Lets Talk About The News

Or the reporting of medical and science topics.

Recently, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle released a study confirming men taking fish oil supplements who have detectable levels of that oil in their blood stream have a higher risk of prostate cancer.

These individuals had a 43% higher chance of getting a prostate cancer. These same individuals have a 71% higher chance of getting a nastier form of prostate cancer.

This is interesting. But there are some things to view this finding with a bit of a jaundiced eye.

First, other studies have shown that a large majority of men will have some form of prostate cancer the older they get and die. Most are slow growing cancers. That is just the way it is.

Second, the subjects of this study, the ones who have the increased risk, are an interesting subgroup of men: they have detectable levels of fish oil in their blood. This fact was mentioned by news readers (I refuse to call them reporters) but it was never clarified if this was rare or common in men who take supplements.

Is this population of men unique? Do natives of the arctic regions, the population where the benefits of fish oil were discovered in the 1970s, have higher rates of prostate cancers?

There is an association, but not clear causality between fish oil and prostate cancer. We see the result statistically but no why.

The problem with the reporting of this research is that it doesn’t give any emphasis to what the report actually says. Editors looked at the conclusion and failed to see the conditions of the study: that these results were valid only for men who have detectable levels of fish oil in their blood, not a common occurrence.

I am sure there will be a drop in the Fish Oil Supplement revenues. I am not sure dropping a fish oil supplement is at all justified for most people. Certainly not women who do not have prostates, nor most men but don’t have detectable levels of the fish oil in their blood.

This study was relevant for one population of men. And it did not address why they had the precondition.

Too bad it was not reported that way.

This sort of poor, misleading reporting comes from a lack of understanding of science, medicine, and how to read research results. I would seriously question if these editors could tell you how evolution works in the broad, Darwinian sense.

I doubt they could explain the basics of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, or that nobody has ever proven smoking causes lung cancer. Yes, there is a strong association between the two, but there is proven cause and effect, the naming of specific compounds in burning tobacco or the additives to tobacco products that actually cause a specific type of cancer of the lung.

I would hope that our communications schools would attract students who would also have strong minors in the physical and biological sciences.

Or science, math, and engineering students take a minor in communications.

Either way, we consumers of news would gain the benefit of knowing what is really going on.