Another day and another trashy recycled BBC health story with scary headlines and unproven facts.

Best of all, the famous BBC “experts” say it is all true.

The origin of this article is actually quite interesting though if you will bear with me for a little while …

Firstly, an introduction to the article in question :

UK rise in age-related macular degeneration predicted

UK experts are predicting a steep rise in the rate of an eye condition that is already a leading cause of blindness.

Oh noes, a blindness disaster coming soon say experts!

Why is that exactly?

Simply due to the fact that Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is, well, age related and the population of the UK is ageing :

But an ageing population means this figure could rise by a quarter to nearly 756,000 by 2010, according to recent research in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.

Not exactly a difficult prediction to make then is it?

Digging a little deeper is quite interesting in this case as the article and associated scary headlines are actually a recycled press release from the The College of Optometrists which is itself a recycled study of a model designed to study the probable increases in AMD cases due to ageing.

For the timeline from original research to scary story we have the following trail :

We start with a British Medical Journal paper from 12th February with the rather dry title of :

Modelling the prevalence of age-related macular degeneration (2010–2020) in the UK

It has a very straightforward conclusion with no scary warnings :

Conclusions The model predicts that the beneficial effects of the treatment would be outweighed by the strong anticipated demographic ‘ageing’ effect

More older people equals more older people’s diseases.

That would have been the end of it if The College of Optometrists (CO) had not repackaged that research conclusion into an awareness raising press release issued yesterday (15th March) :

Leading cause of blindness in the western world set to increase in UK by a quarter by 2020:

• Half of UK adults have never heard of the UK’s leading cause of blindness, Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD)
• In the UK over 600,000 people suffer from AMD with an estimated 239,000 people predicted to experience vision loss as a result of the disease by the end of 2011
• Cases of AMD expected to increase by a quarter in the next 10 years
• The direct and indirect costs of overall sight loss are expected to rise by over £1 billion in 2013

A major new study into the nation’s attitude and behaviour towards eye health, ‘Britain’s Eye Health in Focus’ indicates that Britain could be heading towards an eye health crisis due to the ageing population, poor diet and a lack of awareness of eye diseases.

Notice how the original research statement of fact that AMD cases will rise due to an ageing population has now become “eye health crisis” in the last paragraph with absolutely no mention of more older people being the simple cause.

The CO press release itself reads like a shroud waving exercise designed to get more people to have eye checks which will keep CO members in business. No real surprise there then.

They even have tenuously related anti-smoking statements which go from “will cause” to “could cause” to “evil smelly ashtray types are all going to die” within the space of three paragraphs :

Smoking is a major risk factor for increasing the chances of developing AMD, however, only a third of smokers (36 per cent) were aware that smoking can cause eye disease

…

It is not known what causes AMD, but a family history, obesity, diet, smoking and age are all thought to be contributing factors.

…

Smoking also doubles your chances of developing the condition so quitting can also reduce your risk.

Talk about scatterbrained writing there – a major risk factor turns into a possible factor which is not proven before becoming  a doubling of risk!

Make your minds up damn it rather than making sure you have ticked the righteousness checklist to the point of oblivion.

Anyway, at this point The BBC health team pick up on the already recycled piece of shroud waving and give the sentence order a quick shuffle to give us tales of experts and doom, which is where we started back at the top of this post :

The survey of over 4,000 also found many people were unaware that a poor diet and smoking increases the risk of AMD.

Better yet, there is bugger all we can do about it anyway which makes the whole article pretty pointless other than that they mention smoking and the BBC Health team can fill their column inch quota without endangering any brain cells :

There is currently no cure for either forms but early diagnosis and treatment of wet AMD – which develops rapidly – is crucial in order to prevent vision loss.

So, there you have it, the evolution of an innocuous research piece into a shroud waving call for action before being recycled by sloppy journalists employed at our expense as a page filler on a slow day.