Health Behavior News Service - <FONT color=#003366 size=+2 face=’Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif’><strong>The Cure Is First, Then the Disease</strong></FONT>

The Cure Is First, Then the Disease

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Two classes of drugs – ACE inhibitors and ARBS (angiotensin II receptor blockers) – have been part of national diabetes- treatment guidelines for years because they can prevent heart and kidney complications, especially in older people. A new study has found that only 43 percent of elderly with diabetes get the medications. Author Allison Rosen suggests that contributing factors are lack of physician awareness, cost and few effective measures to encourage use of the drugs. (http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/519679/?sc=dwhp

H I T S

An HBNS story on the effects of alcohol misuse during pregnancy was used by the St. Louis Post Dispatch, The Australian, HealthDay News and yahoo.com A story on increased depression risk among women with urinary incontinence was picked up by CanWest newspapers in Canada, The Guardian in London and the Washington Times. And a story linking drinking at earlier ages by youth to their wearing of clothing with beer company logos appeared on Foxnews.com, Reuters and the Hindustan Times.

M I S S E S

In early April, most of the news media could not resist telling about the prestigious Institute of Medicine's report virtually declaring sleep disorders a public health issue. It quoted NIH "estimates" that 70 million Americans have a sleep problem of some kind. The wires and major broadcasters passed that figure along although there is no such evidence. It would mean one of every four Americans – man, woman and child – are not sleeping well. A public health problem? Not likely, but a dream statistic for sleeping pill advertisers.

Jessie Gruman
President and Executive Director, Center for the Advancement
of Health

The Public Library of Science, a free online journal,devoted a recent issue to "disease mongering" – the practice by drug companies of turning routine, transient conditions into scary new illnesses. They get away with it partly by taking advantage of gullible journalists trying to satiate a perceived public demand for health news.

Right now, the demand for medical news of any kind is a function of the average age of newspaper and evening broadcast news audiences. They are the market for drugs to treat serious life-threatening diseases, for certain, but also for a horror show of brand new diseases once previously thought to be badges of age: erectile dysfunction, restless leg syndrome, heartburn and insomnia, to name a few.

Several weeks ago, the American Journal of Managed Care issued a study showing that most Americans get their news from television, that health news on the air increased dramatically in recent years and that typically the stories were misfocused, uninformative and often rife with "egregious errors … that could harm viewers who relied on the information."

That's the good news! The bad news is the corruption of science and journalism in the name of commerce.

You would have had to have been in a coma not to have heard a news account during "National Sleep Week" in late March that one in four Americans -- 70 million or so -- suffer from sleep disorders, even though that includes anyone who woke up grumpy a little too early some time in the past six months. (According to one National Institutes of Health estimate, as few as 28 million have chronic, debilitating insomnia.)

The prestigious Institute of Medicine last month issued a widely reported scientific-sounding snooze-inducing report on sleeplessness, but it wasn't responding to some alarming new epidemic. The report was a wake-up call commissioned by a syndicate of sleep advocates, including the National Sleep Foundation, an organization embraced not only by the arms of Morpheus but by the sleeping pill and mattress manufacturers who fund much of it.

The next day, the news media swallowed more than just aspirin and wrote about the next public health disaster – the fact that migraines in teenagers are not adequately treated. That study was done by the National Headache Foundation, which gets most of its support from – guess who? -- 25 companies that think not enough people are taking enough of their prescription drugs.

Sleep disorders and chronic headaches are legitimate problems, but so are marketing schemes disguised as science and reporters who couldn't find a Form 990 even after LASIK surgery.

These are not good times for the credibility of either the news or the medical research establishments. Perhaps one day, an intrepid reporter may awaken and realize that this sudden outbreak of malady, malaise and misery was a case where the cure was first, then the disease.