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NEWS: Pokemon Causes Cancer

I think that naming the gene after one of anime's most successful franchises is just a matter of coincidence.

dormcat did explain where the acronym came from, and either the MD does have a sense of humor, or he doesn't know about Pokemon the anime.

I just hope Nintendo sees it this way, but knowing them, they're probably planning lawsuits even as we speak.

Perfectsword wrote:

What did you expect? Pokemon did cause a ton of people in japan to have seasures (sp?). I think like 400 or 700 people. (it's in the guiness book of records for 2002 i belive...)

http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/seizure.htm

Haiseikoh 1973 wrote:

Perfectsword wrote: What did you expect? Pokemon did cause a ton of people in japan to have seasures (sp?). I think like 400 or 700 people. (it's in the guiness book of records for 2002 i belive...) http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/seizure.htm

That Snopes article is extemely missleading. It says "False", but they then go on to support it. Either they actually ment to write "True" or they're being picky over symantics and mean that they show induced the seizures rather than caused them. Either way it is indeed true that over 618 children went into epileptic seizures after watching that episode.

Emerje

Emerje wrote:

That Snopes article is extemely missleading. It says "False", but they then go on to support it. Either they actually ment to write "True" or they're being picky over symantics and mean that they show induced the seizures rather than caused them. Either way it is indeed true that over 618 children went into epileptic seizures after watching that episode.

If you can provide articles, goverment documentation, and medical reports to support it, then i'll give you credit.

Otherwise, i'm undecided on if the story is true or not.

We studied a reported illness outbreak occurring on December 16, 1997, involving more than 12,000 Japanese children who had various signs and symptoms of illness after watching an episode of a popular animated cartoon, Pokemon. While photosensitive epilepsy was diagnosed in a minuscule fraction of those affected, this explanation cannot account for the breadth and pattern of the events. The characteristic features of the episode are consistent with the diagnosis of epidemic hysteria, triggered by sudden anxiety after dramatic mass media reports describing a relatively small number of genuine photosensitive-epilepsy seizures. The importance of the mass media in precipitating outbreaks of mass psychogenic illness is discussed.

CONCLUSIONS: High amounts of long-wavelength red light emitted from CRTs might play an important role in induction of photosensitive seizures in "Pokemon" incident.

On 16 December 1997, many Japanese children developed neurologic problems while watching the animated television series Pokemon. This study included children who visited the outpatient departments of 14 pediatric clinics for other reasons within 2 months after this incident. Volunteering children and parents or guardians were asked to complete questionnaires. We obtained 1,373 replies (including 800 males, 558 females, and 15 children without information on sex; mean age, 6.8 +/- 3.5 years). The majority of children included in this study (80%) watched this program, and 67 (6.1%; 40 males, 27 females) were affected by the program. There were 10 patients with seizures (0.9%; four males and six females). Fifty-seven patients developed other symptoms. Compared with nonaffected children, significantly more affected children reported that they concentrated on watching this program, watched it at a short distance from the screen, and did not watch this program in a brightly lit room. Seizures tended to occur in older children (average = 10.8 years) and in children with a high rate of familial histories of seizures. Symptoms other than seizures occurred more frequently, and autonomic and psychologic factors, such as motion sickness, could be considered possible mechanisms. Children who developed symptoms seemed to have problems in viewing conditions.

The 18 patients (13 females and five males) underwent electroencephalograms and photo-pattern stimulation testing, including special stimulation test batteries (strobe-pattern test and cathode ray tube-pattern test). Photo-pattern sensitivity was confirmed in 16 patients with and without seizure episodes. The strobe-pattern test including a white flickering light test (with eyes open, closed, and open or closed), and the cathode ray tube-pattern test each induced a photo-paroxysmal response in more than 80% of patients. However, with the eyes closed only, as is common in Japan, the photo-paroxysmal response induction rate with a white flickering light stimulus was significantly lower (43%). In the cathode ray tube-pattern test, higher spatial frequencies produced higher rates of photo-paroxysmal response induction. It was demonstrated that underlying photo-pattern sensitivity is more accurately investigated by our method than by standard intermittent photic stimulation alone.

If you can provide articles, goverment documentation, and medical reports to support it, then i'll give you credit.

Otherwise, i'm undecided on if the story is true or not.

However the Snopes report does nothing to actually prove it false. Simply saying that only a small precentage of those treated were diagnosed doesn't mean that they were all properly diagnosed, they could have easily been misdiagnosed.

The Admin of ANN should have shown a little more caution when posting about this one. You would think that a site as professional as ANN would have shown more common sense than trying to be funny about a disease that isn't funny.

More to the fact ... blasting a dedicated anime show that continues to be popular among its fans when the disease has NOTHING to do with the anime is also a lack of responsibility on the part of ANN.

I'm very disappointed.