|
|
| Volume 46, Number 1, Spring/Summer 1998 |
by Daniel S. Greenberg
Professor: Class will come to order. Today we will discuss reporting news of medical progress. Why is this type of news popular and important?
Student: People are afraid of being sick and want good news.
Professor: Correct. But it’s not only ordinary people who like good news about medical progress. Who else?
Students: (In unison) Investors.
Professor: Of course. But what I had in mind was that scientists and doctors like good news too. It shows they’re helping people. That’s why they let us know whenever they make progress. But new cures are actually very rare. Sometimes doctors and scientists go for years without finding a new cure for disease. For long stretches, there are no cures to report. So what do you do?
(Silence).
Professor: Think hard. What do you do?
Student: Make up that there’s a cure?
Professor: No. For the hundredth time. You’ll get caught if you make it up, and you might lose your job. What do you do?
(Silence).
Professor: You write about a step that might possibly lead to a cure. A step. There are few cures, but in the medical journals, there are many reports of steps.
Student: But if it’s only a step, you can’t be sure that it’s leading to a cure. It could end up as nothing.
Professor: Right. And that happens lots of the time. That’s
why you don’t report that it’s leading to a cure. That
would be unethical, because you don’t know. You report progress.
Student: So, what do you write?
Professor: You write that there’s a promising development and that researchers and doctors are excited. That clues people into knowing that something important is going on. Otherwise, the researchers and doctors wouldn’t be excited. Also, that doctors are besieged by desperate patients and their families pleading for the new treatment. You might even call it an unprecedented clamor.
Student: For the cure?
Professor: That’s what the patients want. But you have to point out that there is no cure, no treatment, no drug. There’s nothing. Just a promising development in mice or maybe some bugs. That’s all. As a medical communicator, it’s your responsibility to make that clear.
Student: How do you do that?
Professor: With absolute honesty. You write that there’s
a development and that researchers are excited about it. You find
a researcher who will give you a meaningful quote, along the lines
of: “In 35 years of working on this problem, I’ve never
seen anything like this.” You should also point out that
the new step was published in a peer-reviewed journal. Most people
have no idea what that means, but it’s a plus. But having
set the stage, you now need to guard yourself and your readers.
Student: Against what?
Professor: Against undue optimism that a cure is coming.
Student: How do you do that?
Professor: You write that on many previous occasions, reports of promising developments have not panned out, and that it may be years before a drug is available just for human testing—if ever. Also that drugs sometimes work in rats but have no effect on people, or maybe even harmful effects. Look for a researcher in the field who will give you a skeptical quote, something like, “This development, if it stands up to verification, is interesting, but a great deal of work remains to be done to determine what, if anything, it means.”
Student: So, it’s not so hard to write about medical progress that can lead to cures even if it doesn’t.
Professor: Not at all. It happens all the time.