By Gary Schwitzer
minimizing the importance of the recent news about an experimental
treatment for leukemia — one that has drawn much news attention.
It is an important finding.
What I am commenting on herein is the news coverage.
The ABC television piece itself wasn’t bad, with good perspective
from Dr. Len Lichtenfeld of the American Cancer Society. But the
lead-in and the ending, both involving anchor Diane Sawyer, were
hyperbolic. The following screenshot was part of Sawyer’s lead-in.
Then, in the studio wrap up at the end of the video piece, general
assignment reporter Linsey Davis, who had to handle this piece (and
whose taped package wasn’t bad), concluded by saying that researchers
hoped to try the approach in "pancreatic, ovarian, prostate and even
brain cancer."
To which Sawyer gushed in amazement:
"Good heavens – pancreatic and brain cancer!"
"Good heavens" because they’re going to TRY it on those
cancers? Her ending verbal exclamation point left the impression that
there were already amazing results in these cancers.
NBC’s online story had this in the first sentence:
"the sensational results from a single shot could be one of the most significant advances in cancer research in decades."
Really? After an experiment in 3 people?
A CBS online story found its own depth of hyperbole:
"A new leukemia treatment has experts buzzing over a possible cure that may one day change cancer treatment forever."
Again, really? After an experiment in 3 people?
Is there any institutional memory left in these news organizations
about past cancer breakthroughs after experiments in a handful of
people? Breakthroughs that didn’t pan out when experiments went from
handfuls to dozens?
Look at how easily some news organizations chose to lead with calm and caveats.
Joe Palca did, in his post on the NPR Shots blog:
"Any time you report on promising but preliminary
results about a new therapy for a lethal disease, you worry that you
might be raising false hopes. So be warned: Although this is a "good
news" story, it’s preliminary. Don’t expect to find it at a hospital
near you any time soon."
This is how he opened the story. It wasn’t buried deep at the end.
An AP story calmly and rationally opened:
"Scientists are reporting the first clear success with a
new approach for treating leukemia — turning the patients’ own blood
cells into assassins that hunt and destroy their cancer cells. They’ve
only done it in three patients so far, but the results were striking."
A Reuters story
had a very measured headline, "Gene therapy shown to destroy leukemia
tumors." In fact, the entire piece was restrained, including important
reminders:
"The treatment appears safe, but researchers said more
study was needed. … In addition, the long-term viability of the
treatment is still unknown."
I think these latter examples did a more responsible job of reporting than the examples at the top of this piece.
Years ago I published a commentary on "The 7 Words You Shouldn’t Use in Medical Journalism." I didn’t create the list; each of the words was put in my head by patients I’d interviewed. As I wrote at the time:
"A woman struggling with cancer once told me she wished
medical reporters would leave the word hope out of their reports and
allow consumers to decide how much hope to assign to each story. "