WORRIED WELL

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Those that have followed Worried Well’s search for eternal life may be relieved to read that:

“FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH PILL ‘IS JUST TWO YEARS AWAY FROM SHOP SHELVES'”

Daily Mail online 28 September 2010
The Mail reports that its creator, a Professor from Moscow State University, said ‘the drug works by halting the damaging effects that oxygen can have on the body’s cells – this would stave off dangerous age-related illnesses, thereby adding years to our lives’.
An American Nobel Prize winner is quoted as lending credence to the claims, saying:
It has been shown that oxidative damage is huge. But we do not have an anti-oxidant of the type that Professor Skulachev has developed……He is clearly the world’s best bio-chemist and bio-energetic scientist.’
The Mail does not report whether this last comment was heard clearly or rendered indistinct by the Nobel Prize winner’s tongue being inexplicably lodged in his cheek.
Of course Worried Well may not have the luxury of waiting two years before some calamity supervenes, so it was reassuring to read that:

“PUMPING ICE-COLD FLUID INTO PATIENTS’ VEINS COULD BRING THEM ‘BACK FROM THE DEAD'”

Daily Mail online 27 September 2010

In some fascinating work, a researcher from Boston has successfully performed his ‘suspended animation’ technique in operations on hundreds of pigs and now hopes to begin tests on humans. Leading the Daily Mail to gush that:
Victims of violent crime and road accidents could be ‘brought back from the dead’ with a pioneering new treatment’.

Since the Daily Mail seems to spend considerable effort convincing its readers that they are about to become the victims of violent crime – this is good news indeed.

In the July issue, Worried Well reported the epidemic of foot injuries resulting from the wholly irresponsible practice of wearing flip flops. So if you have spent the summer observing people hopping on one leg and holding the other foot, this headline may have caught your eye:

“WHY RUBBING IT BETTER REALLY DOES WORK: IT HURTS LESS IF WE CLUTCH OURSELVES, FIND SCIENTISTS”

Daily Mail online 24 September 2010
The paper reports: ‘Scientists found that people experience far less pain when they touch a sore part of their body with their hand….However, rubbing away pain only seems to work when we do it to ourselves, the researchers say’.
The experiment itself was an elegant piece of work that provided an intriguing insight into the mechanisms behind an everyday phenomenon. Why we have to shout expletives at the same time is doubtless the subject of further research.
Finally, there is nothing Worried Well likes better than a meaningless comparison designed to strike fear into the heart of the obsessive compulsive consumer of healthcare trivia.
The Daily Mail never disappoints:

LIFT BUTTONS ‘ARE 40 TIMES DIRTIER THAN TOILET SEATS’

Daily Mail online 24 September 2010
A typical elevator button harbours nearly 40 times as many germs as a public toilet seat, scientists have found. A study carried out in hotels, restaurants, banks, offices and airports found 313 ‘colony forming units’ of bacteria on every square centimetre of lift button….The equivalent surface area of toilet seat had only eight units’.
I suppose if someone cleaned the toilet seat the problem would only get a hundred times worse.
So the next time you see someone trying to push a lift button with his foot – you know what paper he reads.  Of course, if he is wearing flip flops he is just a reckless fool.

It appears that all of my clips this time come from the Daily Mail (although some are also faithfully reproduced in the Times of India). Now I really am worried.

Worried Well

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