.

The view of boys and men presented is one that implies masculinity is inherently violent against women and that Western societies such as ours are patriarchal ones in which women are ­oppressed and treated as second-class citizens.

Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence reported that 25 per cent of family violence victims were men but the Respectful Relationships program implies it is only women who are at risk.

Students also are never told that such is the way the law now operates that men often are assumed to be the guilty party.

Another example of how the curriculum has been feminised is the way school programs present traditional male characteristics such as fortitude, courage, physical strength and mateship as negatives instead of being worthwhile.

Even worse, many schools ban physically active and risky playground activities and behaviour, and it’s not unusual for primary schools to ban boys wearing ­superhero costumes on the basis that play-acting reinforces ­negative and potentially violent behaviour.

More radical feminists go as far as saying traditional male qualities lead to what The Age journalist Anna Prytz describes as a “man box”, a situation where men are constrained because they mistakenly believe they should be “unemotional, hyper-sexual, physically tough, stoic and in ­control”.

Instead of accepting the feminist argument that the characteristics that typically define men are toxic, Black argues in favour of what he describes as “virtuous masculinity”. Paglia makes a similar point, arguing that feminists guilty of misandry should learn to respect and admire positive masculine qualities.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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