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Miracle Alzheimer’s cure, randy baby boomers and a shameless mention of Justin Bieber

By Lilian Anekwe

Our round up of health news headlines onThursday 9 September.

It seems that the stream of escorts willing to sell their stories about Wayne Rooney has abated for now, and so Fleet Street has had to fall back on a trusty stalwart to make it through an otherwise slow news day: The Miracle Cure to a Disease That Will Potentially Affect Us All in the Years to Come. Or TMCDTWPAUAYC.

So how fortuitous it must have been when the press release landed on the news desks of the Daily Mail, The Independent, and the Daily Telegraph. 'Hold the front page!' I'm sure they would have yelled, with neither a trace of irony nor cliché.

'10p pill to beat Alzheimer's' the Daily Mail splash announces. In these times of austerity, the frugal nature of this miracle cure seems to have gone down well.

'Vitamin B pill could halt Alzheimer's' the Daily Telegraph's front page says, pleased that the research has been done by good old fashioned pioneering British chaps, what what. At Oxford University, you say? Jolly Good. I remember my punting days there at St. John's. Pimms, tally ho and all that. Spiffing.

Not to be outdone, The Independent also splashed on it, but in a rather more understated by aesthetically pleasing way. Dementia: hope at last. It's not about the news, you see, it's a viewspaper.

So The Guardian seems rather churlish, making us wait until page eight to deliver the breakthrough bombshell. It's far too busy trying to instigate the downfall of the Murdoch empire to give any room to TMCDTWPAUAYC on its front page.

In other news, and there is some, if not much: The Independent says the Government is planning a national ad campaign to curb soaring STI rates in the over 50s, those randy so and sos, by harking back to the 60s when there was none of this free love and promiscuity and… oh, wait.

Could the over 50s playing fast and loose with sexual morals have something to do with the staffing crisis on maternity wards? Well, logically, no, but someone's got to be responsible for a 16% rise in the number of babies born in England and Wales in seven years, haven't they? Yes, and its bureaucrats in Brussels, the Daily Telegraph says.

Doing a good deed a day keeps the doctor away, the Daily Mail says. So my good deed will be, for no other reason other than to feed the beast that is search engine optimisation, telling you that Justin Bieber (ask a teenage girl) takes oestrogen pills for teenage acne.

Spotted a story we've missed? Let us know, and we'll update the digest throughout the day...

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