health

When television stations take the "'quick and dirty' route to health news coverage" by airing sponsored videos produced by public relations firms or other companies, it's a real problem, writes journalism professor Gary Schwitzer. For example, Ivanhoe Broadcast News (which was mentioned in the Center for Media and Democracy's "Fake TV News" report) puts out "single source stories with one spokesman from one institution touting one idea," complete with PR contacts. Yet, the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) -- which is supposed to set "standards of newsgathering" -- recently partnered with Ivanhoe. RTNDA's foundation is offering "two new training opportunities for journalists": a three-month internship providing "professional training in health reporting at Ivanhoe headquarters," and a two-week fellowship "to travel to the Ivanhoe headquarters to focus on health and medical reporting." Schwitzer asks, "Why doesn't RTNDA partner with the NIH Medicine in the Media workshop or the MIT Science Journalism Fellowships or with the Association of Health Care Journalists or with [the University of Minnesota's] HealthNewsReview.org project?" RTNDA has sided with the Public Relations Society of America, in opposing attempts to ensure that video news releases are disclosed to news viewers.

Imperial Tobacco has been paying out cash incentives and lavishing corporate entertainment on owners of trendy clothing stores and hair boutiques in Adelaide, South Australia, to get them to sell Peter Stuyvesant brand cigarettes in special displays amid their hip merchandise. In the campaign, which started over a year ago, Imperial offers retailers up to $2,000 per store per year to display the cigarettes. The company also treats store owners to free lunches and a party cruise with food, cocktails and all the free cigarettes they want. Marketing kits promote the brand using the slogan, "It used to be extremely dangerous. Now the only danger is you're not the coolest cat on the block." After the Sunday Mail revealed the campaign and kickback scheme, Imperial Tobacco announced it would pull cigarettes out of the boutiques by January 31.

1976 True cigarette adThe U.S. Supreme Court has given a green light to smokers to sue tobacco companies over the fraudulent marketing of "light," "ultralight" and "low tar" cigarettes. Cigarette companies are currently facing around 40 such lawsuits. For decades, advertising lulled smokers into believing that so-called "light" and "low tar" cigarettes were better for their health. Smokers in Maine, however, sued Philip Morris, charging that the company was aware for decades that smokers compensate for lower levels of tar and nicotine by taking longer and deeper puffs. Philip Morris argued that the Federal Trade Commission's endorsement of machine testing for tar and nicotine levels in cigarettes, started in the 1960s, should relieve them of fraud charges. The FTC recently abandoned its testing method, though, after concluding that it's flawed because machines don't take into account how smokers adjust their smoking behavior when using cigarettes with lower levels of nicotine.

When Forbes.com wrote last winter about the proper diet for preventing colds and the flu, the article included advice from nutritionist and former TV host Lisa Hark to drink orange juice. As Tom Avril points out, however, "vitamin C's value as a cold-fighter is unclear," and "Hark failed to mention" that she "was being paid by the Florida orange industry to promote the health benefits of its product." Hark says what she did was common practice. "She may be right about that," Avril says, pointing to examples of financial ties between the food and restaurant industries and individual nutritionists affiliated with dietary organizations including the Obesity Society and the American Dietetic Association.

The Philippines has enacted a law that treats the exposure of women to secondhand smoke in the home as a form of domestic violence punishable by law. Under the law, a woman can seek a protection order requiring her partner to stop smoking around her. Between 1981 and 1989 Philip Morris (PM) performed at least 115 studies at their secret overseas biological labs on the toxicity of secondhand tobacco smoke and found that secondhand smoke is four times more toxic by inhalation and 2-6 times more tumorigenic on skin than mainstream smoke (the smoke the smoker himself inhales). PM never published their studies or shared the information with governments or the public. PM also carried out elaborate media strategies in the U.S. and other countries aimed at confusing the public about the health dangers of secondhand smoke. Deborah Sy, a legal consultant with the Health Justice Foundation in the Philippines, explained the law by saying "Exposing another to second hand smoke has the same effect as exposing someone to poisons and dangerous toxins. It is an act that has immediate effects such as nausea, dizziness, headache or irritation of respiratory system. Normally, the exposure to smoking suffered by women is prolonged. Hence, the damage to the body is more significant."

Arguing an appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Jesse Williams, a African American man who died of lung cancer after smoking Marlboros for 42 years, Philip Morris (PM) lawyers likened the company to a civil rights victim. PM also compared itself to a death row inmate illegally denied due process, an indigent criminal denied adequate legal representation, and even the civil rights group NAACP. Mayola Williams, Jesse's wife, pursued the personal injury case on behalf of her husband after his death, arguing that PM is liable because of its longstanding misinformation campaigns designed to allay fears about smoking. In 1999, a Portland, Oregon jury ruled against PM and awarded $81 million to Williams' estate. After the original verdict, PM finally admitted publicly that smoking causes cancer, but the company continues to appeal the case. PM's now seeking a new trial and relief from the punitive damages award, whose value with interest has now climbed to over $140 million.

A consumer group filed a complaint against the medical device company Medtronic, because an online video promoting one of the company's products "did not make consumers aware of the risks, warnings, precautions or side effects" associated with the product. The video, which was posted to the YouTube website, was produced for Medtronic by the broadcast PR firm VNR-1 Communications. After a consumer group, Prescription Project, filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Medtronic pulled the video from YouTube. The group also called on the FDA "to take action against YouTube videos promoting medical devices from Abbott Laboratories ... and Michigan-based Stryker Corp." The Prescription Project's director said the videos "raise serious questions about whether drug and device companies are using the Internet to skirt laws that safeguard consumers." In related (fake) news, Richard Edelman blogged that ABC News Now producer Jessica Guff told him that PR people should offer TV newsrooms "fully formed four minute segments, with visuals, spokespeople and news hook all conceived." She explained, "Don't just send me a pitch letter or a book which requires me to put together the piece," because "we are short staffed."

An earlier PRWatch blog exposed an unseemly partnership between the American Heart Association and Rite Aid Drug Stores after AHA teamed with Rite Aid to promote the "Go Red for Women" campaign to increase awareness of heart disease in women. AHA selected Rite Aid as its partner for "Go Red" even though Rite Aid sells cigarettes, a leading cause of heart disease. This bizarre alliance gave Rite Aid the ability to brag publicly that it was "taking a stand against heart disease in women" while simultaneously displaying "healthy heart" posters alongside cigarette displays in its stores across the country. In another unseemly alliance, it was revealed that Eugene Trani, the President of Virginia Commonwealth University, which operates a medical center, school of public health and medical school, was found to be accepting a $40,000 annual retainer, plus fees totaling $3,500 and stock options, for serving on the board of the Universal Corporation, a leading global supplier of tobacco leaf.

The public is often unaware of such unethical relationships among high-profile public health groups and figures, which only helps perpetuate them.

Now another prominent public health figure has been found to be profiting personally by both causing and treating tobacco-related diseases. Michael A. Friedman, M.D., the Chief Executive Officer of the prestigious City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California serves on the Board of Directors of the Rite Aid Corporation, the same cigarette purveyor that allied with the American Heart Association to "fight heart disease in women."

Biopure, a company that makes blood substitutes, is suing scientist Charles Natanson for defamation after he published a critical review in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Nature magazine has condemned the lawsuit. It "could have an enormous chilling effect on scientific inquiry," says Cleveland Clinic cardiologist Steve Nissen, whose controversial analyses of safety risks from the diabetes drug Avandia and the painkiller Vioxx resulted in billions of dollars in lost industry sales. Some people are saying "a plague on both houses," noting that Natanson has come under criticism for "failing to disclose a conflict of interest in a medical-journal article he wrote" that was critical of blood substitutes.

Voices of caution are responding to recent breathless headlines about the supposed heart-health benefits of statin drugs. Publications including Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times claimed "that millions more people could benefit from taking the cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins." As health reporter Andre Picard points out, the net health benefits from statins are actually "modest."

The headlines were based on a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. However, the study failed to impress Merrill Goozner of the Integrity in Science Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Goozner reviewed the study closely and found it interesting mostly for "what it reveals about profit-driven medical research and how it contributes to making the U.S. health care system the most bloated and wasteful in the world."