Reporters all over the country had been sent an announcement about a revolutionary colon cancer blood test.
Well, Katie Hobson of US News & World Report checked it out and reports that the claims are long on hype but short on proof.
Yet, she writes, “a company press release issued on December 14 begins by stating that ‘embarrassing and sometimes uncomfortable colonoscopies may soon be a thing of the past.’ “
This is how it goes in health care marketing these days: feed the worried well with the promise of more screening tests that are easier to do.
Meantime, Sharon Begley of Newsweek sends her kudos to us for our recent posts on colonoscopy questions. Thanks, Sharon. Just doing our job.
Overall, this was an easy-to-follow summary. But there was a clear difference between this and a competing Boston Globe story, which did a better job offering context and analysis.
This Boston Globe blog post gave its audience a more thorough understanding of an emerging approach to virtual colonoscopy than the Wall Street Journal.
Longer, but overall not any better, than the coverage from the competing LA Times story. Not thorough enough to explain what this preliminary research actually means for readers–which is not much at this point.
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