BMJ blogger Richard Lehman’s weekly review of medical journals is worth a weekly visit. This week he comments on a New England Journal of Medicine article, “Surgery versus Physical Therapy for a Meniscal Tear and Osteoarthritis.” He writes: “To my mind, the words “meniscal tear” conjure up Monday morning at the surgery, with young men [...]
So I’m watching the evening network TV news the other night – I know, silly me – and I see this commercial pop up that visualizes artificial knee joint replacement surgery like peeling an apple. Now part of the ad pitch is that this is for “partial knee replacement.” You know what? Partial or not, [...]
Novartis and Hooters Is it a kickback to get doctors to prescribe certain drugs? Or is it truly an educational meeting for doctors – that happens to be held at places like Hooters across the country? Read the Wall Street Journal’s story from last week, “U.S. Accuses Novartis of Kickbacks.” It’s about a civil fraud [...]
We’ve been following claims for Cyberknife “knife-less surgery” for a long time. See search results from our blog. We’ve seen billboards promoting it in the metropolitan health care market we live in. And big East Coast medical centers promoting it at subway stops. But only recently did we start noticing many TV commercials promoting [...]
The Star Tribune is going to take a lot of criticism for its story about a local TV news personality’s cancer foundation “targeting high school sporting events,” but I think this is important and legitimate cross-town journalism about journalism ethics. The story involves longtime Minneapolis TV personality Randy Shaver who has danced back and forth [...]
I’ve been too nice the past two years, calling my year-enders “PR puffery” or “PR stuff.” The stuff I’m writing about here is pure crap. So we’re calling it that. This annual series is about the bombardment of news releases sent to journalists who are trying to decide what is vital information for readers, viewers [...]
The following is a guest post by Alan Cassels, a drug policy researcher at the University of Victoria. Alan was founder of Media Doctor Canada, a project very similar to our HealthNewsReview.org, but a project that is unfortunately on the shelf for now. ————————————————- Life might be looking up for 23andMe, the world’s largest dataset [...]
So I’m watching a network TV newscast the other night – the place where old people go to die in their sleep apparently based on the number of old peoples’ drug ads that appear therein – and I must not be there yet because I stayed awake long enough to see a commercial for a [...]
I wonder if one of the following is being observed in the Star Tribune newsroom this month: Be Nice To Your Local Medical Device Industry Month Report On Surgical Approaches To High Blood Pressure Month Open Mike Month: Tell Us Good Things About Your Company & We’ll Print It In a little more than a [...]
If you didn’t see it, you should. It begins: “If you want to know why health care costs so much in this country, consider this, it’s estimated that $210 billion a year — about 10 percent of all health expenditures — goes towards unnecessary tests and treatments and a big chunk of that comes right [...]
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.
While this story adequately addressed 7 of our 10 criteria, the 3 on which it missed were significant omissions, yet could have been easily addressed.
Solid medical conference reporting, with many expert interviews and good context provided. Goes far beyond the conference presentation itself.
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