ACTive ALIA
proACTive
Number 230: December 2002
What next for Barbie? | Warning: heart attack hoax | Member dial-in access
What next for Barbie?
Would you believe it? Mattel, Barbie's creator, is taking a poll to help determine what Barbie's next profession should be in its popular I Can Be career series. The series was created to encourage young girls to explore a wide variety of career possibilities.
The choices this time are librarian, architect and policewoman. Thus far, librarian is the top choice of both parents (86%) and kids (48%)!
If you'd like to cast your vote for Barbie's next career, go to http://www.barbie.com/parents/products/products_icanbe2.asp and click on the career of your choice in the lower right-hand corner of the page. After you vote, you'll see up-to-the-minute poll results, so you can see how things are going.
Helen Roberts
Warning: heart attack hoax
Last week I was one of a long list of people who received an enclosing an article on How to Survive a Heart Attack When Alone, asking me to forward it to ten of my friends. You, or someone in your library, may very well receive one too. The article read:
'If everyone who gets this sends it to 10 people, you can bet that we'll save at least one life.
'Let's say it's 6:15pm and you're driving home (alone of course), after an unusually hard day in the office. You're really tired, upset and frustrated. Suddenly you experience severe pain in your chest, radiating out into your arm and up into your jaw. What can you do?
'Without help, a person whose heart stops beating properly and who begins to feel faint, has only about ten seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough and the cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again. Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating.
'Tell as many other people as possible about this, it could save their lives!
'From Health Cares, Rochester General Hospital via Chapter 240s newsletter AND THE BEAT GOES ON ... (reprint from The Mended Hearts, Inc. publication, Heart Response). BE A FRIEND AND PLEASE SEND THIS ARTICLE TO AS MANY FRIENDS AS POSSIBLE.'
Is this true? It would be great if it worked. But, being an editor by occupation and a sceptic by nature, I looked in the web for the source of the article, Rochester General Hospital in the USA, and there I found a very different story. The hospital's home page carries a link http://www.viahealth.org/rgh/heartattack.htm to an 'urgent message' as follows:
'Hundreds of people around the country have been receiving an message entitled How to Survive a Heart Attack When Alone. This article recommends a procedure to survive a heart attack in which the victim is advised to repeatedly cough at regular intervals until help arrives. The source of information for this article was attributed to ViaHealth Rochester General Hospital. The article is being propagated on the Internet, as individuals send it to friends and acquaintances, and then those recipients of the memo send it to their friends and acquaintances, and so on.
'We can find no record that an article even resembling this was produced by Rochester General Hospital within the last 20 years. Furthermore, the medical information listed in the article can not be verified by current medical literature and is in no way condoned by this hospital's medical staff. Also, both The Mended Hearts, Inc., a support organisation for heart patients, and the American Heart Association have said that this information should not be forwarded or used by anyone.
'Please help us combat the proliferation of this misinformation. We ask that you send this to anyone who sent you the article, and ask them to do the same.'
Web Development Co-ordinator
Rochester General Hospital
If you are interested, follow the link on the hospital's disclaimer page to the very informative Urban Myths website. There is indeed an emergency procedure called 'Cough CPR', but only to be practiced with a doctor present, after proper diagnosis.
So if you receive or hear of an on How to Survive a Heart Attack When Alone, let the sender know the procedure described is NOT to be recommended. Any serious chest pains should be cause for calling an ambulance at once, sitting quietly until help comes and meanwhile taking a couple of aspirins to slow blood-clot formation. This may be difficult advice to follow if you are indeed alone and driving a car in heavy traffic, but it seems that coughing is unlikely to be much help and may even aggravate an otherwise non-fatal attack.
Peter Judge
Member dial-in access
ALIAnet provides ALIA ACTive members with a dial-in number for access to ALIAnet and the internet at large. This number has changed. If you are a current dial-up account holder and wish to dial in you will need to alter the existing number from 02 6281 1174 to 02 6215 8249. No other settings require change, although you may wish to review the speed of connection, since we are using a better-quality line for our modems. Please contact ivan.trundle@alia.org.au.nospam , our web manager, if you have any queries about the changeover.
Helen Roberts
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