The Komen Foundation’s ad campaign for breast cancer screening was criticized in a BMJ article by Dartmouth’s Steve Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz, who wrote:
“Unfortunately, there is a big mismatch between the strength of evidence in support of screening and the strength of Komen’s advocacy for it.”
Take your pick of places to read more about it:
BMJ OpEd Says Komen Ads False – MedPage Today
Susan Perry of MinnPost.com wrote: “The commentary is part of BMJ’s “Not So” series, which the editors call an “occasional series highlighting the exaggerations, distortions, and selective reporting that make some news stories, advertising, and medical journal articles ‘not so.'” I wish I could send MinnPost readers to the BMJ website to read it, but for reasons that are inexplicable to me, the journal has decided to keep this paper behind a paywall.
Switching to the debate over kids’ cholesterol screening, Cardiobrief.org’s Larry Husten set up his piece this way:
“What role should industry play in discussions about guidelines, especially when the debate about those guidelines includes allegations that industry may have influenced the final product of the guidelines? Should a public relations agency that represents a company with a product that would be affected by a guideline offer journalists a chance to interview an expert who has views that might benefit the company?”
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