Gauging harm from a health news scare

Did a documentary on cholesterol-lowering statins scare people away from their medicine? Cathleen O'Grady writes that Australian researchers say it probably did: "It’s impossible to say whether it definitely was the documentary that caused the change without finding each individual and asking them what made them stop filling their prescriptions … However, the evidence does seem to point in the direction of the media scare for approximately half of those [60,000] cases."

June 22, 2015

ADVERTISEMENT
BWF Climate Change and Human Health Seed Grants

ADVERTISEMENT
EurekAlert! Travel Awards

ADVERTISEMENT
Eric and Wendy Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communications