Celebrities seem to appear often in news reports about health and medicine. Since 2005, my research group has recorded all health related content on all five free-to-air Sydney TV channels. As of 21 August 2011, 1657/29 322 (6%) of news items have featured celebrities, which is substantially lower than the proportion featuring people experiencing disease or injury (60%), experts and health workers (50%), and politicians (49%).1 Celebrities often get involved because of personal experience with a disease or because they share the concerns of other citizens and want to help by offering the publicity magnet intrinsic to their celebrity. And like experts, some probably calculate that a public profile on good causes might also be good for their careers.