Canadian drug policy researcher Alan Cassels observes October as breast cancer awareness month by analyzing the hype of breast cancer drug Herceptin. He writes: “The media pushed the glee meter into the red zone, with words like ‘breakthrough,’ ‘wonder drug,’ and ‘impressive advance,’ overblown, laudatory adjectives that I admonish journalism students to strenuously avoid.”
Cassels concludes his column: “We all want new and better breast cancer treatments, but that doesn’t mean we should allow selective and misleading reports of a drug’s benefits to drain our public health care system of precious dollars, and put suffering patients on a roller coaster of hope and despair.”
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
Monday at #ADA2021, an infectious disease epidemiologist, a journalist, and a researcher shared perspectives on communication of risk in the era of COVID-19: http://ow.ly/ROfR30rMeE7 @AstleyCM @garyschwitzer @berthahidalgo @ADA_DiabetesPro
Shoutouts to @susan_bewley @drkevinknopf @MichaelBaum11 in this call for more than fawning coverage from press releases for these kinds of stories.
Also, linked history inside goes back 5 years just on Grail apparently trying to become Holy Grail. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1408849696416841731
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rebecca farmer
October 5, 2005 at 1:41 pmHi, I think you’ve posted on the Think Before You Pink campaign in the past, and I wanted to let you know that the newest phase of the campaign has launched and is available online at http://www.thinkbeforeyoupink.org. This year’s campaign is focused on all the pink ribbon products on the market and asking the companies that sell them to be forthcoming about how much money they actually give to breast cancer, etc.
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