Medical Internet legends are enough to scare the antibodies right out of you Thursday, February 10, 2000
BY VINCE HORIUCHI THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Warning! Antiperspirant can cause breast cancer!
Caution! Mountain Dew can shrink your testicles, and yawning can lead to an orgasm!
Beware! These and other medical scares found on the Internet are bunk.
One of the most popular ways of spreading urban legends is through cyberspace.
Folklore about unpublicized medical crises or "toxins-of-the-day" are making the rounds and scaring the willies out of anyone with half a thought and an e-mail account. Call them modern-day versions of hitchhiker stories.
Did you hear the one about aspartame? It says that the key ingredient in artificial sweeteners can cause multiple sclerosis or systemic lupus. How about the one that says tampon manufacturers use asbestos in their products to promote bleeding?
Some of these stories are written with enough finesse to read as if they came from doctors. But all are untrue, and these and many like them are keeping the Internet abuzz with plenty of worry.
"It seems each year has its own type of legends -- like a couple of years ago we had the gang-related stories. This last year seemed to be big for medically related legends or misinformation," said David Mikkelson, co-creator of the San Fernando Valley Folklore Society Web page (www.snopes.com). "We pretty much get new ones every day."
What once was the fodder for fax machines in the early 1990s (remember the one about the gang members who shot at drivers who flashed their headlights?) is now plaguing the Web and millions of e-mail boxes worldwide. There are dozens of popular medical scares that crop up every few months.
No, rat urine has never been reported in soda cans.
No, bananas from Costa Rica are not infected with a flesh-eating bacteria.
And no, antiperspirant and shampoos containing sodium laureth sulfate do not cause cancer.
"We hear this sort of thing. I throw it into the Old Wives' Tales -- stuff that doesn't make sense but people develop these fears about them," said Ross Morgan, medical oncologist at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City. "It's not because of toxin accumulation from plugged pores in the armpits. That's one of those farfetched ideas that people come up with that have no merit."
Places like the Utah Poison Control Center in Salt Lake City sometimes field calls from people wondering about popular urban legends -- like if children can really die from eating poinsettias (no, they cannot), or if sunscreen in the eyes can cause blindness (absolutely not).
"The calls are fairly cyclical," said Barbara Insley Crouch, director of the Utah Poison Control Center at the University of Utah's Research Park. "You get one coming out and you hear about it from all sides, from callers, friends and colleagues."
There even has been one homegrown legend in Utah, about the Brown Recluse Spider with a vicious bite.
"The spider does exist, but we don't have them in Utah," said Jennifer Grover, a certified specialist at the poison-control center. "People see it on the Internet, and they are concerned about it."
At least it is not as deadly as the South American Blush Spider, which, according to one widely circulated warning, crawls out of the toilet to bite the victim on the buttocks.
"So please, before you use a public toilet, lift the seat to check for spiders. It can save your life!" the dire message warns us. "And please pass this on to everyone you care about."
If staffers at the poison-control center have not heard of a story, they will research it, which takes time and effort to pin down, Crouch said.
"My concern with them is they come out and you don't know where they came from and you don't know if they are based in fact," she said. "Then you go to the trouble to find out if there is truth to it, and also try and convince people that it really isn't an issue."
Sometimes, it is hard to shake people into believing the stories are not real.
"Many people will believe the e-mail rumor rather than look it up and verify it themselves, and they will pass it on," said David Emery, who runs the urban legends and folklore section for About.com (urbanlegends.about.- com).
Grover said some people insist the story that children can die from eating poinsettias is true.
"They say, 'Uncle Bob wouldn't lie to me,' and I'm just a stranger on the other end of the phone," she said. "They have a hard time letting go of something from what they perceive as a credible source."
Some of these hoaxes started out as jokes, and some were meant to damage corporations by making up bogus product problems.
Mikkelson believes it was vegetarian groups who started the rumor that John Wayne's autopsy (sometimes it's Elvis Presley's) revealed 40 pounds of impacted fecal matter lodged in his colon. (Besides the near impossibility of such an amount, no autopsy was done on Wayne.)
Kentucky Fried Chicken got cooked by an Internet scare shortly after it changed its name to KFC. A rumor erupted on the Web earlier this year saying the name was changed because the chain no longer uses real chicken. KFC had to post a notice on its Web site in an effort to derail the story.
"As ludicrous as the rumor was, there are still people out there that think it's true," said KFC spokeswoman Beth Redford. "People don't realize the power of the Internet."
It may have been disgruntled consumers who started the vicious scuttlebutt that Procter & Gamble's Febreze fabric freshener kills pets, or that the company's pot-scrubber sponges contain a dangerous derivative of Agent Orange.
"My wife would always say, look at whose ox is being gored," said Mikkelson, who runs the San Fernando Valley Folklore Sociey Web site with his wife, Barbara. "Is it something serious, or something intended to get you to buy an alternative product? Is it just a piece of scare lore?"
Before the computer age, gossip like this may have flourished by word-of-mouth. But in today's high-tech world and the global Internet, the lies can become legends in just a day.
"The Internet has certainly accelerated the rate rumors are spread," said About.com's Emery. "It's so easy. All you have to do is click your 'Forward' button on your e-mail program." %%
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Source: http://www2.sc.mahidol.ac.th/sclg/supports/ors143/5n_medical.htm
