December 22, 2014
Monday health news roundup: mostly gems, one dud
Tags
Alzheimer's disease,
beta-amyloid,
breast cancer,
DCIS,
diabetes drugs,
Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel,
Dr. Nancy Snyderman,
John Mack,
Larry Husten,
mammography,
MR CLEAN study,
NBC News,
nutrition science,
Pharma Marketing blog,
stroke,
surrogate markers,
The BMJ,
TV medical talk shows
I realize that I wrote about the following things on my Monday morning email digest, but if you don’t subscribe to that email, you didn’t see what we wrote. (One solution: sign up to subscribe to the emails. It’s free.)
Some things we saw that we really liked:
- Richard Smith’s feature in The BMJ, “Are some diets ‘mass murder’?” Poor nutrition science is a global, uncontrolled experiment that may lead to bad outcomes, he writes.
- Diets often provide the fodder for TV medical talk shows. Another study published in The BMJ concludes: “Recommendations made on medical talk shows often lack adequate information on specific benefits or the magnitude of the effects of these benefits. Approximately half of the recommendations have either no evidence or are contradicted by the best available evidence. Potential conflicts of interest are rarely addressed. The public should be skeptical about recommendations made on medical talk shows.”
-
Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel’s webinar, for ReportingOnHealth.org at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, explaining his controversial, “Why I Hope to Die at 75.”

- On the Journal of the American Medical Association‘s Patient Page, an article and this graphic to help women better understand the tradeoffs between benefits and harms in mammography screening.

On the flip side, another Alzheimer’s story failed on several counts. Dr. Nancy Snyderman, chief medical editor of NBC News, delivered a string of unsubstantiated claims in a story called, “Never Too Young: Seeking an Early Test for Alzheimer’s.”
- She profiled what she called “a unique Alzheimer’s prevention clinic” but never explained what makes it unique, making the piece feel far more promotional than journalistic.
- She profiled a 32-year old man whom she described as having blood work “associated with an increased risk of dementia.” Associated is the key word; she could (should?) have explained there’s no causal link.
- So it may not be surprising that she didn’t challenge the clinic director when he claimed that “musical experience has been proven to delay cognitive decline.” Once again, association does not equal proof of a causal link.
- She ended, “This is the new frontier.” For network television journalism, perhaps.
It’ll be better in 2015, right?
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Comments (2)
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Joe Hagedorn
December 22, 2014 at 6:18 pmI’m puzzled by why you would like the editorial, “Are some diets ‘mass murder’?” It seems to contradict much of what your site stands for. I agree that the introductory section is quite good and that it is true that nutritional researchers have not found convincing evidence that saturated fats are as bad as once believed. However, the bulk of the article is an uncritical repetition of claims from the book “Big Fat Surprise.” It amounts to something of a conspiracy theory.
Many have wrote in to the response section and pointed out numerous errors and cherry-picked evidence describing history of the dietary recommendations regarding fat. I would recommend reading Seth Yoder’s response in particular.
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