I attended an excellent conference at The New York Academy of Sciences Monday entitled Vaccines Under the Gun. The participants were Paul Offit, MD, Dan Thomasch (who argued the Supreme Court case limiting vaccine maker liability) and Trine Tsouderos, Chicago Tribune science and health reporter who spent a year investigating alternative treatments for autism, leading to a series of stories that deemed them risky and unproven and Perri Klass, a pediatrician and author of many books and articles on health, medicine and children.
The major point of discussion was: Why did the media fail so miserably in covering the vaccine-autism link and why was it willing to give junk and pseudo science a platform?
No one answer was provided. However it is clear that the motivations and approach of journalists that perpetuated this false narrative is alive and well. The participants made the following points:
1. Health care journalists limit their focus on conflicts to specific industries and give those ‘experts’ who raise questions about the integrity of companies, who claim links between chemicals and disease and who identify the profit motive as inherently evil are free pass. Here are one recent example: FDA Probes Link Between Food Dyes, Kids' Behavior
2. Health care journalists ignore all ‘conflicts of interest’ except when it comes to medical product companies. For instance, a story in Reuters claiming if doctors prescribed more generic drugs there would be more compliance and less spent on medications. It was based on a study conducted by CVS and Harvard professors who claimed no financial interest. The authors are: an executive of CVSCaremark, a doctor running CVS Caremark Harvard Partnership for Improving Medication Adherence and another making money doing academic detailing. The authors did not disclose this association or were not required to. Even health care journalists are guilty of this deliberate oversight: Joanne Kenen’s bio on the Health Journalism blog leaves out her long affiliation with the left-leaning New America Foundation.
3. Health care journalists continue to ignore the body of science in covering a study. The Reuters article is a case in point: The totality of evidence regarding the impact of generic drugs in improving adherence is unclear at best because most studies do not measure the impact of switching to a generic on compliance. Such studies, with rare exception, fail to look at total treatment costs in specific therapeutic areas. Finally, there is a body of evidence demonstrating that “allowing people to use only generic drugs would increase total treatment costs, not reduce them, and would lead to worse outcomes.”
More here.
Similarly, coverage of the food color-ADHD ‘connection’ has ignored several large studies and a European Food Safety Agency review harshly criticizing the small ‘studies’ for the same reasons Wakefield’s MMR-autism ‘research’ was trashed.
More here.
The following blog post shows how an unbiased journalist would critically cover this story.
All of which leads me to conclude that health care journalists need to be more vigilant in correcting those in the field. There is nothing wrong and indeed much to admire in reporting or coverage with a strong point of view or bias. I don’t think journalists should be penalized for having a particular bent or expressing opinions on most subjects. At the same time it is wrong to apply a double standard on conflicts, (which will be the subject of another post) fail to do a 5 minute search of well-designed studies that have clear endpoints or subject a medical or scientific claims about risks to the scrutiny of clear, replicable evidence. Finally, journalists and headline writers have to stop framing possible associations as causation.
The major point of discussion was: Why did the media fail so miserably in covering the vaccine-autism link and why was it willing to give junk and pseudo science a platform?
No one answer was provided. However it is clear that the motivations and approach of journalists that perpetuated this false narrative is alive and well. The participants made the following points:
1. Health care journalists limit their focus on conflicts to specific industries and give those ‘experts’ who raise questions about the integrity of companies, who claim links between chemicals and disease and who identify the profit motive as inherently evil are free pass. Here are one recent example: FDA Probes Link Between Food Dyes, Kids' Behavior
2. Health care journalists ignore all ‘conflicts of interest’ except when it comes to medical product companies. For instance, a story in Reuters claiming if doctors prescribed more generic drugs there would be more compliance and less spent on medications. It was based on a study conducted by CVS and Harvard professors who claimed no financial interest. The authors are: an executive of CVSCaremark, a doctor running CVS Caremark Harvard Partnership for Improving Medication Adherence and another making money doing academic detailing. The authors did not disclose this association or were not required to. Even health care journalists are guilty of this deliberate oversight: Joanne Kenen’s bio on the Health Journalism blog leaves out her long affiliation with the left-leaning New America Foundation.
3. Health care journalists continue to ignore the body of science in covering a study. The Reuters article is a case in point: The totality of evidence regarding the impact of generic drugs in improving adherence is unclear at best because most studies do not measure the impact of switching to a generic on compliance. Such studies, with rare exception, fail to look at total treatment costs in specific therapeutic areas. Finally, there is a body of evidence demonstrating that “allowing people to use only generic drugs would increase total treatment costs, not reduce them, and would lead to worse outcomes.”
More here.
Similarly, coverage of the food color-ADHD ‘connection’ has ignored several large studies and a European Food Safety Agency review harshly criticizing the small ‘studies’ for the same reasons Wakefield’s MMR-autism ‘research’ was trashed.
More here.
The following blog post shows how an unbiased journalist would critically cover this story.
All of which leads me to conclude that health care journalists need to be more vigilant in correcting those in the field. There is nothing wrong and indeed much to admire in reporting or coverage with a strong point of view or bias. I don’t think journalists should be penalized for having a particular bent or expressing opinions on most subjects. At the same time it is wrong to apply a double standard on conflicts, (which will be the subject of another post) fail to do a 5 minute search of well-designed studies that have clear endpoints or subject a medical or scientific claims about risks to the scrutiny of clear, replicable evidence. Finally, journalists and headline writers have to stop framing possible associations as causation.
