“This is so ridiculous, it may not be worth blogging on,” Marilyn Mann wrote to me.
I thrive on the ridiculous.
Whenever and wherever I see something this absurd, this non-evidence-based, this unhelpful and potentially harmful to health care consumers, I’m going to comment.
The columnist, a certified personal trainer, says she adapted her column from the July/August issue of Men’s Health magazine.
She advises men to think about getting
Cardiac CT angiography
Bone density scan – She writes: “Uh, oh, fellows. Did you think osteoporosis was just for women? Nope.”
VO2 Max Test. She writes: “For this one, you get on a treadmill or stationary bike and pump up your cardiovascular volume to maximum effort while wearing a mask that measures your every breath.
The VO2 Max Test is the master cardiovascular test that will let you know what you’re made of. It’s the most accurate measure of your cardiovascular and overall health.”
You won’t find one evidence-based recommendation that supports any of those recommendations.
This kind of junk journalism feeds the “test, test, test” mentality that fuels the worried well and drives up health care costs.
I hope Philly Daily News readers either didn’t read this column or didn’t pay any attention to it. But for those that did, now you know the rest of the story.
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
Comments
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Sarah Cain
June 29, 2009 at 2:34 pmYou are correct when you say that such messages are bad for the general public. However, this sort of journalism isn’t the main cause of outlandish health care costs. Shoddy reporting and scare tactics happen in every other country in the world – but in those countries, people aren’t too poor to get help. In those countries, 60% of all bankruptcies don’t occur because of medical bills.
Our very system, in which doctors are allowed to charge outrageous prices to individuals, and charge less to large insurance companies, is broken. Then, you have to consider just how many operations are given unnecessarily, and the people who will forever be reliant on medications that they must take every day, forever. Yes, there are plenty of reasons that health care is so expensive, and the massive amounts of people that could avoid illness with a different lifestyle is underestimated.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like