the-BA : Science News Digest

Vaccinations: back in the news (Copyright: iStockPhoto.com/Mikhail Tolstoy)

In the news this week, calories galore in the Snickers Pie, paradise found in Indonesia and trouble with trollibags in the North East...

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating” is a saying I haven’t heard in what seems like years, and yet this week I saw in two articles, perhaps predictably around the issue of obesity.

The first was an editorial in the Daily Telegraph, talking about a recipe from Antony Worrall Thompson for Snickers Pie, denounced by the Food Commission as one of the most unhealthy recipes ever published. The Telegraph disagrees: ‘It may clock up 1,250 calories a slice, but why call it unhealthy? Nourishing is more like it.’

The editorial goes on to talk about a low-carbohydrate potato which was revealed to the world this week – ‘Yet it is the very vocation of a potato to contain carbohydrate.’

(Perhaps McDonald's might be interested in the potato since it has been forced to admit that its French fries contain a third more "trans" fats, which are linked to heart disease, than originally thought, as the Scotsman reports.)

The second incidence of “the proof of the pudding” (or in this case, “the proof is in the pudding”) was in another obesity-related article, this time on BBC News Online. The piece discussed plans by five of the UK's biggest food firms to include details of ingredients' guideline daily intake amounts on the front of their packets.

After polling a number of people in the street (including a butcher looking suspiciously like Nick), the article asks: ‘But will [the new labels] have an impact on the nation's growing waistbands? The proof, it seems, will be in the pudding.’

It seems a long time now since the whole controversy over MMR first raised its head. Back then, Prime Minister Tony Blair refused to say whether his son Leo had been given the jab. His refusal to comment was seen by some as fuelling the controversy. This week, though, senior politicians seem to have been queuing up to report that their children had been vaccinated.

First off was Gordon Brown (this week seeking to strengthen his position as heir apparent to Tony Blair). As the Times reports, the Chancellor said that parents had obligations to the rest of society to protect children from disease, adding: “It’s not just an optional extra.”

Then it was David Cameron’s turn, as the Daily Mail reports.

Ah, the Daily Mail... Never one to shy away from an MMR controversy. This week it reported that Dr Peter Fletcher, a former government medical officer responsible for deciding whether medicines are safe, has accused the government of "utterly inexplicable complacency" over the MMR triple vaccine for children. His warning comes in the week that the government announced the addition of a jab against pneumococcal meningitis for babies.

Good news this week from a team of international scientists who have found a "lost world" in an Indonesian jungle, home to dozens of new species of animals and plants. As BBC News Online reports, Bruce Beehler, co-leader of the team, said: "It's as close to the Garden of Eden as you're going to find on Earth."

National Geographic has a photo gallery of some of the animals discovered, including a rather disgruntled-looking golden-mantled tree kangaroo.

Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that Britain's waterways are under threat from an invasion of Chinese mitten crabs, so named because of the tufts of brown fur that sprout from its claws. The crabs first entered our water after arriving as larvae in the ballast of merchant ships in the 1970s, but their numbers have recently surged.

This week, the world’s first face transplant recipient braved the media. Isabelle Dinoire declared: “I have now a face like everyone else,” as New Scientist reports. But then the magazine (somewhat bluntly) goes on, ‘Except that, by definition, her face is not like everyone else’s. A triangular flap of tissue containing her nose, lips and chin once belonged to another woman from Lille who committed suicide shortly before the operation took place.’

In other news this week...

An academic row has erupted after Science, one of the world's leading scientific journals refused to publish an article which claims that men and women think differently. (Daily Telegraph)

Athletes are taking ever more health risks as they seek performance enhancing drugs that will not be picked up in doping tests, scientists say. (BBC News Online)

A manuscript charting the birth of modern science that was lost for centuries has been rediscovered at the bottom of a cupboard. The document, an account of meetings and debates at the Royal Society from 1661 to 1691, was written by Robert Hooke. (The Times)

And finally... A new medical dictionary is being compiled by a health trust in the North East concerned that doctors may not be able to understand their patients' dialect. At last, doctors will be able to locate the trollibag, thropple and wang.

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