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Comment by pastor_williams | Hacker News Reader

The author of "Why We Sleep" has written a blog post responding to the OP article and other questions from readers:

https://sleepdiplomat.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/why-we-sleep-...

There's no evidence that this was written by the author of Why We Sleep. This blog never links to Walker or to his social media or email, was never linked by Walker, and is not connected to Walker in any way other than using a "sleepdiplomat" handle (for all we know, I could've written that post).

Random quote from the above: "The book’s misattribution of the CDC statement to the WHO will be corrected in the next edition. "

Walker said this in [1] and I believe that this position is indefensible

At the time at the time of the book’s publication in 2017 (and today), CDC had no documents and no pages on its site that would declare a sleep loss epidemic.

As I noted in section Possible origin of the “sleeplessness epidemic” thing [2],

>Between late 2010/early 2011 and August/September 2015 [3-6], CDC had a page on its site titled “Insufficient Sleep Is a Public Health Epidemic”. More than 2 years before Why We Sleep was published, the page changed the word “epidemic” to “problem”, so that its title became “Insufficient Sleep Is a Public Health Problem”. … the fact that CDC itself changed the wording from “epidemic” to “problem” more than 2 years prior to the book’s publication, indicat[es] that they no longer believed in the presence of an “insufficient sleep epidemic”

Issuing a correction that would just change “WHO” to “CDC” in the next edition of the book – as Walker suggested – is deceptive. The CDC long ago (more than 4 years ago) removed the word “epidemic” from the article, and then removed the article itself.

If Walker believes that that is sufficient to state that CDC has declared a sleep loss epidemic, he might as well say that CDC has declared an epidemic of inhalation anthrax (and forget to note that it was declared in 1958 [3])

Also, Walker never explains why the source for this sleep loss epidemic claim in the book is a random National Geographic documentary.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz3s6

[2] https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/#possible-origin-of-the...)

[3] https://perma.cc/72CZ-L9DG

[4] [https://perma.cc/23UM-849W

[5] [https://perma.cc/2E68-ZRL9

[6] [https://perma.cc/UJ4W-JHNY

[7] https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/1940-1970.html

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