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What are the causes of pancreatitis, the disease Ashcroft is reportedly in the hospital for? Here's what CNN's Fact Box said:

So I googled for the first bullet point quote that CNN put in the box, and found it not at CNN's source, the Mayo Clinic, but at an Ohio not-for-profit that cited the Mayo Clinic:

Pancreatitis often is caused by gallstones leaving the gallbladder and lodging near the pancreatic duct, obstructing the duct. This can cause digestive juices produced by the pancreas to move into ...

But what does the Mayo Clinic itself have to say? Now, searching the Mayo site doesn't yield the quote in the CNN "Fact Box":




But the Mayo site did yield—right from the helpful home page link to "Timely topics"—the following additional material on the "Causes" of pancreatitis:

Pancreatitis can occur for various reasons. The two most common known causes are excessive alcohol use and gallstones. In some cases the cause is unknown.

Looks like CNN left out one of the two main causes of pancreatitis. I wonder why?

Did they just Google something and slam it onto their site, without checking the primary source material? Or was there some other reason? Perhaps CNN and official Washington are enablers?

We report. You decide.

NOTE Inspired by a prescient post by TBogg.

UPDATE Alert reader CaptionObvious says:

As a physician (really!), let me say that CNN is blatantly withholding the truth. Any person/website/etc. that does not mention alochol when discussing pancreatitis may as well not be discussing is at all.

In fact, according to Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine (the IM Bible), in the US, alcohol is the most common etiology of pancreatitis, followed by gallstones. In other countries, such as England, however, the opposite is true.