Health care consumers, and news consumers, are often not told of the biases that may exist in medical research, in clinical care, or in health care professionals’ continuing medical education because of financial ties to drug companies and medical device manufacturers.

Journalists, broadcasters, editors, and producers too often rely – wittingly or unwittingly – on drug industry sources. The result: medical news often helps sell drugs to the public, accentuating the positive and minimizing risks, rather than giving readers a balanced, accurate view.

To counter claims that it is impossible to find experts who are not on the payroll of industry, independent journalists Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee have compiled a list of more than 100 experts from several nations with expertise across a wide range of disciplines. There are two parts to the list. One part includes experts who have no financial conflicts of interest, or conflicts that are irrelevant to most stories. The second part includes experts with a variety of potential conflicts. Some of these experts have ended their pharma ties – but only within the past five years. Others may have current financial conflicts of interest. These experts, despite their commercial ties, are included in the list because they have provided important insights into the inner workings of industry – effectively biting the hand that fed them in some instances --and/or because their conflicts did not limit their ability to comment in areas unrelated to the conflicts.

The experts include: two former editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, the former editor of the western journal of medicine, current editors of American Family Physician and Public Library of Science-Medicine; former FDA advisors; physician educators; researchers; bioethicists; epidemiologists, methodologists, geneticists, and clinicians from a various specialties; medical whistleblowers; and several medical journalists.

Information about the list appears in the “Journalist Toolkit” section of the site at: http://www.healthnewsreview.org/independentexperts.php. If you’re a journalist, you’ll be given instructions about how to acquire the list, complete with experts’ contact information. The general public will be able to see the list of names without any contact information.

It’s our hope that this list helps journalists find and use sources who do not have financial conflicts of interest. We hope that the general public understands the gravity of these issues and their impact on the integrity of medical science.

For further information on the list see: Naming Names: Is There an (Unbiased) Doctor in the House? BMJ July 23, 2008.

Journalistic hype of health news never stops.

The latest: ABC News last week called the drug Dimebon a "miracle drug" for Alzheimer's Disease on its website.

It was tested in about 100 people. It was only tested against placebo, not head-to-head with any other existing Alzheimer's treatment.

ABC News didn't interview the principal investigator in the story that aired last Thursday night. HealthDay did, and she told them: "This is not a cure for Alzheimer's disease, but the benefits could last for a long time. The drug appears to slow the clinical progression of the disease."

Sounds like the PI is much more cautious than the "journalists" at ABC.

HealthDay also reported that the PI is on the Scientific and Clinical Advisory Board of the company that makes Dimebon and has stock options in the company. None of this was revealed in the ABC story.

And nothing that warranted calling it a miracle.

Recently a physician friend brought the following to my attention. The same story, written by the same person, but appearing under two very different headlines.

Here's the original New York Times headline:

The story stated at one point: "No one knows whether vaccinations had anything to do with the girls’ health problems, and the scientific significance of individual cases is always difficult to assess."

But the Seattle Times picked up the NYT story and used this headline:

The Seattle headline gives the misleading impression that there's a causal link between autism and vaccines. This is the kind of thing that gives headline writers a bad rep.

In case you don't visit the HealthNewsReview.org site often, I wanted to let you know about a new Publisher's Note just published there. It reads:

Our database of stories reviewed now numbers more than 600.

113 of the stories were by the Associated Press, which feeds most newsrooms. We've reviewed 38 stories by the Los Angeles Times, 37 by the New York Times, 33 by the Wall Street Journal, 21 by the Washington Post, and 19 by USA Today.

Of the television networks' morning programs and evening newscasts, we've reviewed 52 stories by ABC, and 45 each by CBS and NBC.

As you know, our highest rated stories get 5 stars, our lowest-rated get none. After 603 reviews, 12% got 5 stars, 24% got 4 stars, 29% got 3 stars, 27% got two stars, 6% got one star and 3% got zero stars.

But sometimes the star score doesn't tell the whole story. With a movie review, you wouldn't only be interested in the star score the reviewer came up with. You'd want to read WHY the reviewer loved or panned the flick. Similarly, you need to read the meat of our reviews - the criterion-by-criterion comments and the summary review - in order to get the full feeling for what we thought about a story.

For example, an ABC Good Morning America piece, "Breakthrough Cancer Study: Change Lifestyle, Change Risk", recently got a 4-star score. That's what it got when we applied our ten review criteria. But we didn't like the story all that much. Our review summary stated, in part:

There are times when our "star" scores are misleading. In this case the star score is deceptively high for how we really feel about the story. That is why these summary comments are important. This piece may have addressed many of our criteria, but was lacking in balance, independent perspectives, details about the actual study results and details about the types of patients who might be candidates for this lifestyle intervention. Viewers may have been given a far too optimistic picture of an early pilot study.

We've had other instances in the past where a story "felt" better than the low number of stars it got from a fair application of the ten criteria. So please read the whole review or you're not seeing the work and the thought that went into our analysis.

Finally, we want to praise a series that we have not reviewed. On Sunday June 29, the New York Times published a story, "Weighing the Costs of a CT Scan’s Look Inside the Heart". It was a terrific story and one that all of our readers should be sure to read. Then, on Sunday, July 6, the Times published "Costly Cancer Drug Offers Hope, but Also a Dilemma".

These stories were published under the series title of "The Evidence Gap" which the Times describes as a series that "will explore medical treatments used despite scant proof they work and will consider steps toward medicine based on evidence."

Please come to our Discussion Forum and offer your thoughts on our reviews, or on any aspect of health and medical news coverage.

Thanks for your continued interest in our project.

Gary Schwitzer
Publisher