Yes, and I’m more than happy to spread the word. Typically, these bogus medical alerts spread from woman to woman, the subtext being that the medical establishment is willfully withholding important information about scary things.
Things like — I kid you not — flesh-eating bananas, anti-perspirants that supposedly cause breast cancer and my all-time favorite: tampons containing asbestos and dioxin. For the record, the first has been debunked by the Centers for Disease Control, the second by me (Boston Globe, January 25, 2005) among others, the third by the US Food and Drug Administration.
To check out these email hoaxes and urban legends, the Harvard Women’s Health Watch helpfully suggests several websites. One is hoaxbusters.ciac.org run by the Computer Incident Advisory Capability of the Department of Energy. Another, truthorfiction.com is run by Rich Buhler, a journalist who says, on the site, that he has been debunking rumors and urban legends for more than 30 years. There’s also: