Paris (AFP)
No, bras do not cause cancer, but yes, anti-Covid vaccines are effective: Inserm scrutinizes received ideas, infoxes and beliefs around health in a general public publication to be published at the end of September.
Divided into chapters (women, mental health, food, brain, HIV, addictions, Covid ...), dozens of topics are explored with pedagogy (and a little humor): who has never dreamed of understanding how consist of the "molecular scissors" which won a Nobel Prize for a French and an American in 2020?
Titled "Fake Health News", the book also tackles much more down to earth subjects: "Dark chocolate, better than milk chocolate?" (not really), "Video games make you addicted?" (not necessarily). Or futuristic: "Intelligent robots in the hospital?" (just a little). Or downright unusual: "Is snail slime really effective against osteoarthritis?" (Unfortunately no).
On the menu, reassuring information (no, the IUD does not make you sterile; but, yes, the flair of dogs can detect tumors) but also disappointments: "believing that we can do all the excesses and that it is enough to take an herbal tea, a lemon juice, to fast for twenty-four hours or to sweat in a sauna to make disappear all the toxins and accumulated waste is illusory ".
If it also emphasizes that beauty creams are not used much, the book deals with much more controversial subjects, such as cell phone waves, or certain dietary fashions, at best useless, at worst dangerous, such as " raw food "(eating raw) or fasting.
Between remedies from grandmothers, pseudo-sciences and charlatanism, disinformation around health and disease is old, but social networks and the Covid have made it ubiquitous.
From vaccines to the origins of the Covid, an entire chapter is also devoted to the pandemic.
Faced with the tide, the ambition of the book - 280 pages to be published on September 30 at Recherches Midi - is to "give back a voice to science", writes Gilles Bloch, the president of the public institution dedicated to medical research , in the foreword.
The book is an extension of "Canal Detox", anti-infox videos broadcast by Inserm on the internet since 2018.
With specific examples, “Fake Health News” underlines the importance of the scientific method and reminds us that medicine can be counter-intuitive: yes, cancer cells consume more sugar, but “fasting” does not allow them to “starve” ".
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