Researchers analyze media’s cancer reporting
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
University of Pennsylvania researchers reviewed 436 cancer-related newspaper and magazine stories (about 1/5 of the total) published between 2005 and 2007 and found that media tend to overhype aggressive treatments and avoid failures, errors, end of life care and death. Here’s the abstract in Archives of Internal Medicine.
In the press release, the study’s highlights are summarized thus:
- Although 32 percent of the articles focused on survival, only 8 percent covered death and dying; this despite the fact that half of all cancer patients will die of their illness.
- While most stories discussed aggressive cancer treatments, almost none (2 percent) discussed end-of-life, palliative or hospice care.
- 13 percent reported that aggressive cancer treatments can fail, and just 30 percent reported that aggressive treatments can result in adverse effects.
The authors note that the media under-reports palliative and hospice care, as well as outcomes data and other issues surrounding death and dying.
The study notes that unrealistic optimism is presented in most stories about cancer treatment, when in reality half of all cancer patients do not survive, according to statistics from the American Cancer Society.
“The nation’s leading media institutions have set a low bar for routine coverage of the nation’s long-running war on cancer. Hype is the norm,” wrote medical author Merrill Goozner, MS, in a commentary accompanying the article. “The relationship between journalism and medical researchers has been called a complicit collaboration in which both benefit from sensationalized stories. Recent media cutbacks and the evolution of a hyper speed news cycle only made things worse.”
“The tendency of the news to report on aggressive cancer treatments and survival, but not on alternatives, is … noteworthy given that unrealistic information may mislead the public about the trade-offs between attempts at heroic cures and hospice care,” the authors of the study wrote.
Roche linked to doctor praising drug in the media
Filed under: Conflicts of interest, Health journalism
Crikey.com, a news Web site based in Melbourne, Australia, calls our attention to some recent reporting about Mabthera, a drug used to treat non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
Nick Miller, health editor of The Age, recently reported that Mabthera, manufactured by Roche, “has been found to nearly double the number of [leukemia] patients who go into remission.”
In that article, Miller quoted a doctor as saying, “This is the largest single advance in the treatment of this disease in the last 30 years.”
Miller was rebuked by oncologist Dr. Ian Haines, who wrote a letter to the newspaper. Haines points out that the article was “an exaggeration of the benefits of the treatment with no presentation of the downsides … which is that it’s incredibly expensive, it’s not without risk,” according to Flint Duxfield, a student at the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.
Duxfield goes on to explain how events unfolded and reveals that the promotion of Mabthera is being driven by Roche, which provides financial support to Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, which employs the doctor who originally touted the drug in Miller’s article.
In fact, sections of the press release issued by the cancer center and the press release from Roche’s public relations company are identical and contain the same comments from the doctor quoted by Miller.
Duxfield also reports that warnings that have been issued for the use of Mabthera that have gone unreported in the print media.
The story says “the engagement of third parties in providing a link between a drug company and the media is all too common in health journalism.”
Veteran health reporter Ray Moynihan agrees: “It happens enormously often because third party endorsements are PR 101 for drug companies.”
Duxfield also points to other examples of these so-called “third=party endorsements” and how they have been reported in the media.
KQED profiles those who live with disease, injury
This month’s edition of Health Dialogues, part of KQED’s California Report, focuses on living with disease. In the report, KQED reporters talk to folks living with chronic disease, the effects of traumatic injury and other conditions that can have lasting effects on a person’s quality of life.
To provide insight into the life and routine of someone coping with chronic disease, reporters profile a music programmer ‘coping’ with diabetes, an activist who stumbled upon a forgotten childhood diagnosis of hepatitis B and a cellist with multiple sclerosis. They also talk to a couple dealing with cancer and two sisters on opposite ends of an organ donation chain.
In addition to cancer and disease, KQED reporters also explore how the lasting effects of traumatic injury can shape your life. Pieces include a KPBS reporter talking about his own traumatic brain injury and the story of a surfing-based physical therapy program for veterans.
Journal launches site for journalists covering studies
In an editorial in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, “Promoting Healthy Skepticism in the News: Helping Journalists Get It Right,” Steven Woloshin, Lisa M. Schwartz and Barnett S. Kramer analyze some recent media coverage of journal articles and research findings and conclude that “When it comes to exaggeration of health hazards and medical breakthroughs, there is plenty of blame to go around.”
It would be easy to pin all the blame for exaggeration on journalists. After all, they have to grab their reader’s (or listener’s) attention. Screaming headlines and breathless reporting come in handy. And many health journalists lack the medical or statistical training needed to appraise research critically. Curiously, many fail to approach medical research with the same skepticism they routinely apply to political reporting. Nonetheless, blaming journalists for all exaggeration would be unfair. Many health journalists (and their editors) do a great job.
The writers also acknowledge that researchers’ passion can play a part, as well as the desire to get good media attention. They also point to journals’ failure to include or highlight some important elements that would help journalists accurately report on study findings.
In a move to help improve coverage of research, the JNCI has launched “a Web site for science and health journalists to help them ‘get it right.’” The first offering is “Reporting on Cancer Research,” a set of tip sheets designed to help reporters better understand oncology research and its results. It was developed for the writers’ book, Know Your Chances: Understanding Health Statistics, and adapted for journalists attending the annual Medicine in the Media workshop. Each PDF highlights a different aspect of interpreting cancer research (risk numbers, statistics, findings and outcomes, and cautions), and all four are succinct and easy to use, even on deadline.
Can Americans learn that less may be better?
AHCJ member Laura Newman, the About.com guide to urology, writes about whether consumers will embrace the message that “‘less is more,’ when science confirms it.” In this case, Newman focuses on the American Urological Association’s guideline for kidney cancer treatment, released in April, that called for saving the kidney whenever possible.
Taken in the context of the conflicts in the past few weeks over recommendations for less PSA screening, less breast cancer screening, and less cervical cancer screening, I commend the AUA and other physician organizations for reviewing the balance of benefits and harms in treating early-stage kidney cancer more aggressively.
Is community research oversight flawed?
Filed under: Government, Hospitals, Hot Health Headline
America’s 400-plus designated Community Research Sites receive much less attention than the massive academic research hospitals, but conduct the bulk of the nation’s cancer research.
The New York Times’ Duff Wilson turns the spotlight on these sites, considering problems an HHS investigation uncovered at an institution in Urbana, Ill., that may show that oversight is lacking and “the community centers may not always be adhering to the rigorous protocols of research medicine that the National Cancer Institute expects them to follow.”
If that’s true, Wilson writes, it will draw the very validity of many research conclusions into question. If you’re curious about the specific nature of the research site’s violations rather than the larger systemic implications, check out the second page of Wilson’s story.
Hockey, theater tickets for prostate screenings
Gary Schwitzer, professor at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism & Mass Communication and publisher of HealthNewsReview.org, writes about the Roswell Park Cancer Institute’s promotion of its “Prostate Club for Men,” complete with prizes for men who discuss screening.
As Schwitzer points out, there is no mention of the potential harms of prostate cancer treatment or the fact that some prostate cancers grow so slowly that they never produce symptoms or become life threatening. Instead, the club says the screening is “quick and simple, and it could save your life.”
The club’s Web site even carries a message from a local anchorman urging men to be screened for prostate cancer, again, with nothing about potential harms.
Cancer data fly and reporters struggle to keep up
For health journalists, the annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical Oncology poses a double-barreled challenge: How to cope with the sheer number of presentations and how to figure out which experimental cancer treatments might be the real deal?
The stories are already flying out of Orlando, Fla., where the meeting got rolling over the weekend. One hot topic is a new approach to treating tough breast cancers. Several experimental drugs that inhibit the ability of cancer cells to repair themselves show promise. Baylor’s Powel Brown told Bloomberg the drugs, known as PARP inhibitors, “are the biggest story in breast cancer, by far.” (See ASCO’s press release here.)
Even though the PARP results look good in preliminary clinical tests, cancer specialists cautioned that larger studies are needed and that nobody expects the drugs to cure patients with advanced disease, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Even if PARP inhibitors being developed by Sanofi-Aventis, Abbott Labs and Merck pan out, they won’t be on the market for years. And if they make it, how much will they cost? Too soon to say.
But a story in Forbes serves as a reminder that even incremental advances in cancer care have come at a high cost. “We would like to believe that cost should be no object, but that is not reality,” Leonard Saltz, a colon-cancer expert at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, told Forbes.
Matthew Herper, who’s covering ASCO for Forbes, gives some reporting tips in an e-mail to Covering Health. “It’s important to talk to as many doctors as possible, and to be able to ask a few you know well and trust for their opinion,” he writes. “I also think pitches from PR firms and companies are useful for helping identify things that might be interesting, but that it’s important to approach each scientific presentation with an open mind about whether the result is positive or negative.”
Fawcett speaks out on cancer, media and privacy
ProPublica senior reporter Charles Ornstein, who is vice president of AHCJ’s board of directors, interviewed Farrah Fawcett about her fight against cancer and her accompanying struggles with media and privacy last August. A story based on the interview was released Monday in ProPublica and the Los Angeles Times. A producer who worked with Fawcett on a related upcoming NBC documentary had asked that the story be held until five days before the documentary’s Friday release.
Above all, in a firm voice that betrayed no hint of her terminal illness, Fawcett described how she was deprived of the choice that most other cancer patients have: when, and even whether, to share information with family, friends or strangers.
“It’s much easier to go through something and deal with it without being under a microscope,” she said. “It was stressful. I was terrified of getting the chemo. It’s not pleasant. And the radiation is not pleasant.”
In the interview, Fawcett talked about the private sting operation she ran to help track down the UCLA Medical Center employee who was leaking details about her medical care to a tabloid and her frustration with the hospital’s aggressive efforts to encourage her to donate money for a hospital foundation in her name.
Fawcett said she decided to speak up about the ordeal because she wants to see the Enquirer charged criminally for inducing UCLA workers to invade her records. “They obviously know it’s like buying stolen goods,” she said. “They’ve committed a crime. They’ve paid her money.”
Fawcett describes the sting to Ornstein in the video below. Ornstein will appear Tuesday on CNN’s Showbiz Tonight at 11 p.m. ET to discuss the story.
Experts: Benefits of cancer screenings overinflated
In Reader’s Digest, Shannon Brownlee reports that while the American Cancer Society and federal government still push regular cancer screenings, “a growing group of scientific heretics - published in highly respected medical journals, working at some of the most august institutions - strongly believe that it’s time to rethink our whole approach.”
(Some researchers) say that yearly mammograms are not nearly as effective at reducing the risk of dying of breast cancer as most women think, and that mammography leads many women to get unnecessary treatment - especially those diagnosed with DCIS [ductal carcinoma in situ]. The problem is bigger than just mammography: They say the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test may do men more harm than good if they don’t already have symptoms of prostate cancer. And they have similarly grim things to say about other widely used cancer screening tests.
Experts that Brownlee interviewed say that screening catches tumors that would never cause major problems but not so effective at catching the more deadly, fast-growing kinds of cancer. Only a small percentage of all cancers that occur are fatal, and some cancers disappear on their own, Brownlee reports.
Brownlee also answers reader questions directly and has talked to AHCJ about her book, Overtreated.
-
Join us in Omaha to find untold rural health stories
New at HealthJournalism.org
- AHCJ offers financial data about nonprofit hospitals
- Diversity in aging: Putting gray in the rainbow
- Southeast journalists eligible for regional fellowship program
- AHCJ-NLM Health Journalism Fellowship offers hands-on medical research training
- AHCJ announces 2011 winners of top health journalism awards
