Category Archives: Health/Medical

The buy one get one free – can’t believe your luck SUPER SALE!

I have to say the fact that is still doing rounds surprised (dismays) me and I’m not surprised by much these days!

I figured everyone must have heard the, “guy wakes up in ice bath”  kidney theft hoax by now surely? It’s been going since 1997 (as far as I cared to trace it back). Apparently not. This showed up on a friend of a friends Facebook page FOUR DAYS ago.

kidneys I wasn’t even going to bother mentioning it but then I read it and two things that made me smile;

The First Thing That Made Me Smile.

The author of the first post stresses that this is a TRUE STORY which is CONFIRMED by the simple fact that the phone number is real. Good-O. I’ve got one for you, check this out:

“BREAKING NEWS: Popular BBC television show,  Doctor Who was revealed today to not be a fiction at all  but in fact a documentary following the true life of  a Time Lord from Gallifrey. 

Please contact the BBC for more information on: 020 7765 1064. “

MUST BE TRUE – The phone number is real!

This started as an EMAIL hoax, it is that old! It’s done the rounds of hundreds of cities in many countries around the globe. This particular Australian version that has found it’s way onto Facebook  (complete with the same name AND phone number),  has been around since at least 2006.  I’m not sure how else to put it. IT IS TOTALLY UNTRUE.

oh and another thing ……

“The story is not medically plausible because a kidney from a random stranger would not be suitable to most transplant patients and a hotel room is not sufficiently sterile for such an operation to be viable. In April 2000 the National Kidney Foundation issued a public statement denouncing the report as an “urban myth run amok”.” joewein.de

But these hoaxes are not done there, oh no!

The Second Thing That Made Me Smile

If you were born with an intelligence even slightly above that of your average potato and spot the oldest hoax in the book there is a second “story” to get you thinking. It goes a little something like this ……….

Another story…..

I was approached yesterday afternoon around 3.30 pm in the Coles Parking lot at Noranda by two males, asking what kind of perfume I was wearing. Then they asked if I’d like to sample some fabulous scent they were willing to sell me at a very reasonable rate. I probably would have agreed had I not received an email some weeks go, warning of this scam. The men continued to stand between parked cars, I guess to wait for someone else to hit on. I stopped a lady going towards them, I pointed at them and told her about how I was sent an email at work about someone walking up to you at the malls, in parking lots, and asking you to sniff perfume that they are selling at a cheap price.

THIS IS NOT PERFUME – IT IS ETHER!

When you sniff it, you’ll pass out and they’ll take your wallet, your valuables, and heaven knows what else. If it were not for this email, I probably would have sniffed the ‘perfume’, but thanks to the generosity of an emailing friend, I was spared whatever might have happened to me, and wanted to do the same for you. These guys hit Sydney and Melbourne 2 weeks ago and now they are doing it in Perth and Queensland …

IF YOU ARE HUMAN AND RECEIVE THIS PLEASE PASS IT ON TO ALL THE WOMEN (EVERYONE) YOU KNOW!!!

I am human – I’m a smart human (smart enough to know that you meant “every one” and not “everyone”) but no I shall not be passing it on to ANYONE or indeed, any one of the women that I know.

Again, this has been around for donkeys years (anyone know the origin of that phrase?) in many different places. Hoax-Slayer has a pretty good list of occurrences but it ranges from ASDA and Tesco in the UK to New Zealand and a petrol station in Belfast.

So there you have it. A buy one get one free hoaxes that have, for a long old time, been denied but now are officially

DEBUNKED!

CGT

Bananas – The Swiss Army knife of the fruit world?

Growing up in the early 90′s the latest craze was getting high from banana peels (also debunked btw!) Over the years bananas have been used for various tasks. Demonstrating how to put on condoms, chimp bait, and explosives amongst them.

So, when I was sent a message currently circulating social media (thanks Lucy :) ) regarding bananas and their ability to whiten teeth I was intrigued. It sounded like bunkum but; bananas, they can do anything, right?

banana-teeth-whiteningI did a bit of research and it appears that the post is a regular on Pintrest (which, naturally, swings me towards thinking it’s nonsense) and although there are lots of articles around the interwebnets espousing the benefits of bananas for tooth whitening they are not quite the kinds of sites we look to to find the truth about things. Also they appear to be referencing each other (dubious). So we moved onto the science of it.

It appears that potassium nitrate, although present in tooth whitening products is in fact added (along with fluoride) to, ” help reduce tooth sensitivity side effects.” Chandler. The whitening agent in the products being carbamide peroxide.  A 2001 paper by the Department of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Toronto confirms this.

After I conducted all this deep, lengthy, scientific research I found an article by Sarah Jio on Glamour.com who tested it herself and debunked it so I shouldn’t have bothered!

Oh, also have a butchers hook at this Website for laser tooth whitening, it’s one of at least four that use this image – recognise the smile? (Bet you thought I’d missed that!)

We’re calling this one debunked!

Credit Where It’s Due

 

This poem has been doing the rounds for years. It’s popped up as an old man and old woman in the USA, an old woman called “Kate” in the UK and also the old man featured here in Australia (couldn’t find any information on the man pictured, but he certainly is not the author of the poem.)

We like the poem so we reckon it should be attributed to the person who actually wrote it and not preceded by the unnecessarily saccharine and bogus pre-story.

SO. The origins of the poem are pretty hazy, it’s been kicking around in various forms and titles and countries for many years but seemingly the best version of its origins is offered by Joanna Bornat in a 2005 conference paper, “Empathy & Stereotype: the work of a popular poem” who discovered that the poem may actually have been written by Phyllis McCormack in 1966, a nurse in a Scottish hospital.

oldmanpoem

Amongst the responses to a small survey which I carried out in 1998 while researching attitudes to the poem 3 (Bornat, 2004) was a cutting from the Daily Mail newspaper in which the son of Phyllis McCormack, whose name is often linked with the poem as its discoverer, explained:

My mother, Phyllis McCormack, wrote this poem in the early Sixties when
she was a nurse at Sunnyside Hospital in Montrose.
Originally entitled Look Closer Nurse, the poem was written for a small
magazine for Sunnyside only Phyllis was very shy and submitted her work
anonymously.
A copy of the magazine was lent to a patient at Ashludie Hospital, Dundee,
who copied it in her own handwriting and kept it in her bedside locker. When
she died, the copy was found and submitted to the Sunday Post newspaper,
attributed to the Ashludie patient.
Since my mother’s death in 1994 her work has travelled all over the world…
(Daily Mail, 12 March 1998).

Credit where it’s due – and it appears to be due to Phyllis McCormack, 1966. 

Water – it cures all known human ailments!

water-saves-lives

I’m not doubting that drinking water is good for you, but don’t you think that if you could avoid a heart attack simply by drinking 1 glass of water before going to bed we’d know all about it. Unless, of course, it’s a conspiracy by heart surgeons across the globe who would suddenly find themselves unemployed!

This first came to light in 2011 when Barbara Mikkelson from Snopes.com explained it so beautifully I’m just going to quote her verbatim!

“Beyond the nebulous suggestion that a glass of water “helps digestion” (how would that be measured?) or the fallacious claim that it “helps lower blood pressure” (it doesn’t) water does not “activate internal organs” in the morning. Our organs function quite well all on their own while we sleep, and they continue functioning after we wake up. As for the claim that downing a glass of water before bed “avoids stroke or heart attack,” were keeping ourselves safe from these dreaded killers that simple, the various stroke and heart disease foundations would be telling that very thing.” 14 November 2011.

Well said Barbara – DEBUNKED!