Full Moon Gets Blame For Many Catastrophes

Wall Street Journal
December 24, 2004

Full Moon Gets Blame For Many Catastrophes
But Is It Truly at Fault?
By SHARON BEGLEY

This coming weekend will be no ordinary couple of days, as a glance at
any decent calendar will show. I am speaking, of course, of the full
moon on Dec. 26.

Lunatics since at least the time of imperial Rome have credited these
13-times-a-year events with strange powers, from triggering labor
contractions to sparking seizures, madness, suicide, homicide, arson
and...oh, sorry, a science column is no place for werewolves.

After all, if the full moon has the strength to pull the Earth's crust
like so much pizza dough, not to mention tug on entire oceans, surely
it exerts enough force to make the water in the human body slosh around
a bit. And since about 50% to 65% of the body, roughly 10 gallons in an
adult, is water, that's a lot of sloshing. You'd think it would have
physiological effects.

A remarkable number of doctors and nurses think so. "Many health
professionals believe the moon influences the mental health of their
patients," says Walter Barr of the University of Liverpool, England. At
least they entertain the possibility seriously enough to check it out.
Often.

This year, researchers in Birmingham, England, combed through 20 years
of records from that city's Burns Centre to determine whether there was
any cosmic pattern in the timing of the 184 self-inflicted burns that
led to hospital admission. They came up empty. "Such incidents are
random, not influenced by the...phase of the lunar cycle," they
concluded.

Examinations of other effects of the full moon also come up short.
Childbirths? There were 3,706 spontaneous deliveries at one New York
hospital over a 12-month period, but no spikes or dips at the time of
the full moon, hospital scientists reported in 1998, and other studies
confirm. Epileptic seizures? Scientists at Tampa General Hospital in
Florida found no link, they reported last August, having undertaken the
study because so many patients insist that the full moon triggers or
worsens their seizures.

Cardiac arrest or heart attack? Two 2003 studies -- one of 6,827 cases
over 11 years at New Jersey emergency rooms and another of 1,240 cases
over six years at a hospital in Vienna, Austria -- showed "no
significant difference in the occurrence" of stopped hearts during the
full moon. That's "contrary to traditional belief," the New Jersey team
added with a nod toward their more superstitious colleagues.

Nor does the full moon fill emergency rooms with victims of violence.
When ER doctors in Pittsburgh toted up admissions due to assault,
gunshots and stabbings, they found no lunar-related statistical spike.
Nor have scientists found a link between the full moon and violence at
hockey games, prisons or middle schools (yes, studies have probed for
all of these). A 1982 study did claim a link between traffic accidents
and full-moon nights. But those nights happened to fall more on
weekends, when traffic peaks.

How about breast-cancer survival? A belief had sprung up that surgery
to remove a tumor during a full moon had a worse outcome. A 2001 paper,
toting up survival of 3,757 women undergoing the surgery, found no such
effect.

A brief astronomical aside might explain why. The moon is full when
Earth lines up between it and the sun, maximizing the amount of
sunlight the moon reflects. The new moon occurs when the sun and moon
are on the same side of Earth, combining their gravitational pull.
Lunatics might more reasonably expect funny business around the time of
the new moon (though studies show it is no more likely to occur then),
but it is no fun attributing spooky powers to an orb you can't see.

The best I can offer in support of the moon myth is a study by
Liverpool's Dr. Barr. Although he found no lunar link to the mental
health of most of the mentally ill, schizophrenics seemed to
deteriorate a bit.

Speaking of bit, two 2000 studies counted the incidence of dog bites to
see whether it rose during full moons. In Australia, it didn't. But in
Britain there were twice as many ER visits for animal bites (mostly
dog, but also rats, cats and horses) as on other days.

Had the full moon scrambled the beasts' synapses? Either that or on
nights lit by a full moon Brits, oft beset by cloud and fog, are more
likely to take Fido for a walk, where he might encounter tempting
targets. The land down under has such glorious weather, says one
scientist (Aussie, of course), that a full moon "is no big deal" and so
does not inspire people and their pooches to venture outside.

Moon myths arose before outdoor lighting was, at least around cities,
ubiquitous, and a full moon lit up the night enough to cause sleep
deprivation. That might have been enough to induce depression, mania or
seizures in the susceptible.

Now that nights are not pitch black for most of us, the extra
illumination is hardly noticeable, let alone disruptive. For people in
the hinterlands the full moon might still disrupt sleep and lots else,
but those folks tend not to make it into hospital-based research.

As for why the myth of the full moon persists, blame cognitive bias.
When something extraordinary happens during, say, a quarter moon, we
don't notice the lunar connection. But let a mass murder occur under a
full moon, and the myth gains another lease on life.
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