Off the News

Teens rethinking sugary drinking

Turns out a soda tax might not be needed after all to prompt less consumption of sugary drinks.

A "Rethink Your Drink" media campaign conducted by the state Health Department over a three-month period earlier this year is said to have reached about 54 percent of teens statewide, through public service announcements, advertising in malls and movie theaters and on social media networks.

And guess what? It apparently worked. A phone survey of teens by the University of Hawaii’s Office of Public Health Studies found that 60 percent said they are drinking fewer sugary drinks as a result of the campaign, which included ads depicting young people drinking orange-colored globs of "fat" from soda and sports drink bottles.

The $300,000 campaign was paid for with money from the state’s tobacco settlement special fund.

Saving babies without an M.D.

As the latest evidence that innovation can spring from unexpected sources, consider the work of Jorge Odsn, a car mechanic in Argentina.

Inspired by a YouTube video showing how to extract a cork floating in a wine bottle, Odsn applied the same logic to treating fetal distress caused by obstructed labor. He invented a simple device to safely extract babies stuck in the birth canal. Now the Odsn Device has won the hearty endorsement of the World Health Organization and doctors say it has enormous potential to save babies’ lives in poor countries, and to reduce the incidence of Caesarean sections in rich ones.

Odsn says the idea came to him in his sleep, after he had watched the clip on the Internet. Talk about sweet dreams.