How the Media Helps Make People Sick

An article with the above subhead caught my eye. You can find it in the current issue of PLoS Medicine, which is devoted to disease mongering. You won't find that affliction in the Physician's Desk Reference. But it ought to be there, because it is dangerous to your psychic health.

One article in the special issue focused on the media's role in disease mongering. Two Dartmouth Medical School physicians analyzed journalism coverage of restless legs syndrome between 2003 and 2005, a period when GlaxoSmithKline was marketing a Parkinson's disease drug for the disease. They found that virtually every article about the disease uncritically accepted its definition and its widespread incidence in the general population (would you believe one in ten people have it?).

After debunking those claims, they offered this advice for unwary journalists covering the latest medical epidemic that had previously gone unreported:

"If a disease is common and very bothersome, it is hard to believe that no one would have noticed it before. Prevalence estimates are easy to exaggerate by broadening the definition of disease. Journalists need to ask exactly how the disease is being defined, whether the diagnostic criteria were used appropriately, and whether the study sample truly represents the general population."

There's plenty to chew on in this issue of PLoS Medicine. I recommend it highly, and, unlike most leading medical journals, it's available free online.