The data were reported inaccurately.
There was no discussion of cost or of potential harms – two huge oversights.
There was no meaningful comparison with other approaches.
And the story appeared to rely largely (perhaps solely) on a news release.
Better luck next time.
This isn’t a good example of how to report on data presented at conferences about new drugs that are still in development. You need to read the full review below to understand all of what’s missing here.
No mention of costs. The competing Wall Street Journal story, by comparison, reported: "Cost could be a factor. The three-treatment Provenge regimen has been controversial partly because of the $93,000 cost. Dendreon has said treatment costs are comparable with chemotherapy if total costs of care are taken into account."
WebMD reports the data incorrectly–it’s median survival, not average survival. This implies that 50% of the patients had more than a 4-month survival, but the story (assuming that investigators provided data, which they might not have) should then provide the upper range of survival times (e.g., 11 months) to quantify "better." They could also report that X% survived for 6 months, Y% for 12 months, etc. (though the latter may be 0).
This story seemed determined to put this study in the best possible light, reporting that "The treatment gave patients with metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer only an extra four months of life. But there’s more hope than that from the study…" What does that mean?
There was no discussion of harms of hormone therapy – harms that may include osteoporosis, fractures, diabetes and heart disease. This is a significant oversight.
We do appreciate WebMD’s boilerplate language that "
In a 264-word story, no space was given to any meaningful discussion of the condition itself, so we rule this Not Applicable in this case.
There is no independent voice or perspective in the piece.
There was no meaningful comparison with other approaches.
One last time, let’s look at how the competing Wall Street Journal story tried to give such context:
"When you have drugs that act in different ways and each is giving some measurable benefit, that is significant progress in a field where new agents have come along very rarely in the past," says Steve K. Clinton, director of prostate and genitourinary oncology at Ohio State University’s James Cancer Hospital and Research Institute, Columbus. Dr. Clinton wasn’t involved in the current study and doesn’t have consulting relationships with the companies.
That’s an example of the kind of context – the kind of comparison – we look for in such stories.
The reader is given no information about whether this drug is available now, or, if not, what stage of research it is in. There’s a hint – in the line that Johnson & Johnson is "developing" the drug but news organizations shouldn’t play guessing games with readers on the topic of the availability of prostate cancer drugs – or any topic.
The competing Wall Street Journal story, by contrast, reported: "Johnson & Johnson plans to file for new-drug approval in the U.S. and Europe by year-end, raising prospects that the drug could be on the market next year." There’s no doubt about availability when you read that. (Although one could doubt the prediction of when it could be on the market.)
The story didn’t provide any meaningful context about possible novelty of this approach. Again, let’s turn to the competing Wall Street Journal story for comparison. It reported: "Androgen hormones, particularly testosterone, fuel prostate tumors. Conventional hormone therapy blocks androgens produced by the testes. Abiraterone appears to target androgens also produced elsewhere, even by the tumors themselves, said Dr. de Bono, who presented the study in Milan." This story only told us that "It appears that abiraterone is able to shut down androgen production not only in the testes, but also from the adrenal gland and from within prostate tumors themselves." But that statement stands in isolation without any comparison to existing hormonal approaches.
Given that the one quote in the story is attributed to a news release (at least they admitted that), and that there is no independent perspective in the piece, it appears that the story did rely solely or largely on a news release.
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