SIRC Media Watch Archive
The Pick – January 2005

Doctor's diary: under the influence of medical busybodies. "The medical profession's inflated sense of its own worth prevents it from realising just how irritated people feel at being condescendingly told what they can and cannot do. The British Medical Association, always a prime offender, was at it again last week, with its truly astonishing demands that motorists should be banned from driving for a year if they are found to have more than the equivalent of a single alcoholic drink in their blood." James Le Fanu in the Telegraph

Study Overstated Obesity Deaths, its authors say. A highly publicized government study that reported obesity was poised to become the leading preventable killer of Americans contained serious errors that inflated the numbers, the study's authors conceded in a letter published today in a major medical journal. But critics of the controversial study remained unsatisfied, saying that the study has even deeper methodological flaws that further exaggerate obesity's death toll. Los Angeles Times [archived – subscription / fee required]