Daily Mail Tries to Blame 'Xbox' for UK Teen's Death


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As it often likes to do, the UK paper theDaily Mail tries to pin the death of a 16-year-old on "too much excitement" while playing a Sonic the Hedgehog game on his "Xbox."


 


In April of this year sixteen-year-old Jake Gallagher was playing Sonic the Hedgehog on his "Xbox" when he became overly excited, triggering an undiagnosed heart condition, claims his mother Sarah Pyatt. Shortly after the attack he collapsed and was taken to a local hospital. Jake Gallagher died two days later after being declared brain dead by doctors. Pyatt told the Daily Mail that doctors said that her son died from Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome. He also suffered from Asperger's Syndrome, but that didn't contribute in any way to his attack.


 


"There is a definite risk in predisposed young people playing video games that causes surges of adrenalin in the blood," Professor Sanjay Sharma, of St George's Hospital in South West London told the Daily Mail.


In the aftermath of losing her son to an undiagnosed heart condition, Sarah Pyatt joined the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young, and is calling for the government to make screening mandatory in young people. We hope Sarah Pyatt succeeds but it is truly a shame that the Daily Mail has used this tragic event to promote their continued effort to blame just about anything bad on playing video games.


 


 


http://gamepolitics.com/2013/07/16/daily-mail-tries-blame-xbox-uk-teens-death


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It's immensely rare I wish this, but I wish the Daily Mail would just go out of Business already. They pushed for the mandatory internet filter in the UK to block Porn, yet probably over half their articles on their website are about Celebrities in their underwear (I hope go whatever God is up there the Daily Mail gets blocked by the filter). 

 

Reading the comments in the articles just makes me facepalm

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I don't see how the video game caused this? Anything that made the kid excited would have set off his heart condition.

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lol. Yeah, the DM sucks. Their crusade against games is rather pathetic. Maybe they have an older demographic who they can scare with sensationalist stories.

 

You've just correctly described ~90% of their readers. (Y)

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I blame it on the mother, for not getting her kid diagnosed for every possible medical condition out there the kid could ever have! Obviously a failure of the NHS right?..... </s>

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Now if MS installed heart monitors and a defibrillator in the X-Box one this sort of thing would never happen

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