Do you think these thoughts about UK kids health issues apply to other countries?

nutmegoreo wrote: »

zyxst wrote: »

nutmegoreo wrote: »

zyxst wrote: »

nutmegoreo wrote: »

GaleHawkins wrote: »

madammags wrote: »

grannynot wrote: »

How many parents of children afflicted with these maladies, used recreational (or heavier) drugs??? How many people have damaged chromosomes from ingesting who-knows-what? How many children are affected by something their parents did in their youth??? I'm not saying that environmental factors aren't a cause - but when generations since the 60's have used various concoctions - NONE of them regulated by any kind of testing - we really have no clue what might be causing our children to be less than 100% healthy.

Not just drug use, there is a HUGE range of environmental factors that cause changes in offspring, not just in the DNA coding but also epigenetically (DNA structure).

Also, as so often happens in these comparisons, any changes in screening and diagnostic criteria are ignored.
As with so many other diseases, we have become much better at finding cancer, and much more aware of the importance of looking for it, in the past 40 or so years. It's quite possible that a number of children who today are diagnosed with cancer would just have been considered 'sickly' 50 years ago.

Good point about epigenetics. This is a new area of interest of mine that was never covered in graduate school. It seems to be a huge factor in our health.

Was graduate school in the 80s this poor quality that they didn't teach you to critically question/analyze the resources used?

You mean you can't trust a paper that's been in circulation since 1855?

I think the drive for revenue tends to lead to sensationalism and journalistic interpretation and extension of studies and findings which are actually beyond the scope of the studies themselves. Along with complicating factors such as changes in screening and diagnostic evaluative criteria and the lack of a peer review process and scrutiny of published works makes these sources less reliable. Of course all studies require some interpretation and there are flaws and bias which influence much of what is studied and published. Age of source is hardly the most reliable criteria on which to base reliability of information. I suspect you know all of this though

:laugh: *babysloth* Google translator

Just because it's existed for a long time, doesn't mean it's reliable. In some cases the claims become increasingly extravagant in an attempt to remain relevant (not saying that's the case with this particular publisher, just that it happens).