Old News

I was watching News Center Five News at Noon to see when this snow would let up. To my surprise, they announced that they were going to do a little segment on endometriosis. I have had endometriosis since I was 13, and I had surgery for it in 2006, so my ears immediately perked up.

News Center Five reported that there is a “new” link between endometriosis and cancer. New? As far as I know, this information has been out for several years. And it’s really not a strong enough link to be cause for alarm.

I did a little digging to see if there was a newly released study about the endometriosis and cancer link. Nope. I did, however, find this from 2003:

Dr Anna-Sofia Berglund said: ‘It is very important to keep these findings in perspective. ‘The overall risk of cancer does not increase after endometriosis, and where there are slightly increased risks, they are in some of the less common cancers. ‘For instance, in Sweden just under 20 women in every 100,000 develop ovarian cancer each year. ‘My study shows that for women with endometriosis, another eight women in 100,000 could develop it - and it may be even fewer than that.’

I thought it was bizarre that they would even address this on a mid-day news program. This is not new information! And even so, I frankly don’t find it as alarming as News Center Five made it sound. Imagine if I just got diagnosed with endometriosis, didn’t know much about it yet, and got upset from hearing this information!

I wonder if they filmed this years ago and didn’t have enough news for today so they dug up an old story.

I hate the news sometimes. Especially local, televised news. I really only watch it for snowstorm coverage. At least we’re lucky enough to live in a time where we can easily pick our news sources, thanks to Google News, etc. News Center Five is not on the top of my list.

Filed under Current Events (other), Greater Boston (General), Local News |