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A terrible byline: "Human fat cells can be used to regenerate damaged hearts and ageing joints. So should we start piling on the pounds?" Piling on the fat is

A terrible byline: "Human fat cells can be used to regenerate damaged hearts and ageing joints. So should we start piling on the pounds?" Piling on the fat is about as effective as smoking if you want a reliably slow way to shorten your lifespan by a decade or more [1] while at the same time considerably increasing your lifetime medical expenditures [2]. That visceral fat around your organs works a number on your biochemistry, increasing chronic inflammation [3] with all its detrimental consequences. That is bad enough but other unfortunate and more poorly understood changes take place in metabolism when you eat a very high calorie diet consistently, of the sort needed to sustain a lot of fat tissue, pushing nutrient sensing mechanisms into overload. [4] There is magical thinking everywhere when laypeople talk about medical technologies. But this fat-related example is particularly egregious. [1]: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-07/iaft-sfl071210.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-07/iaft-sfl07121... [2]: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-12/dumc-hcc121613.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-12/dumc-hcc12161... [3]: http://www.houstonmethodist.org/body.cfm?id=495&action=detail&ref=1003 http://www.houstonmethodist.org/body.cfm?id=495&action=detai... [4]: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10863-009-9229-3 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10863-009-9229-3

barrkel 12y ago
The article is actually about fatty deposits containing stem cells - the benefits come from using stem cells. That's if the automated summary linked to elsewhere is to be believed. Long articles prompt people to react to headlines rather than the substance of the article. That's why I suggested that a summary was needed, yet was biffed in the head multiple times for.
- babuskov 12y ago
  I really don't understand why, perhaps people were mad that you were complaining instead of providing the summary for them ;) One of the reasons why I enjoy HN is that I can read comments first, which works very fast on any device, does not load 20+ javascript and CSS files and is surely not going to make my browser crawl to a halt. I read comments for almost everything, but only hit the original site once in 20 times or less. This article was trending and there were no comments, so I figured I would read it, and if it's any good, provide TLDR for the rest of us. It's a way of thanking all the others who provided useful comments to me in the past. BTW, I did not down-vote you, I actually went to read it and provide TLDR. I guess you were just too eager and could not wait till I complete reading it :)
anigbrowl 12y ago
(That's not what a byline is - that's usually location, date, and name of the author. This is just a subtitle.) It's linkbaity, sure, but the story is a good deal more complex, unsurprisingly so as the author is 'an associate professor of medicine and pharmacology at the University of Illinois.' You should be aware that titles and subtitles are very often written by editors rather than authors, and the editor's goal is to draw and retain people's attention. One way to do that is to use a counter-intuitive proposition as bait to draw in the reader.
logicallee 12y ago
I clicked through and after reading that subtitle ("Human fat cells can be used to regenerate damaged hearts and ageing joints. So should we start piling on the pounds?") concluded that McDonald's paid for the article and closed it. If McDonald's didn't pay for it, it shouldn't be written as if they had.

barrkel 12y ago

The article is actually about fatty deposits containing stem cells - the benefits come from using stem cells. That's if the automated summary linked to elsewhere is to be believed. Long articles prompt people to react to headlines rather than the substance of the article. That's why I suggested that a summary was needed, yet was biffed in the head multiple times for.

babuskov 12y ago
I really don't understand why, perhaps people were mad that you were complaining instead of providing the summary for them ;) One of the reasons why I enjoy HN is that I can read comments first, which works very fast on any device, does not load 20+ javascript and CSS files and is surely not going to make my browser crawl to a halt. I read comments for almost everything, but only hit the original site once in 20 times or less. This article was trending and there were no comments, so I figured I would read it, and if it's any good, provide TLDR for the rest of us. It's a way of thanking all the others who provided useful comments to me in the past. BTW, I did not down-vote you, I actually went to read it and provide TLDR. I guess you were just too eager and could not wait till I complete reading it :)

anigbrowl 12y ago

(That's not what a byline is - that's usually location, date, and name of the author. This is just a subtitle.) It's linkbaity, sure, but the story is a good deal more complex, unsurprisingly so as the author is 'an associate professor of medicine and pharmacology at the University of Illinois.' You should be aware that titles and subtitles are very often written by editors rather than authors, and the editor's goal is to draw and retain people's attention. One way to do that is to use a counter-intuitive proposition as bait to draw in the reader.

logicallee 12y ago

I clicked through and after reading that subtitle ("Human fat cells can be used to regenerate damaged hearts and ageing joints. So should we start piling on the pounds?") concluded that McDonald's paid for the article and closed it. If McDonald's didn't pay for it, it shouldn't be written as if they had.