SHS: Should We Be Afraid?

I’m not sure if anyone saw the story a couple years ago linking television watching to what has now been labeled Sawdust Head Syndrome or SHS. There were some who cited a conspiracy of media and either the State or Justice Department to keep the story from going public. CBS was even planning a Sixty Minutes feature on the phenomenon, but under pressure from the Justice Department pulled the piece. Evidently, the TV networks, who helped foster the Alar scare which did huge damage to the apple industry that year, did not want people frightened into not watching television.

Sawdust Head Syndrome was discovered in an increasing number of instances where autopsies were performed and it was discovered that portions of the brain had become sawdust. I can’t recall all the details other than it somehow involved Columbia University. I vaguely recall that research into SHS was also being conducted at the University of MN and Stanford.

At first it was believed the sawdust like material was caused by either a bacteria or virus. When the link to excessive television viewing was finally established, the investigation went under wraps. I guess you can imagine what would happen to our court system if everyone who ever watched TV suddenly sued the TV manufacturers, or Best Buys and Circuit Cities where they bought their gear.

I just did a Google Search and actually found a few stories on the subject. The American Medical Association (AMA) also seems to have been implicated in the cover up. I also found a couple links from a blog to YouTube videos but they came up “file not found” so I’m not sure what’s going on there.

The article about the Justice Department came out in 2006, verifying that Stanford and the U of M were indeed aware of the matter. According to this article they were working in conjunction with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. The piece ends by mentioning that TV sets might be forced to come with warning labels by 2007. I haven’t bought one lately, but if anyone has a new television, I’d be interested in knowing what kind of warnings it carries.

In another article, some of the first reported cases of SHS were from nursing homes where aides would occasionally find flecks of sawdust on patient’s pillows. The sawdust like material usually went unreported until a grad student from Temple University, who himself had been a former aide, made the correlation between the patients having sawdust on the pillows and television viewing.

Personally, I have long suspected that television has been having some kind of impact on our brains. For the purposes of comedy, if this story is proven true, it might also prove that to some extent we’re a nation of blockheads. TV could then be likened to a big saw.

And now, one wonders about the stories circulating that cell phones might cause cancer. Is this true as well, or just another story... or maybe there's another cover up. Should we be afraid?