Olympian Apolo Anton Ohno is a marketable commodity. And drug company Teva Pharmaceuticals is riding those fast blades for all it can. And media love reporting on how Ohno is now the “national face” of the exercise-induced brochospasm campaign sponsored by Teva, which gives the condition the acronym label of EIB. Acronyms are hot in [...]
Just a few weeks ago, HealthNewsReview.org analyzed several stories on a study of berries and women’s heart health. In our review of a HealthDay story, we noted: The story quotes two independent experts, preventive cardiologist Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum and nutritionist Dana Greene. We wish that the experts were quoted on a more analytical view of [...]
Dr. Michael Kirsch, who claims that “when I’m not writing, I’m performing colonoscopies, has published a blog post, “Is Colonoscopy the Best Colon Cancer Screening Test?” It’s an excellent piece, which I encourage you to read in its entirety. It touches on medical conflicts of interest, comparative effectiveness research, the medical arms race, medical marketing [...]
Have you ever tried having a discussion of the evidence for Tamiflu with your doctor? (A physician-reader of our work has reminded me to use generic names whenever possible. The generic name for Tamiflu is oseltamivir.) Is this one of the top medical marketing success stories after, say, Lamisil (terbinafine) for toenail fungus? On Forbes.com, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
We wrote about this one year ago, “Come to the mall to sit on Santa’s lap…or play with his robotic surgery system.” So, I guess, two years running makes a tradition. That was about some New Jersey doctors playing with their robot at a New Jersey mall. It must have been a big hit for [...]
Putting the update at the top: hours after posting this, I’ve now been told there are, indeed, anal testosterone suppositories. Thanks to Leonore Tiefer for this tip: The newest “female sexual dysfunction drug” hitting the PR waves is a nasal testosterone gel in clinical trials in the US, Canada and Australia. The Dinah Project website [...]
Last week, the American Society for Radiation Oncology’s annual conference was held in Boston, and several papers were presented on proton beam therapy, and several medical centers sent out news releases about their involvement in the work. MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Loma Linda University Medical Center in California were two that we [...]
The Alt_Mentalities website published a piece, “Lemons into Lemonade: How an off-label marketing fine can be good for business,” tracking Pfizer’s journey through fines for off-label marketing of Neurontin and, later, for Lyrica and other drugs. Punchline question in the piece: “Was taking the hit for off-label marketing in 2004 all part of a plan to boost [...]
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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