USA Today’s Liz Szabo reports on the good and bad that can come from celebrity health crusades. Excerpt:
“Experts say most of actress Suzanne Somers’ advice in her new book, Knockout, is wrongheaded or even risky. Doctors and patient advocates say they’re concerned that the actress champions alternative therapies over those with proven value.”
But she also touches on health “campaigns” – for lack of a better word – involving Tom Cruise, Jenny McCarthy, Magic Johnson, Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan, Lance Armstrong, Katie Couric and others.
Australian journalist Ray Moynihan has written quite a bit about his concerns about celebrity marketing of disease and of treatments. For example:
“Celebrities paid by drug companies to promote drugs, or ‘raise awareness’ about disease, should be subject to the same rules as direct-to-consumer advertising, which would mean prohibition in many nations and much more fulsome disclosure in the United States than is currently the case. At the very least, public disclosure of a product’s risks and benefits, and the magnitude of the celebrity’s fee, should be mandatory and routine.”
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
In researching this @bopinon column on medical misinformation, I reached @garyschwitzer who said the information pollution problem goes back to the 1980s, when PR people started tempting reporters with easy, uplifting, prepackaged hype.
https://t.co/ch8rz2MqY4
https://t.co/4AeZZXNhiE
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.
Don
December 22, 2009 at 6:26 pmThanks for the posting.
I agree 100% with Ray Moynihan regarding holding celebrities accountable in some way, or at least subjecting them to the same rules.
Although I work in clinical trials, I do beleive there are other methods that should be used in addition to medical means.
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