See my article on the Columbia Journalism Review's CJR Daily website.
In recognition of the sorry state of television health news, it's a call for certification of TV health reporters. TV meteorologists get certified by the American Meteorological Society after they prove some level of knowledge and skill. But the audience doesn't know anything about the credentials of the people who forecast cures, breakthroughs and health scares. Read my rationale in the article.
Two lawsuits were filed in a Virginia circuit court yesterday, accusing the dairy industry of making fraudulent claims that people can lose weight by consuming more dairy products.
The Washington Post reports that the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine contends that the industry has promoted the weight-loss notion through a "massive, deceptive advertising campaign." In fact, the committee says, overwhelming scientific evidence shows that dairy products cause weight gain or have no effect on weight.
The House voted Friday to ban Medicare and Medicaid from paying for impotence drugs. The New York Times reports that Medicaid had been spending about $15 million a year on those drugs.
Iowa Republican Steve King, sponsor of the bill, said, "We provide drugs through Medicare and Medicaid that are lifesaving drugs; we don't pay for lifestyle drugs." King also was quoted saying it was wrong to tell taxpayers that "we're going to take the money you earned on overtime to pay for Grandpa's Viagra."
Among the opponents of the ban was Rep. Jay Inslee of Washington, who said, "There is a value for Congress not to dictate to people what is important in their own lives."
The ban would still have to be approved in the Senate.
40-million uninsured Americans. 15 percent of the GNP spent on health care. Medicare in trouble. States squeezed to manage Medicaid. Just a few things in the news, yet local TV news doesn't find time for many of these issues.
See my J school's summer magazine for a glimpse of my 2004 election year research on TV news health policy (non)coverage, and for a look at some of my colleagues' health communications research interests.
The New York Times reported on important new questions about the PSA blood test for prostate cancer. Excerpts:
(Dr. Tim Wilt of the Minneapolis VA Medical Center:) " "There is no doubt that we will label more people as abnormal." ...Despite the arguments in the academic medical community about what the test means, most men are still having it done. But now they have to address these questions: When should a low P.S.A. level lead to a biopsy, and when should a tiny tumor be treated?"
There is no easy answer, according to Dr. Ian Thompson of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. "You can't condense it to a sound bite," Dr. Thompson told the Times.
The article continued, "But many doctors, he added, are either unaware of the new views on P.S.A. or are ignoring them.
"I was presenting some of the data recently to a gentleman over 50 who was visiting our institution," Dr. Thompson said. "He looked at me with kind of wide eyes and said, 'Do people know this?' " The answer, Dr. Thompson said, is that it appears that most general practitioners do not know it. "They don't know that there is no such thing as a normal P.S.A. level."
Dr. Wilt has another concern. Most patients, he said, are not being counseled that even if they have prostate cancer, they may not need treatment. Only a small percentage of prostate cancers are dangerous, and older men, in particular, with small tumors may be better off monitored instead of treated. Dr. Wilt is directing a study that should help settle the question of whether treatment with surgery helps save lives in men whose prostate cancer is detected by P.S.A. screening, but its results will not be in until 2010."
ED. EP. PE.
C'mon, guys. (And the women who love them.) It's quiz time. And if you don't know what these stand for, you're simply not doing a good job keeping up with drug company marketing.
ED is the marketing term for erectile dysfunction. Erectile dysfunction was too clinical. Impotence was too offensive.
EP, as noted earlier on this site, is the new name for BPH, which is the acronym for benign prostatic hyperplasia, which will affect most men if they live long enough. It's prostate enlargement (but it's not PE) that gives men urinary trouble. Many men find it doesn't need to be treated with drugs or surgery. But you don't hear that in ads.
PE was highlighted in the New York Times this week. as drug companies develop drugs for premature ejaculation. A Netherlands sexual health researcher is quoted in the article, saying that he thinks the number of men suffering from premature ejaculation is far lower than studies sponsored by drug companies suggest. The neuropsychiatrist says, "My worry is that independent research will become more difficult as pharmaceutical companies bring the message that P.E. is very prevalent and that most men should use medication, and of course their medication."
I can't wait to see the PE television ads. Man slips into bed....clock ticking loudly from nightstand. Anxiety. Anticipation. Then fade to black. Superimpose new drug product name. Then dissolve to happy faces cuddling.
Another lifestyle drug achievement. Meantime the war on cancer and heart disease moves on slowly in silence.
The Boston Globe reports that "A fierce, behind-the-scenes battle over how much influence drug companies exert on doctors is raising the blood pressure at the American Society of Hypertension."
The story continues: "The society's cofounder and longtime editor of the prestigious American Journal of Hypertension, Dr. John H. Laragh, has accused 'academic physician/businessmen' who accept industry speaking and consulting fees of improperly coloring the group's activities." Laragh wrote an e-mail message to physicians in the 3,000 member society that said, ''The lines separating marketing from education have been fractured."
Welcome to Wal-Mart -- whose low prices are made possible partly because many of its workers have to rely on state-subsidized health plans.
A Star Tribune editorial highlights a bill in the Minnesota legislature to require disclosure of such big companies that push the health insurance burden onto states. As the editorial points out, Minnesota "Gov. Tim Pawlenty has proposed severe cuts to MinnesotaCare this year, and lawmakers ought to know how those cuts would affect the economy and Minnesota's biggest employers. More specifically, (the bill's author) wants to sit down with business lobbyists who press for lower taxes while simultaneously using tax-funded services."
My vitriol will be on vacation until June 20. For your daily dose of stories about Big Pharma, the nation’s need for a better health policy discussion, news media health news hype, or new abuses of video news releases, you’re on your own.
PRWatch.org or GoozNews.com will keep you busy.
The unveiling of "Deep Throat" got the headlines this week. But in past weeks and months, whistleblowers in health care have helped blow the cover off of some very troubling practices.
The July issue of PLoS Medicine has an interesting article on "What can we learn from medical whistleblowers?" In it, FDA whistleblower David Graham says, “The pharma–FDA complex has to be dismantled and the American people have to insist on that, otherwise we're going to have disasters like Vioxx that happen in the future.”
Former Pennsylvania investigator Allen Jones describes how he believed that drug companies were acting at the state level to influence the prescribing of psychiatric medications.
“I began to investigate an account into which pharmaceutical companies were paying money that was being accessed by state employees,” he said. “Additionally, I found that various pharmaceutical companies were paying state employees directly—also giving them trips, perks, lavish meals, transportation, honorariums up to $2,000 for speaking in their official capacities at drug company events. They were given unrestricted educational grants that were deposited into an off-the-books account—unregistered, unmonitored, literally operated out of a drawer.”
Jones was fired for talking with journalists.
Read the article and the PLoS editorial about why it sponsored the whistleblower roundtable that was the subject of the article.
That's what the Center for Media and Democracy calls the news of an aggressive new PR plan of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). The plan calls for former Congressman Billy Tauzin to be "an evangelist for the pharmaceutical industry." Included in the plan is a radio series, comparable to audio news releases, that can be played in small markets without health reporters.
It's one more example of drug industry public relations and marketing folks looking for "fake news" opportunities within media. Let's hope that radio stations see the ruse for what it is and deny the free airtime to PhRMA's PR efforts. Or, if anything, charge Big Pharma for trying to get its message on the air. Then perhaps radio stations could begin to use the revenue to hire their own health reporters so that they wouldn't be so inclined to take the Pharma freebie "news."
USA Today published an inside look at how the FDA struggles to review claims made in drug ads.
It reports: "The FDA's drug-marketing enforcement office has only 40 employees to review more than 30,000 pieces of promotional material a year. Those include TV and print ads, sales brochures for doctors and company postings on Internet sites. And while the FDA has stepped up enforcement this year, citing 13 drug pitches for running afoul of marketing rules, the enforcement pace is well off historical levels. In 2000, the FDA cited 79."
Critics include Public Citizen's Sidney Wolfe, who "says the FDA has encouraged such conduct by handing down weak punishments that sought only to halt offending promotions and others like them. Sometimes the FDA did not act until the promotions had ceased."
"There's no disincentive to running misleading advertising," says Wolfe in the article. "Drugmakers know they'll be able to run ads for four, five months and get their message out. ... Then FDA says stop, and they stop and go on to something else that may be more misleading."