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The Media

Need to demonstrate balance of evidence?

From Mr P. D. Sellwood, MRPharmS

During the two-and-a-half years that I have been qualified as a pharmacist I have seen health care issues plastered across newspapers and broadcast on television in a most unscientific manner. Have the writers of these articles ever heard of balance of evidence?

Balance of evidence is something that all of us in the health care professions work with every day. Unsupported opinions would never make it into the medical and health care press, which requires a wealth of evidence to back up the claims being made: claims such as the dangers associated with mefloquine, the link between the MMR vaccine and autism, pharmacists being incapable and under-qualified to sell emergency hormonal contraception over the counter and the many so-called “blunders” by health care professionals.

Patients do not generally have access to professional journals and therefore tend not to be able to read all of the background information. An example of this was the media handling of the MMR vaccine issue. Many parents would have read the concerns relating to the MMR vaccine in newspapers or saw articles on television. But how many of them read articles published in professional journals suggesting that these concerns were scientifically unfounded? I am sure that many of them did not and to the media this represented a much less interesting story, which would be unlikely to generate as many sales as the initial story.

Why are patients only entitled to half the story? They should be able to rely upon information regarding health care issues in the press being balanced. The pharmaceutical industry is not allowed to present factual, balanced information on its POM products to the general public, yet the media are able to present unbalanced views on products and health care issues to millions of people.

There should be some kind of law or restriction to control the press regarding health care issues in order to prevent misunderstandings. The press should hold articles until all the scientific facts are available, thereby preventing unnecessary worry for patients, and their families and friends

Paul Sellwood
Bicester, Oxfordshire

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