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Television and newspaper reports of new medications often ignore the drugs’
drawbacks and exaggerate their benefits, according to a study of 180 newspaper
stories and 27 TV reports on an osteoporosis drug, a cholesterol-lowering
medication and aspirin. Fewer than half of the reports mentioned the drugs’ side
effects, and 40 per cent did not provide any quantitative evidence of their
benefits (The New England Journal of Medicine, vol 342, p 1645).
“Editors want the medical miracle,” says Ray Moynihan, a medical reporter who
initiated the study while on a fellowship at Harvard Medical School in Boston.