Posted by Gary Schwitzer in Health care journalism
CBS’ Dr. Jon LaPook covered the report on the nation’s health, delivered yesterday by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. LaPook did a good job driving home the point that more drugs, more imaging, more technology does not necessarily lead to better health outcomes. Two key lines from his story:
“Throwing money at pills and procedures can’t buy good health.”
“To help patients get their money’s worth, doctors need to clearly explain the pros and cons of everything they suggest. And that includes helping then understand that sometimes the best option is … nothing at all.”
I’m also late in applauding Katie Couric’s reports last week on feeding antibiotics to farm animals and questions about how that practice is spawning new drug-resistant bacteria.
Treatment for advanced ovarian tumors may lengthen survival, but questions still remain, despite the story’s emphasis on “promising” and “new hope.”
As with the HealthDay story on this research that we reviewed, readers of this story get a good dose of caveats and cautions along with the suggestions that electrical brain stimulation might someday “have implications” for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
The readers of this story and the other one we reviewed by Reuters are likely to understand that electrical brain stimulation could have some memory effects, but it’s a long way from becoming a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
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