Category Archives: Health

SnakeOil? Scientific evidence for health supplements

February 25, 2010

SnakeOil? The scientific evidence for health supplements

A generative data-visualisation of all the scientific evidence for popular health supplements by David McCandless and Andy Perkins.

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Also posted in Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, Disease, Drugs, Generative, Interactive |
 182 Comments

Is the H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Safe?

November 25, 2009

Some frequent questions about the H1N1 Swine Flu vaccine answered as clearly and as visually as I could manage. A few people asked for this so I thought I would oblige.

It was hell on earth to research. There’s a jungle of science around H1N1. Very hard to hack through. You can check all my sources here.

Is the H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Safe?

You can check all my sources here.

UPDATE 1: Interesting story here on how the H1N1 vaccine is made

UPDATE 2: Jan 2010: There’s now a Greek version of the H1N1 Swine Flu image. (Thanks to George Papadakis) and a Hebrew version (thanks Matty)

Skeptical Sources: Centre Of Disease Control. Medscape, New England Journal Of Medicine, British Medical Journal, PubMed.

Explore the sources In this Google doc

Also posted in De-Hyping, Disease, Infographic, Statistics |
 90 Comments

Visualising the Guardian Datablog

November 6, 2009

I’m doing a regular weekly visualisation for the excellent Guardian Datablog, the front-end for an amazing library of statistics and data, lovingly hand-gathered by The Guardian.

My first post is about Deadly Drugs.

There’s been a furore over here in the UK about the dangers of illegal drugs. The Government has sacked its most senior drugs advisor, Dr Professor Nutt, after he claimed cannabis was no more harmful than alcohol. And that horse-riding, and specifically ‘equasy’ (Equine Addiction Syndrome) was riskier than taking ecstasy. (Statistically he’s correct. His study here.).

Anyway, digging at the numbers behind his statements and how drugs are reported in the popular press, I found some stuff I didn’t expect about drug harms.

Check out the article on The Guardian blog for detail and data. You want both right?

Also posted in Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, De-Hyping, Drugs, Visual Journalism |
 84 Comments

Four Infographic Morsels 2

November 4, 2009

The Change In Carbon Emissions
Another beautiful viz from Good Magazine. This time by Spanish viz supremo Lamosca. Twinned with Kyoto Targets.

Carbon Emissions

Your pet’s CO2 pawprint
How much CO2 is that doggy in the window? [Via Good Magazine and NewScientist]

Your pet's CO2 pawprint

White fight or flight?
Here’s a little something I did, overlaying membership data from the racist British National Party and ethnic populations in the UK. See the full size image.

Racist Profiling: BNP membership vs Ethnic Populations

300 days of Swine Flu
Nice image from Michael Paulkner showing the death toll from Swine Flu after 300 days. Larger sizes here.

Blimey. Quite a lot of doom and gloom in those images. I’ll try to make the next one cheerier.

If you’re still hungry for more infographical morsels, check out the last selection.

In the meantime, if you come across any visual delights, please send them through.

Also posted in Climate, Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, Environment |
 6 Comments

How Safe is the HPV vaccine?

October 12, 2009

I’ve been reading a lot about the HPV (Human Papillomavirus) vaccine and the risk of serious side effects and even death. I thought I would seek out the numbers and put them in context. Especially given headlines claiming the HPV jab is “as deadly as the cancer” it seeks to prevent.

How Safe Is The HPV (Human Papillomavirus) Vaccine?

A note about the UK. These are the figures for Gardasil, the vaccine used in the US. In the UK, the dominant vaccine is Cervarix. For which I have no figures. Ben Goldacre explores some important points around Cervarix. Worth reading.

(You can explore my data here. I’ve put the data on three separate sheets inside the spreadsheet. Here are the original source documents from the US Centre Of Disease Control).

If you have any figures on Cervarix or any other facts and sources that can add to this diagram, please get in touch. Thanks!

If you’re looking for information on HPV, Cervical Cancer and immunisation, try these links
: The NHS page on the cervical cancer jab
: General info on immunisation, including HPV

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Also posted in Data Journalism, De-Hyping, Disease, Infographic |
 117 Comments

Fatal Infection

September 24, 2009

A few people asked for this. And I was curious about it too. So here it is. Case fatality rates for well-known diseases.

Case Fatality Rates for Well-Known Diseases
This was very hard to research. The AIDS/HIV figures are especially difficult to find. Many of the numbers are locked into the tables of 1,000,000 page PDF reports. Grrrr!

(I tell you – when I sleep these days, my dreams unfold in rows and columns…)

Anyway, if anyone can find tighter, better figures, or can think of any key diseases I’ve missed (preferably with data!), please get in touch.


UPDATE 1: I’ve added this. Thanks to Gorka Cortazar for the suggestion.

Disease Fatality rate vs Survival Time Outside Of The Body

UPDATE 2: I’ve edited the Seasonal Flu fatality figure, previously 9% to 0.1%. The original figure was based on the number of patients *severely* ill with ‘flu who died, not the overall number of infected people. Sorry for the error. (Thanks to Lucie Melahn for the correction). I’ve also reclassified MRSA to “serious” or invasive MRSA.

sources World Health Organisation, Centre For Disease Control, Guardian Datablog
see the Google doc of data for more

Also posted in Data Visualisation, Disease, Infographic |
 57 Comments

Swine Flu Latest: Visualized!

September 1, 2009

With the help of the excellent Guardian Datastore, we’ve been tracking Swine Flu (“novel H1N1 virus”) as it creeps across the globe and starts to feeds into the autumnal ‘flu season. There are some surprising results.

Is the US about to face a pandemic?

The USA still has the most cases in the world. The America media are starting to pump out alarming headlines. “200,000 deaths!”. Here are the current figures.

Swine Flu: Countries with most cases Sep 2009
But when you factor in population sizes, the USA disappears off the map. (It’s actually 15th in the world)

Swine Flu: Most Infected Countries Sep 2009
Read More »

Also posted in Comparison Chart, Data Journalism, Disease, News, World Map |
 50 Comments

Mountains Out Of Molehills

August 4, 2009

Mountains Out Of Molehills

Watch out! A timeline of global media scare stories.

source: Google News | see in hi-res | download an A4 PDF
Also posted in Comparison Chart, Data Journalism, Media, Timelines |
 33 Comments

Caffeine and Calories

July 29, 2009

Caffeine vs Calories (click for hires)
How much will your Double Frozen FrapMochaChino add to both your bulge and your buzz?

sources: Guardian Datablog, Starbucks.co.uk, Calorie Count | My data in a google doc | download a hires A4 PDF | additional illustration Jez Burrows
Also posted in Data Journalism, Food, Graph, Scatterplot |
 31 Comments

Drugs World

July 22, 2009

I found this image on a far-flung tumblr. It really got me excited. What a cool map of drugs.

Drugs Map

(If you are the author of this image, please get in touch. I had a look but couldn’t find you)

I thought the type could do with a bit of sprucing. So I had a bosh at it myself. Knowing a little about drugs, I also rejinked the categories some. And added captions for the narcotically-naive in the audience. (Click for the hi-res)

The Drugs World - Click for hires

I like the way Cannabis comes out as a SUPER DRUG. The only stimulating-hallucinogenic depressant with anti-psychotic properties. And it grows out of the ground!

Of course, it’s not the complete picture. The more obscure drugs have been filtered out. (If any obvious ones have been missed out, please let me know.) Also complex classes and sub-classes of chemicals have been merged. I’m sure Alexander Shulgin is spitting out his 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine as we speak…

source: Wikipedia | See a hi-res | Download an editable hi-res PDF.
Thanks to PIERS GIBBON for taxonomical advice.

Also posted in Knowledge Map |
 38 Comments