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You might die of a misprint
Providence Journal
By Petter Pitts
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
NEW YORK
MILLIONS OF AMERICANS have resolved to be healthier in 2008. And many are turning to the Internet for advice. Roughly 8 million Americans search for health information online daily, according to the Pew Foundation. But is the information they’re finding reliable?
To get a better idea of what patients typically see when searching online for medical information, the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest recently surveyed the top Google search hits for two popular prescription drugs: Crestor, a drug used for cholesterol and atherosclerosis, and Avandia, a type-2 diabetes drug.
What we found: Nearly half of the sites on the first three pages of search results belonged to lawyers or law firms, often fishing for plaintiffs for class-action lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies. Other sites sold untested herbal “alternatives” or were run by individuals and organizations ideologically opposed to pharmaceuticals.
All in all, 65 percent of the top search results were from sites that were biased or unverified, though almost all position themselves as neutral medical experts. And there were zero — yes, zero — hits for sites run by either regulatory agencies or professional medical organizations.
This means that patients who use Google to research these drugs will be overwhelmed with misinformation and find little, if any, solid medical advice. This is quite regrettable, as both medications have been rigorously examined by independent scientists and approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
The flood of bad or biased medical information online is scaring millions of Americans away from perfectly safe — and often times essential — medical treatments. A recent survey published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 55 percent of doctors reported at least one parent refusing to vaccinate his or her child at all in the past year and 85 percent refusing one or more shots. Doctors surveyed cited “Internet searching” as a cause because it “enables parents to find horror stories about adverse effects from vaccines.”
Never before has information flowed as freely or as swiftly as it does today. We now expect all our information to be fast, free and uniformly reliable, without having to wait in lines or plod through complex reading.
This attitude is downright dangerous when it comes to health. There are drastic consequences when important health decisions are based on incomplete, false, or misleading information.
After all, impulsive, ill-informed decisions only cost you a couple bucks when you’re on eBay. They could cost you your life when you buy medicine.
Of course, the Internet can be extremely useful in informing a patient’s discussions with his doctor. And there are a number of important and reliable online sources for authoritative medical information, including sites run by the National Institutes of Health, the National Library of Medicine, and independent medical specialty groups. Rarely, however, do these sites show up first on searches.
The Internet has made it easier than ever before for charlatans and quacks to spread fear and misinformation. Mark Twain wrote: “Beware of health books. You might die of a misprint.” The same can now be said of the Web.
Peter Pitts is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a former Food and Drug Administration associate commissioner. His organization receives funding from the pharmaceutical industry. |
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