New name for the old “Gary Schwitzer’s HealthNewsReview blog”
This is the publisher‘s blog (perspective, opinion) – different than the systematic story reviews, in which multiple reviewers use standardized criteria to critique stories.
The following is a guest post by Carl Elliott MD, PhD, a professor in the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota and a writer with credits many journalists would envy. ————————————– Five years ago, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported the violent death of Dan Markingson in an industry-sponsored antipsychotic study at the [...]
Important news leading into a holiday weekend. Stephen Colbert was back this week with another segment of “Cheating Death” on his Comedy Central program. He went off on news coverage of a study suggesting that sunlight exposure may help lower blood pressure. Colbert’s reaction: “That’s why I call sunblock the silent killer.” Follow us on [...]
On a BMJ blog, Dr. Margaret McCartney writes about her irritation after seeing ads on the side of buses in Glasgow (where she lives) promoting screening tests but not divulging that this was to recruit people into clinical trials. She and her daughter took photos of the ads, and she shared those with me: [...]
HealthDay reports on a paper published in JAMA Internal Medicine: “The costly form of radiation therapy that has become the norm for prostate cancer in the United States may be no better than the older, cheaper variety — at least for some men, a new study suggests. Researchers found that among more than 1,000 U.S. [...]
A paper by New Zealand researchers published in the journal, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica (subscription required for full text access*), summarizes a literature review and meta-analysis of drug company–funded mental health websites. The analysis compared mental websites funded by drug companies with those not funded by pharma. It concludes: Practitioners are encouraged to inform patients about [...]
The following is a guest post by Harold DeMonaco, MS, one of our expert reviewers on HealthNewsReview.org, and a frequent guest blogger on this site. ———————- The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) will hold its annual meeting starting on May 31st in Chicago, Illinois. While we have consistently cautioned against over reading the abstracts [...]
For at least the second time in a week, we have seen polar opposite news coverage on a medical science story. Fox News reported on a paper in the journal Cell: “In a major medical breakthrough, researchers at the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) have for the first time ever successfully converted human skin [...]
Women with breast cancer who are active on social media make a vital contribution to our public dialogue. So, when I read Angelina Jolie’s New York Times opinion piece, “My Medical Choice,” about her decision to have bilateral prophylactic mastectomy after breast cancer gene testing, I turned to some of the women I follow through [...]
Kudos to Julie Appleby, Kaiser Health News, and the Washington Post for publishing the story, “Hospitals promote screenings that experts say many people do not need.” It’s a story that is reported infrequently, even though it could be reported any time in almost any city in the US – the practice is that widespread. The [...]
That’s the way Barbara is described on the website of Breast Cancer Action, which she ran until 2010 when she stepped down because of her ALS diagnosis. She died last Friday. You can read more on their site. But I chose this key excerpt: “One of the most successful – and controversial – of the [...]
Better than a competing piece by Reuters but still a little short on some details about this asthma drug study.
An adequate summary of this asthma drug trial’s design doesn’t make up for the overly optimistic tone about the drug’s future. A New York Times story was better.
This story focuses on a family that may have a rare genetic mutation that increases their risk of heart disease. Unfortunately, the “rare” part wasn’t mentioned until 1,600 words into this 2,100 word story.
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