news

[miriam_e]

Amazing! Just heard some news headlines and the things that the stupid mainstream media consider most important are the horses in the Melbourne Cup, a luxury boat catching fire, and someone stealing another boat.

No mention of the recent research showing that marriage and religion paradoxically worsen your chances of getting sexually transmitted diseases, and places with many sexual partners are safest.
No mention that NASA has decided to send another mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to do another repair job and further extend its lifetime.
No mention that SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) may be linked to some brain abnormalities.

And I wonder... we are the smartest generations in history, so why do the media treat us as morons?

Comments

[damien-wise.livejournal.com]

To be fair, the SIDS study/announcement was on the TV news here in Melbourne over the weekend.

The Hubble news is fantastic, but I've only seen it on slashdot. :(

I hadn't heard the research linking the prevalence of STDs with religion and marriage. I can see how they could coincide/correlate but don't know enough on those topics to say whether one leads to another...you got links?
(REminds me of recent news that tooth decay and heart-disease correlate -- can you say that a sick heart could mess-up blood-flow to your teeth/gums, or that chronically decayed teeth produce some bug that attacks the heart, or that it's something else, such as poor diet being bad for your teeth and heart?)

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I read of the research showing up the link between religion, marriage, and STDs was in New Scientist, the current issue 4th Nov. Unfortunately it is only a brief piece about it, but as you can imagine, relates to religions making condoms and other safety measures harder to obtain under the mistaken theory that they'll encourage naughtiness.

The connection between dental problems and heart/artery disease is some years old now. I first read about it in Scientific American a few years ago (can't remember the date). It seems the bacteria that cause problems in teeth also turn up in diseased arteries. The old idea of fatty deposits simply accumulating on the walls of blood vessels is wrong. It's more complex than that and those bacteria and inflammation look like they're playing a pivotal role.

If we could bring about a universal health care system (after heaven knows how many times tried -- each time sabotaged by ideology) which included dental health then we would massively cut the costs to society in terms of death, suffering and, yes, money too.