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Time For Major Media Organizations To Seriously Investigate Their Flawed Health Coverage

www.redflagsweekly.com/scream/screamoftheday.php
Friday, May 28, 2004

Time For Major Media Organizations To Seriously Investigate Their Flawed Health Coverage

If The New York Times Can Admit That It Published Flawed War Coverage, Then That Newspaper And Other Media Outlets Should Bite The Bullet And Also Thoroughly Investigate All Their Medical And Science Reporting Because Coverage Is Becoming Difficult To Separate From Propaganda, Conflict-Of-Interest And Outrageous Misleading Information.

But this much-needed internal investigation will not occur because there is scandalously little health and science expertise at the major TV news networks and a heavy bent towards Establishment Medicine and science at daily newspapers. Many reporters make their mark by cowtowing to the so-called experts (their cherished sources) and when they are not doing this, they are lapping up press releases and re-jiggering them slightly. The lack of enterprise reporting at both the TV networks and at newspapers is shocking. I know this personally because I've worked at the highest levels of the news business for three decades.

Making matters even worse is the flood of doctors who report on health news for newspapers and TV and radio stations. A few are worth their weight in gold but the vast majority are little puppets of the Medical Establishment, having been indoctrinated in the ways of medical practice - including the amazing acceptance of conflict-of-interest as a way of life.

It has been my experience, and that includes a decade at ABC News, that health and science "breakthroughs" are typically seen as fodder for ratings. Most people who regularly watch health news on the networks would be stunned to discover how little effort goes into separating hype from substance.

-Nicholas Regush

Thursday, May 27, 2004

MEDICAL ASSAULT - THE PROSTATE CANCER FIASCO

To Claim As Some Cancer Doctors Did The Other Day That Many Men With Prostate Cancer Are Being Given Invasive Treatment They Don't Need Was Actually Quite Courageous, Given The Medical Political Football That Prostate Cancer Has Become. At The Heart Of The Problem Is The PSA Test.

It can miss some cancers and cannot - and should not - be used to predict whether the cancer will develop slowly or rapidly. It has become evident - and it has has been evident for years now - that the PSA test cannot tell the difference between the so-called "tiger" cancers and the "pussycats."

Unfortunately, there has been a strong push - again, for years, - for screening and often that screening has led to aggressive medical care. If this was a new finding, then one could always say that medicine might learn from its mistakes, but problems with the test have been apparent since at least the late 90s. This is one issue that the medical community, for the most part, has not faced honestly and squarely. (For example, I was reporting on this issue for ABC News, back in 1998, and even then, it should have been clear to more doctors that this was not a test that was going to be useful for everyone. The almost belligerent drive for a "cure" via surgery or other invasive methods has been nothing less than shameful. Perhaps as many as half the men who develop prostate cancer do not need treatment. Of course, many men do need treatment, but more research is necessary to try to filter out those who do not.

Are we going to be pointing all this out again and again ten years from now? Probably, because prostate cancer, much like everything else in medicine today, has become an industry.

-Nicholas Regush

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