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
We’ve written about the hype of liquid biopsies for years (see link in comment below). And now this…. https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/12/medicare-shouldnt-cover-liquid-biopsies-early-cancer-detection/
Case counts still matter. “(There) are stories that may not be told adequately if only hospitalizations and deaths are emphasized.” @garyschwitzer interviewed by @dbauder of @AP. https://apnews.com/article/omicron-changing-news-outlets-covid-data-da9272f7c4c8a109c3bfb56bed9e9c76
My friend Gary @garyschwitzer wrote to his city council representative in a Minnesota town about a Viva Las Vegas event scheduled for January.
The response he got seems to perfectly capture where we are now.
https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2021/12/2021-ends-with-covid-craziness-in-sports-and-politics/
Comments
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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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