While I was away in England during October I missed a bunch of news. One story that I missed was the remarkable spread of a spoof CNN webpage (see
PDF file) claiming that "Fellatio may significantly reduce the risk of breast cancer in women."
Reading through it now, I don't see how anyone could not have recognized it as a joke. After all, how many doctors are named "Dr. Inserta Shafteer"? But apparently many people were fooled. CNN was annoyed enough that they threatened the creator of the hoax site, a North Carolina State University student named
Brandon Williamson, with legal action. Brandon quickly removed all CNN references from the page. The spoof page itself was hosted on NCSU's server (which was another reason people should have immediately realized it was a hoax). But apparently people are still being taken in by it. Just a few days ago Mary Ann Liebert, publisher of the Journal of Women's Health,
issued a press release demanding that "the network must investigate thoroughly its decision-making process that allowed a story that is so damaging and degrading to be put up on its website." Apparently she doesn't realize that the spoof page never appeared on CNN's website.
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