The Integrity in Science Watch project of the Center for Science in the Public Interest has a weekly e-newsletter that includes cheers and jeers for certain aspects of health care journalism. This week's:

* Jeer to Alicia Chang of the Washington Post for failing to mention that the authors of a study supporting the off-label use of drug-eluting stents received funding from Cordis, Boston Scientific and Abbott Vascular, all manufacturers of drug-eluting stents.

* Cheer to Stephanie Saul of the New York Times for noting that the American Heart Association, which has defended the cholesterol drug Vytorin in recent weeks, receives $2 million a year from Merck/Schering-Plough Pharmaceuticals, the joint venture that markets Vytorin.

I'm drooling, but I shouldn't be. John Carey of BusinessWeek has the cover story this week, entitled, "Do Cholesterol Drugs Do Any Good?" I'm not going to post an excerpt because I want everyone to read the entire article. It's that good - and that rare. I'm drooling over it but I shouldn't be, because the themes he explores should be part of all news stories making claims about new ideas in health care.

Carey explores absolute vs. relative risk statistics - showing how the latter are abused and are misleading to the general public to trump up drug benefits. But he also is one of the only journalists I've ever seen explore and explain another statistical tool - the Number Needed to Treat or NNT.

See his insert on this important statistic. It will raise questions about the way drugs are promoted and sold to hundreds of thousands of people who won't benefit from their use.

When I wrote the Statement of Principles of the Association of Health Care Journalists, I urged health care journalists to "consider explaining the 'number needed to treat' - the number of people you would have to treat with the experimental intervention (compared with the control) to prevent one event." And I included tips on how to do that. But it rarely, VERY rarely ever happens.

Carey and BusinessWeek hit a home run with this cover story. Kudos to them. Keep up the good work. Let's hope other journalists - and certainly consumers of news and health care - learn from this excellent piece of work.

Although I said I was on a blog break until January 22 because I'm on vacation and should be out on the beach, when I read about this, I had to share it with those who may not have seen it.

An Eau Claire, Wisconsin newspaper reports the following:

"One year after being hired as WEAU TV-13 news director, Glen Mabie has resigned because of a disagreement with station management regarding coverage of medical topics.

According to Mabie and other sources close to the situation, station management attempted in recent weeks to negotiate a deal with Sacred Heart Hospital in which TV-13 would run medical stories featuring personnel from that hospital and its affiliates but not employees of other Chippewa Valley hospitals or clinics.

That didn't sit well with Mabie, who said an exclusive deal with Sacred Heart posed an obvious conflict of interest that called the newsroom's objectivity into question. Mabie said he was unsure whether the hospital would pay TV-13 as part of the agreement.

"My problem with this is it was going to dictate newsroom content," said Mabie, whose last day at TV-13 was Friday. "I told myself that I could not with a clear conscience go into that newsroom and tell the staff that this was a good thing."

If this went down as the newspaper reports, my hat goes off to Glen Mabie, the only news executive I've heard of in this country who spoke up and stood up against this very common practice. Health news is being sold to the highest bidder in many communities.

In the past, I've blogged about this practice and how widespread it is. How and why the Radio-Television News Directors Association - whose code of ethics clearly addresses such practices - fails to address this directly and openly should be a source of embarrassment to that organization.

And to all other station managers and news executives who - unlike Glen Mabie in little Eau Claire, Wisconsin - have looked the other way and allowed this practice to continue, shame on you. Viewers of these stations should turn away from your "product" and never come back.

Last year I published an article documenting several instances of U.S. journalists' apparent bias in favor of certain screening tests - in the absence of evidence supporting such tests in they way they were being promoted.

Now it's just come to my attention that an Australian team published an article in November describing an analysis of Australian news coverge of prostate cancer screening. Their conclusion:

"Australian men are exposed to unbalanced and often non-evidence-based appeals to seek PSA testing. There is a disturbing lack of effort to redress this imbalance."

Of special note is how the authors documented the "widespread, overwhelmingly negative" reaction to a statement by the head of an Australian cancer agency who told a newspaper that, at age 59, he chose not to have a PSA test.

And journalists seemed to join in the ad hominem attacks. All because the man spoke from a perspective of evidence and science, not faith and emotion.

We will continue to follow journalism's role in promoting non-evidence-based approaches and will address it whenever we see it.

Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon have posted their 2007 P.U.-litzer Prizes for "the year's stinkiest media performances."

Two health-news-related pieces made the list. Here's what the judges said:

"AMERICANS DON'T WANT UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE" AWARD -- Jeff Greenfield of CBS, et al.

Reflecting what became mainstream media's conventional wisdom in the wake of Michael Moore's "SiCKO" documentary, CBS correspondent Greenfield explained that the U.S. lacks a universal healthcare system not because of the powerful insurance lobby -- but because "Americans are just different." He quoted an academic who said Americans, unlike Canadians and Europeans, don't want government involvement in healthcare: "It's a cultural difference."

Actually, CBS's own poll of Americans had found 64 percent supporting the view that the federal government should "guarantee health insurance for all" -- with 60 percent approving of higher taxes to pay for it. A CNN poll found 64 percent American support for the idea that "government should provide a national health insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes."

"IT'S TRUE BECAUSE WE SAID IT" AWARD -- CNN's Lou Dobbs

To prove his claim that illegal immigrants were bringing "once eradicated diseases" into our country, Dobbs featured a CNN reporter in 2005 who claimed that the United States had seen only 900 cases of leprosy for 40 years -- but that "there have been 7,000 in the past three years." This year, in May, Dobbs was challenged on the shocking statistic by Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes, who cited a federal report saying there were 7,000 leprosy cases over the last 30 years. Dobbs' response: "If we reported it, it's a fact."

Stahl: "How can you guarantee that to me?"

Dobbs: "Because I'm the managing editor, and that's the way we do business. We don't make up numbers, Lesley. Do we?"

You do, Lou. The Centers for Disease Control report that new leprosy cases in the United States have been on the decline for close to 20 years (with 166 cases in 2005).