Be careful with your words.
A new podcast from Health News Review points out the dangers of spitting out carefully crafted marketing material as news – particularly in the healthcare industry. Otherwise, it’s easy to excite the hopes of desperate consumers, and ultimately disappoint them.
This is hugely important as biotechnology, in particular, hurtles to the forefront of the media – with new discoveries in the fields of precision medicine, immunotherapy and gene editing entrancing the broader public. It’s easy for healthcare media to seduce a consumer with the promise of a life-changing therapy. But when you’re peddling snake oil – intentionally or not – it’s hard to backtrack.
“The media should understand they have a responsibility when it comes to how we address or talk about healthcare – and it needs to do a better job to educate people,” Dr. Rodger Novak, founder and CEO of CRISPR Therapeutics, told me during an interview at this year’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference – in regards to the broader perception of his company’s powerful gene editing technology. “Otherwise, these topics could be very, very inflammatory.”
This caution extends to the spin-heavy nuances we find in companies’ public statements and press releases – and the way they get translated into the press. Companies must be careful of the image they project, even when they’ve hired a crack public relations team.
Health News Review systematically reviewed about 100 health-related press releases, and graded them based on accuracy and spin.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
“I expected them to be bad, but the report card is even worse than I expected,” Health News Review publisher Gary Schwitzer said. “There are so many ways to twist numbers and statistics to make your work, your idea, your product, your research look better than it really is – and we’ve seen many of those tricks on display.”
Schwitzer brought up was a situation in which a woman was harmed, at least emotionally, by a media release sent out by Arizona’s Translational Genomics Research Institute.
The news release promised a “significant breakthrough” – for a drug that could “limit the spread of glioblastoma.” This is language that is seen on a daily basis, in terms of biopharma press releases – and even news articles.
But the language in that news release from the Translational Genomics Research Institute was particularly tricky in this case – because it included the line: “And, the FDA has already approved it.”
That statement, unfortunately, is inaccurate – the therapy simply had FDA sanction to conduct clinical trials. A big distinction.
“The thing I was most excited about was that it said it was already FDA approved,” said Vickie Smith, a woman interviewed by Health News Review whose brother-in-law has glioblastoma. “Many trials and research studies are on things that are very far from being accessible in someone’s lifetime that has such a terrible prognosis – so that was encouraging. I was excited.”
Smith told her sister, who told her husband who has glioblastoma, about this so-called FDA-approved therapy – but when they talked to an oncologist, it was revealed that the therapy wasn’t actually approved by regulators. Smith assumed it was the oncologist was wrong, because this glioblastoma story had been all over the news. It was a huge blow to her family’s morale – and in particular, the patient’s – when they learned the news was inaccurate.
“It was pretty heartbreaking,” Smith said. “My brother-in-law was crying when I told him about it.”
In this age of Google everything, consumers can access – and misinterpret – the news release. Though the Translational Genomics Research Institute has since corrected the sentence – it was a mistake – a ripple-effect remains. That press release is still searchable in its original form.
Myself, I wrote an article that was well-shared in the glioblastoma community about another therapy – a cancer vaccine from Celldex that has been found, in early clinical trials, to help extend life. My own article makes no promises; the headline might: “Hope for glioblastoma: Brain cancer vaccine from Celldex extends life.”
We get seduced by the desire to attract page views and social shares – but it’s critical to remember that real people can be impacted by a sentence gone awry. And, in terms of reputation – a poorly worded press release can drag an organization’s name through the dirt.
Schwitzer also called out a recent University of Maryland press release, which claimed a new formulation of chocolate milk could help high school football students improve recovery from concussions. There was no evidence to back up the findings, however – and when the researcher and the media team were questioned further, they were stonewalled.
“The university was transformed into a peacock, showing off its wonderful product, to an ostrich, burying its head in the sand,” Schwitzer said.
An internal inquiry has been set off at University of Maryland as a result of this chocolate milk scandal.
“What makes this especially troubling was that this was the byproduct of so-called translational research, whereby companies are teamed with researchers for the development and marketing of university research outputs,” he said. “I believe this goes on far more often than anyone has tracked or analyzed – and there is harm from this kind of PR shenanigan.”
The onus of inaccuracy can fall on the shoulders of the journalist, for not delving past the news release to confirm the accuracy of its statements. Or it can fall to the PR team, that crafted content that’s sexy enough to be shared. So it comes down to the judgment calls of the companies, organizations and universities to stay away from a temptation to over-promise and under-deliver – because the media is ready to do it for you.
[Image courtesy of Flickr user Opacity]
