Misleading media coverage of medicine

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Misleading media coverage of medicine

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Media coverage of clinical trials does not contain the elements

readers require to make informed decisions. A comparison of the

coverage received by pharmaceutical and herbal remedy trials, reported

in the open access journal BMC Medicine, has revealed that it is

rarely possible for the lay public to assess the credibility of the

described research.

Tania Bubela from the University of Alberta, Canada, led a team of

researchers who investigated 201 pharmaceutical and 352 herbal remedy

newspaper articles, and studied the 48 pharmaceutical and 57 herbal

remedy clinical trials that the stories referred to. For both

complementary and mainstream medicine, stories under-reported risk and

lacked any disclosure of trial funding or scientists' conflicts of

interest. Bubela said, " There were significant errors of omission of

basic information such as dose, sample size and methods for randomized

clinical trials. In addition, there is an under-reporting of risks,

especially in the context of herbal remedies " .

The main theme of almost all articles on pharmaceutical clinical

trials was the trial itself. This contrasted with articles on herbal

remedy clinical trials where 63.6% focused on the trial and the other

third focused on other issues such as the myriad uses for any

particular herb. The main benefit cited in almost all articles was

improved health or treatment options. The study found that the media

is overly reliant on narratives from satisfied patients, researchers,

clinicians and patient groups - without disclosing these people's

financial ties to industry and conflicts of interest.

According to Bubela, " The study is not all bad news for the media.

Slowly they are beginning to report on the welcome trend of evidence

based clinical trials for complementary and alternative medicine

(CAM), including herbal remedies. Unfortunately, the media still rely

for their sources on high quality medical journals, which are more

likely to report negative results about CAM and positive results about

pharmaceuticals, The clinical trials in the study showed no difference

in quality between herbal remedy and pharmaceutical trials, but CAM

was still reported on more skeptically " .

Healthcare receives significant media attention, and CAM is no

exception. Given the continued public interest in the multi-billion

dollar business of CAM, this media attention is hardly surprising. The

researchers conclude, " Given this well established and expanding

market, it is time for journalists and editors to experiment with

improving content without necessarily sacrificing narrative themes

such as human interest stories. A change for the better is unlikely to

result in a reduced public appetite for health news - an appetite

which is increasingly sophisticated and desirous of high quality

information " .