Charlotte McDonald of the BBC News debunks a persistent rumor that there are more doctors from Malawi in Manchester than there are in Malawi itself. Apparently the rumor has been repeated by a variety of sources including "the authors of an international study of health workers, and the head of Malawi's main nursing union."

However, the rumor isn't true. She estimates there are approximately 265 doctors in Malawi (which isn't a whole lot for a country of 15 million), but there are only 7 Malawian doctors in Manchester, which has a population of half-a-million.

Even if you look at the ratio of doctors to people, Malawi wins out. There's one doctor for every 56604 people in Malawi. And there's one Malawian doctor for every 71428 Mancunians.

McDonald interviewed Malawian doctor and social historian John Lwanda who theorized that the rumor dated back to 1981, when the Malawi ministry of health held a meeting in Manchester. Someone might have commented that there were more doctors from Malawi in Manchester during the meeting than there were in Malawi itself. And so the rumor was born.

I wonder if the persistence of the rumor also has something to do with the alliteration of Malawi and Manchester. It makes the phrase sound catchier, which might encourage people to repeat it.

The Craig Shergold rumor strikes again. Jacob is a real kid, and he really has leukemia, but he isn't dying. But somehow word got out on the internet that he was dying, and that his last wish was to get christmas cards from everyone. So now the cards are pouring in by the thousands. Link: Associated Press.

Below is one of the youtube videos spreading the rumor.

The Belgian man believed to be in a coma for 23 years, but recently found to be conscious, has been big news for the past few days. But now problems are emerging with the story. No one doubts that he's sentient, since MRI scans have confirmed this. But his ability to communicate is being questioned. Skeptics are questioning whether the statements attributed to him really are his, or do they come from his "facilitator" (a woman who holds his hand to help him type on a keyboard)? Doctors are also questioning how someone could be so profoundly isolated for so long, and yet still be so sane and coherent. From Wired.com:


There's also an ongoing discussion of the case in the hoax forum.

Indian doctor Geeta Shroff is claiming to have helped many patients, thought incurable, by injecting them with embryonic stem cells. However, she hasn't submitted any of her work to scientific review, leading to suspicions that something fishy is going on. From timesonline.co.uk:

Clive Coleman tells the story for BBC Radio 4 of the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company. It was an 1892 case of fraudulent advertising. The case against them is "seen by some as the birth of modern consumer protection":

The Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa has determined that Dr. Abdallah Kiwa has been "'duping' people into paying for services that cannot possibly be delivered." Specifically, Kiwa has distributed advertising pamphlets in which he has made the following claims:

DC's Improbable Science has posted a pdf file of the exam given to those studying medical acupuncture at the University of Salford. Fans of acupuncture have long been lobbying for it to get more respect from the medical community, but as the DC Science blog points out, this exam appears to be nothing but gobbledygook. Here are several of the questions that exam takers must answer:

DJ Steve Miller claims that he is allergic to Wifi. Being caught near a Wifi connection causes him agonizing pain. From the Daily Mail:


There are a growing number of people who complain that they're allergic to WiFi. Last year there were reports of a group of "electro-sensitive people" trying to stop the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico from creating a wireless internet network, claiming it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Ian Douglas, of the Telegraph, explains why no one is allergic to Wifi:


However, there is one group that is well known to have an extreme sensitivity to electromagnetic waves such as light: Vampires! Intriguingly, Steve Miller's stagename is "Afterlife." So I'm betting he's a vampire.

Yet another cancer hoaxer unmasked. Jonathan Jay White claimed to be a 15-year-old from Idaho suffering from Anaplastic Astrocytoma (a kind of brain cancer). He gained a lot of supporters online, including Lance Armstrong, who sent him a number of gifts. But it now appears that Jonathan Jay White never existed. Details at news.sky.com and jonthanjayisafraud.blogspot.com.

ABC News has a report on the village of Bama, "China's Fountain of youth." People there are said to live unusually long lives. Out of the population of 500, six people are over 100 years old.

The locals attribute this longevity to pure water (which is "a striking blue because of low alkilinity"), simple home-grown food, and a special magnetic field.

Bama has become a big tourist destination in China. Billboards promote its special powers. New hotels are being constructed there. And you can shop at a store that sells products labeled "The 100-year-old Man."

But the key phrase in the report is that "there are no birth certificates to prove age." This immediately makes me think of the Ecuadorian town of Vilcabamba, which in the 1970s was heavily promoted as a village of centenarians, until researchers examined the age claims more closely and realized the locals were simply exaggerating their age.

If the old folks in Bama don't have any birth certificates or documentation to prove their age, then I'd be very doubtful they really are over 100, because age exaggeration among old people is an extremely common phenomenon. It's a way for them to increase their social status by claiming to have done something remarkable (lived a very long time).

In the forum Captain Al linked to a recent Newsweek article that's well worth reading. It details how Oprah Winfrey has routinely promoted dubious medical/pseudoscientific nonsense on her show. It appears that the only standard of evidence important to her is whether a claim is emotionally appealing. If a claim passes that test, then it must be true!

Some of the nonsense promoted on her show includes:

• Suzanne Somers' vitamin/hormone cure for aging.
• Jenny McCarthy's crusade to pin the blame for autism on vaccines.
• Dr. Christiane Northrup's theory that thyroid dysfunction is caused by repressing your emotions.
• Radio-wave skin tightening treatments.
• And "The Secret", that by "thinking positively" you can attract success and good health to yourself.

The article doesn't even get into her relentless promotion of psychic scammers.

The Coude Catheter is a curved tip catheter. The bend in the tip apparently is useful for inserting the catheter through the urethra into the bladder. You can buy one on Amazon for $7.78.

Back in 1957, The Leech, the journal of the students' society of the Welsh National School of Medicine at Cardiff, published an article about how the Coude Catheter got its name. It claimed it was named after a nineteenth-century French doctor, Emile Coude. The Leech offered a short biography of Coude and even had a picture of him.

However, Emile Coude was a hoax. There never was such a man. Coude is actually a French word meaning elbow or bent. But the hoax almost fooled the editors of a medical textbook, A Short Practice of Surgery, before they realized their error at the last minute and removed all references to him from the galley proofs.

I've got the full details of this obscure medical hoax in the archive.