Posted by Gary Schwitzer in Cancer, Health care journalism
I know that many people just dismiss the New York Daily News, but you can’t dismiss the number of readers it has and the potential impact its stories may have on them – especially an unconscionable piece like one published today, headlined, “Shot that stops many deadly forms of cancer may be ready in 5 years.”
Continuing a bad trend of just republishing things from the London Daily Mail without adding any new reporting or vetting, the Daily News reports:
“A tumor-busting, life-saving injection may be ready for prime time in about five years.The vaccine, effective against deadly cancers in areas of the body like the breast, bowel and cervix, is being tested on some patients, according to the Daily Mail.
…
The shot shrinks the tumors and stops them from spreading.
…
The vaccine, now being tested on 60 bladder cancer patients, has been used on animals with “extremely good” results, according to the Daily Mail.”
No details on evidence so far, except that there were supposedly “extremely good” results in animals.
No perspective from an independent expert.
Apparently no concern for the harm that might be done to anxious cancer patients and their families.
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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