Drug approval! Earthquake danger! Child risks! Ending aging! Cancer marathon! Texas therapy! Pneumonia vaccination! Robot walking! And a whole new way of looking at regulation! It's your Friday Health Watch, where we watch your health—with a heavy heart!
Researchers discovered the weak link in child protection laws: Parents. A federal rule designed to keep stalky marketers away from kids is being thwarted by moms and dads seeking to expose their kids to... stalky marketers, of the sort bundled into Facebook. We clearly need new laws, but a new set of parents wouldn't hurt, either.
Two people have been arrested for the hit-and-run death of Wang Yue, the Chinese two-year-old left to die in the street. No word on what the formal charges are; police used the now-infamous surveillance footage to identify the suspects. As much as we dislike how camera'ed up and Big Brothery our public spaces have become, we're glad this particular incident was captured on video. [Washington Post]
Her name was Wang Yueyue. She was run over—twice—in a crowded market in Fushan, China, last week as at least 17 passersby drove, walked, and bicycled by without lifting a finger to help her for almost ten minutes. Chinese officials announced today that she has died of her injuries, just as those 17 people intended.
Washington's War on Potatoes appears to be wrapping up, and... let's see here... potatoes are winning! White potatoes, those excessively salted and fried and embacon'd starch rocks that are now limited to two weekly cafeteria servings under new USDA regulations for federally subsidized school lunches, will soon be freed, as the Senate voted yesterday to "block the USDA from putting any limits on serving potatoes or other vegetables in school lunches."
Last week, a two-year-old girl wandering in the street in a market in Foshan, China, was hit by a van. The driver stopped for a moment and continued on, rolling over the girl again with the van's rear wheels. Over the course of the next seven minutes, as she lay in the street bleeding, 17 passersby walked over and around her—one truck ran over her again—without helping.
Here's a one-year-old child whose parents taught her to use an iPad. Now when she's given a magazine, she tries to move her finger over the pages, clueless that it doesn't work the same way.
You may think that you're one of those "good" parents. You read to your kids at night, and you don't let them play with guns, and you stripped most of the lead paint out of the playroom. Well, according to the latest scientific study, it's safe to give up. Your kids will inevitably die of McChicken-related diabetes sooner or later, no matter what you do.
A particularly gross genre of Internet erotica has sprung up around alluring self-pictures of underage girls found on social media sites. But did you know there are actual people with real lives in those pictures? Meet Miami teen Angie Varona, whose life was turned upside down when she became an online sex symbol.
This summer, "planking"—lying face down in an unusual spot while someone takes a picture of you—quickly became a popular internet meme, then a deadly-and-possibly-racist meme, and then, finally, an old meme. And while you'd think that, if anyone, planking would be a hit with the pre-teen set, this new "Kids React" video from the Fine Brothers shows that even children think it's ridiculous and stupid. [via YouTube]
Back in May, Buffalo teen Jamey Rodermeyer contributed a video to the "It Gets Better" campaign. Though only 14, Rodermeyer felt he had a message of hope to send whoever was watching. Now, four months later, he's dead of a suicide.
Gay, anti-Christian, global warming-peddling cartoon Spongebob Squarepants is under attack from old people again, and this time it's from scientists. In the newest edition of Pediatrics, researchers from the University of Virginia found that sticking the kids in front of Spongebob Squarepants so you don't have to actually hang out with them is, in fact, killing their attention spans.
A "mischievous magician" and his two assistants are reportedly in police custody in southwestern Colombia after a "mass hypnosis" session that led to the hospitalization of 75 schoolchildren, according to a regional radio station. Parents of the afflicted students of the Institución Educativa Ciudad Mocoa have asked authorities to allow the magician to visit the hospital, so he can release the children from the trance.
