How the Mainstream Media Hype Health Care

This article originally appeared on Health Beat.

"False Hopes, Unwarranted Fears: The Trouble with Medical News Stories." If you find the headline alarming, you should read the editorial, published just last week in PLoS Medicine. There, the journal's editors summarize what the Health News Review has discovered over the past two years while evaluating medical stories about new products and procedures throughout the mainstream media.

"It's not a pretty picture," says Gary Schwitzer, the University of Minnesota School of Journalism professor who publishes the online project.

In a video linked to the Health News Review website, Schwitzer points out that "about 65 percent of the time" major news organization are not telling viewers and readers how "big the potential harms" of new treatments are -- or "how small the potential benefits."

Meanwhile, about three-quarters of the stories about a new product or procedure fail to talk about how much the idea costs. "At a time when the U.S. is spending 16 percent of GDP on healthcare, I find this unfathomable," says Schwitzer. "No one is asking, 'How are we going to pay for it?' 'Who will have access to these things?' Who's to say that we even need some of these things? This is what we need to discuss."

Ultimately, "these stories are painting a 'kid in the candy-store' picture of U.S. healthcare," Schwitzer charges, "whereby everything is made to look terrific, risk-free, and without a price tag. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Health News Review is supported by a grant from the nonprofit Foundation for Informed Decision Making, which was founded in 1989 by Dr. Jack Wennberg and colleagues. Its mission is to assure "that people understand their choices and have the information they need to make sound decisions affecting their health and well-being."

But rather than helping people understand that they have choices, news stories trumpeting a new product often fail to compare it to existing alternatives. Schwitzer explains: "We expect that a story would put the new approach being discussed into the context of alternatives, with some discussion of the possible advantages or disadvantages of the new approach compared with [treatments already on the market]."

Instead, says Schwitzer, good-news stories about "medical breakthroughs" are "feeding people" who believe there is "a pill for every ill, creating unrealistic expectations and undue demand for unproven ideas. This may help explain why we are spending 16 percent of GDP on healthcare -- and not getting the value for our dollars."

In addition to the editorial, the May issue of PLoS includes an article by Schwitzer detailing the shortcomings of the 500 medical stories that Health News Review has reviewed over the past two years while evaluating stories published in the top 50 U.S. newspapers and in the three major newsweeklies, carried on the Associated Press' wires, and aired on morning and evening news at ABC, NBC and CBS.

Too often, reporters rely on sources that have an axe to grind: "Of 170 stories that cited an expert or a scientific study," Schwitzer observes "85 (50 percent) cited at least one with a financial tie to the manufacturer of the drug, a tie that was disclosed in only 33 of the 85 stories."

For example, a story that ran on ABC World News in April of 2007 heralding a new test for prostate cancer "did not disclose what was abundantly clear even in a Johns Hopkins news release: the principal investigator receives a share of the royalties received on sales of the test. He is also a paid consultant to the manufacturer of the test. There were no quotes from anyone expressing skepticism about the development."

Stores that hype hope can also spread fear. The reviewers, who gave the ABC piece a "2" on a 10-point scale, criticized it for leading with a dramatic graphic that stated: "Prostate cancer in the U.S.: 1.6 million men undergo prostate biopsies each year."