Category Archives: Health

The Internet causes cancer

BOG ALERTS, NHS Indirect, Friday (RT @NewsTechnicaUK) — Facebook and Twitter will give you cancer, says Dr Aric Sigman, a completely unbiased researcher from the University of Metro.

The Firefox girl will kill us allSocial networking sites “could raise your risk of serious health problems by reducing levels of face-to-face contact,” leaving you more susceptible to cancer, dementia, heart disease, diabetes, influenza and rheumatoid arthritis. But not lupus. Instead, you should be spending your time breathing germs on the Tube and reading newspapers.

Cigarette breaks in most offices have been replaced with Facebook breaks, as users desperate for a hit take a moment to reject seven vampire invitations and relax a bit.

“It’s also a sign of autistic spectrum disorders and stuff,” said Dr Sigman. He pointed to a new “are you autistic?” test in this evening’s London Lite:

Do you prefer:
(a) sitting at home on your interweb like a nerdy no-mates goit?
(b) getting pissed down a strip club with the guys from marketing, like normal people?

“It’s obviously ludicrous rubbish,” said Internet socialite Hiram Nerdboy, well-known around Second Life for his sexy fox-with-breasts avatar. “Internet social networks don’t affect your health,” he noted, munching through his second pizza and two-litre Coke of the day and shifting his stomach folds to one side so as not to block the Skype microphone.

Cocaine cheaper than coffee in London

BROOKER, Twatter.com, Thursday (NNN) — London will soon suffer an influx of cheap cocaine, making a line less than £1 — cheaper than a cup of coffee.

Starbucks original cocaine logoDrug experts have warned of “Nathan Barleys from horizon to horizon” as irritating and self-obsessed twats take drugs designed to enhance irritating self-obsessed twattery.

Starbucks has announced plans to fight back against the newcomer, with its new Double Venti Nonfat Decaf Organic Heroin Iced Vanilla Double-Shot PCP Nosecandyccino Caffeinated Detergent Extra Hot With Foam Whipped Methamphetamine Upside Down Double Blended, One Sweet’N Low, One Nutrasweet and One MDMA. The cocaine is guaranteed to be organically grown and Fairtrade™-certified. “A better deal for drug farmers.”

Economists are warning of a second dot-com new media revolution. “No money, just endless streams of droning voices talking about themselves at each other. It’ll be like the worst bits of 2000 all over again.”

“At least they won’t be able to get it up to reproduce,” said the International Narcotics Control Board. “Just talk for hours on end about how good it’ll be.”

Smokers, meanwhile, still huddled outside in the rain while random passers-by threw rotten tomatoes at them.

Killjoy scientists link cannabis to testicle cancer

UH, ROUND THERE SOMEWHERE, You know the place, man, later some time I think (NNN) — American researchers have found that long-term marijuana use will literally make your balls drop off.

Sex, death and pizzaThe study, from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, is the first to look specifically at marijuana use in relation to the disease. Testicles contain receptors for tetrahydrocannabinol, meaning that smoking pot really does make your balls as big as you think it does.

“We also managed to tie it into the earlier study that showed that high sexual activity leads to prostate cancer,” said Dr Janet Daling. “Thus proving: if you touch it, it’ll drop off.”

Dr Daling said that puberty might be a “window of opportunity” during which boys were more vulnerable to environmental factors such as the chemicals in marijuana. “So all we need to do is to convince young men that sex, masturbation and getting utterly wasted is a bad idea and they shouldn’t want to do it.”

Critics of the study expressed concern over it not allowing for possible carcinogenic effects of brownies, pizza or Grateful Dead records.

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New weight loss pill for MPs’ expenses

THE LITTLE MPs’ ROOM, Palace of Westminster, hour thirteen and counting (NNN) — The Government has swallowed a bitter new weight loss pill in attempts to stop the release of details of MPs’ expense reports.

Gordon Brown after Nicola McLean after OrlistatThe drug, FOIlistat, will produce a massive outflow in the event of an MP even thinking about expense padding, revealing full details of tapeworms and other parasites, a telltale Brown stain and a pungent stench. Any fat in the expense report will be passed through the National Audit Office undigested, leading to the customary flatulence and informational incontinence.

Shadow Commons leader Alan Duncan suggested caution. “We don’t just want, by making our expenses available, to allow ourselves to be subject to open season of malicious and vexatious attacks, such as people actually reading them and commenting on them publicly. With friends like this, who needs enemas?” He then issued a truly resounding wet fart and quickly shuffled off sideways.

Much like the drug, the prospect of releasing their expenses has made MPs shit themselves copiously. “Not only will the direct Pavlovian approach work,” said Owen Blacker of mySociety, “it’ll keep us in Channel 5 comedy for decades.”

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“Gloomy Monday” mathematically proven the most depressing day for journalists

THE TUBE, The Bloody Commute, seven bloody AM (NNN) — Phil Space, an expert in depression at the University of Metro, has discovered a mathematical formula to pinpoint today as Blue Monday, the day when six factors come together to leave journalists at their most miserable.

Mondays hate Amy Winehouse tooThe factors are: the dank and gloomy weather; the lack of articles to fill the spaces between the ads; a feeling of monotony writing the seventh “the economy’s utterly sodomised” story; broken New Year’s resolutions to get a more socially worthwhile job, like picking maggots out of a corpse’s arse with your teeth; low levels of motivation; and it’s bloody Monday. Also, that you ran this story last year but that was on January 21st.

The mathematical formula for misery is:

Garrett Lisi’s E8 Equation of Everything

— where P is the weather, O is Barack Obama’s inauguration while we’ve still got Gordon Brown, T is the probability of Abi Titmuss playing Doctor Who’s next companion, B is the lack of stories about students in bikinis in this weather, W is Amy Winehouse flashing her tits around in a smacked-out stupor, R is recycling stories on ever-shorter time scales and H is going past horror at the idea of your boss noticing to losing hope that he ever will.

Phil offers tips for overcoming gloom: “Focus on the good things you do have in your life. If being one of the lucky people who still has a job gives you not even a slight sneer of superiority over the unemployed masses, and instead you have this overwhelming urge to get out a machine gun and kill every fucker on the tube in the morning … well, it’s worth a try. Also, good cheer comes in pints and makes for a bloody happy Friday and Saturday.”

Alistair Darling has been asked to stop visiting investment firm offices in the City talking up optimism and a more positive outlook by City of London street cleaners, who are running low on body bags.

Baby born without “journalism” gene

KALLIKAK, Gattaca, Friday (NotScientist) — The first British baby designed to be free of the “journalism” gene has been born.

Benicio del Toro and Johnny DeppThe breakthrough gives hope to other parents afflicted by the condition, often running in families. “It will be mere seconds before blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan clones genetically engineered with hyperintelligence are frog-marching into the White House, the Kremlin and the United Nations to take over the world and condemn the rest of us inferiors to perpetual slavery,” said one rejected embryo before the autoclave kicked in.

Pro-life campaigners claim it is morally wrong to weed out imperfect babies. “Today it’s journalism, tomorrow it’s cancer, next year it’ll be Young Conservativism,” said Ann Widdecombe. “They’re already screening for all manner of cosmetic reasons in parts of Europe that I can’t specifically name right now. This is a tool to search and kill! We must shun and despise the children resulting from this genetic Frankensteinism.

“Instead, we should deliberately bring children into the world to suffer and then cut their disability benefits. To prove the strength of our feeling on this matter, we’re implanting unwanted eggs carrying breast cancer genes into ourselves personally, so the children can grow up living in fear their whole short lives of their own breasts killing them. It’s right and natural. We’re also looking to reintroduce bubonic plague and smallpox, on conservation grounds.”

“I don’t think you can equate eight cells in a dish to a human being,” said the parents’ doctor, “although it could probably edit the Daily Mail.”

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Branson takes over NHS

MEDICAL MEGASTORE, Oxford Street, Monday (NNN) — Sir Richard Branson has accused politicians of “tinkering” with infection control in hospitals.

Virgin Blue Screen of Arrested Indicators“If our airlines had that kind of track record we’d be grounded. So we need to apply the Virgin Atlantic and VirginBlue model to the NHS. We’ve also our experience with Virgin Trains and bringing NTL up to quality to bring to the table.”

The new Virgin Medical PFI corporation will operate a new line of cheap, cheerful and financially efficient assembly-line medical operations. “We can buy thirty-year-old equipment cheap, like with VirginBlue, and polish it up and put new logos on it.”

Appointment scheduling will be farmed out to Virgin Trains’ Midland Mainline operations. NHS Direct and 999 will be taken on by the Virgin Media customer support department. “We think a ‘quintuple play’ of phone, internet, television, mobile and having an ambulance show up before you die will be a major marketing winner. If you haven’t been trying to read Wikipedia or anything, of course.” Non-subscribers will be taken to hospital by a Virgin Balloons flight.

Sir Richard also called for more information for patients on infection rates, and a tougher policy on managers at failing trusts. “We’re calling MRSA the ‘Virgin Killer.'”

BUPA shares were up 5% in early trading.

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British business doomed as working week cut to 48 hours

DOWN T’ PIT, London EC1, Wednesday (NNN) — Business leaders were unanimous in their protest against the European Parliament vote to scrap the UK’s opt-out from the Working Time Directive.

smashing-bricks-with-your-forehead.jpeg“Workers should be free to work any seventy hours they choose. There is of course no element of coercion whatsoever in any workplace we could find, and we actually asked the proprietors of as many as two or three.”

They also noted the terrible effects such a ban would have on the hospitality industry, with the normal British worker no longer needing to down six pints in their three spare hours a week in order to regain the power of speech.

Alejandro Cercas, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party MEP who brought the vote, said the parliament’s 421-273 vote to end the opt-out would help create “a social Europe,” where all workers, jobs and pay packets would be interchangeable and indistinguishable and everyone could live in clean and spacious grey concrete blocks just as good as everyone else’s.

The NHS cautioned against the possibility of junior doctors no longer working 72-hour shifts, as having enough time off shift to be aware of their surroundings might lead to them realising what a hellhole they had signed up for.

Alan Duncan, the Shadow Business Secretary, attacked Gordon Brown for failing to control Labour’s MEPs. “The only way out of the recession is to allow workers an unimpeachable excuse to get the hell away from their families. British business will be unable to compete if individuals do not have the free and untrammeled choice to choose to slurp heartily at the anus of their undoubtedly charming and personable line manager for seventy hours in a week while being paid for forty.”

When it was pointed out that business leaders had said this about the five-day week, every health and safety rule ever written, the abolition of child labour and the abolition of slavery, he said “British business can’t possibly compete if it has to spend time thinking up new excuses.”

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Celebrity diets can cause memory loss

GOLDACRE, Slimmer’s World, Saturday (NotScientist) — Atkins-style low-carbohydrate diets can cause memory problems after only one week, researchers have found.

Amy Winehouse in the peak of mental health and alertness“That’s ridiculous,” said Cheryl Cole, a devotee of the diet. “That’d make yer stupid, ennit.”

Weight loss is a perennial issue in a society of abundance. One in four children are overweight when they start primary school and one in three are too fat by the time they leave. But fad diets, popularised by celebrities, where the subject does a single thing in the hope of effects without significant effort, rather than general reduction of energy intake and increase of energy use, are potentially dangerous.

“That’s ridiculous,” said Cheryl Cole. “That’d make yer stupid, ennit.”

Amy Winehouse’s shrunken breastsAmy Winehouse is writing up her own celebrity diet tips book, helped by her imprisoned husband Blake Fielder-Civil. “Going out for munchies at 3am is vital, and you gotta have vodka, not beer or wine. Also cigs, they make you thin and sexy, like me. My brain’s in PERFECT ORDER and tell those fucking pixies and giant lobsters behind you I said so. Fuckers.” Ms Winehouse also announced her own designer celebrity perfume, available in powdered form.

Gillian McKeith has offered a new crystal-based dieting method that involves chakra harmony, cosmic reflexology and coordinating one’s qi field to wipe out one’s IQ field. “This method helps strip off the pounds in no time,” said Dr Ms McKeith, “and send them to my bank account, where they belong.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Cheryl Cole. “That’d make yer stupid, ennit.”

Terrorist computer virus infects hospitals

OH FUCK NOT HEALTH, Farringdon Road, Wednesday (NNN) — A terrorist attack on the NHS has brought three London hospitals to a halt.

NHS computer with Red Ring of Death, er, Arrested IndicatorsThe terrorists, representing an organisation calling itself “Microsoft,” apparently used insecure third-party contractors to put a virus-running platform called “Windows” into critical systems in the hospitals, in order to extort money from them on an annual basis.

It is understood that a large percentage of all businesses are infected with the virus, wasting up to 25% of employees’ working time and opening the companies to further attacks from related criminal organisations demanding to see all their licenses.

The virus in question, W32.SHILL/SCHOFIELD, takes over the host’s IT systems, leading to aches, pains, nausea, vomiting, pumping out prodigious quantities of faeces and a terrible compulsion to spread the infection to others. The patient also walks with a shuddering stumble and asks for their hospital meal to include tasty, tasty brains. Recovery has commenced when they have an overwhelming urge to throw their computer out of the window. “Getting this stuff out of the system makes MRSA look like a walk in the park,” said one cleaner, waving his shit-encrusted hands about for emphasis.

When the infection became known, ambulances were diverted to other hospitals. “We have maintained a safe environment for our patients throughout the incident,” said a spokesman for Barts NHS Trust, “keeping them in the Clostridium difficile culturing lab rather than risking exposing them to ‘Windows.'”

“Healthcare staff should not share smartcards,” said a Connecting for Health spokesperson, “and if smartcards are used without a condom then disciplinary procedures should follow.”