|
medpundit |
||
 |
 |
|
Tuesday, February 04, 2003Although the WHI focused on prevention, not on symptom relief and other quality-of-life benefits, many members of the news media and the public did not understand that subtlety, according to Susan Dentzer from "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on PBS. Although news stories were written in the context of prevention, the public was interested in stories related to quality of life and symptom relief. Neither the news organizations nor the public grasped the concepts of absolute risk and relative risk, and there was a tendency to focus mostly on sharp increases in relative risks, which were emphasized in press releases from the NIH and JAMA. Hence, the media emphasized one "side" of the story or the other---either the sharply increased relative risks or the lesser absolute risks. The differences between these two concepts are significant: Although the relative risk for breast cancer among women in the WHI study who used E P increased 26% during the 5 years of the study, the absolute risk in an individual woman was small. ..Future announcements of this type should be accompanied by more concerted efforts to brief the news media thoroughly, Ms. Dentzer recommended. Moreover, thoroughly briefing medical professional groups and clinicians before a major announcement would help them to provide more useful and timely information to their patients. And some demonstration of responsible reporting in news releases by investigators and medical journal editors would be welcome, too. posted by Sydney on 2/04/2003 07:36:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
|
