JOHN CLARE

A Social Networking Quiz

 

Climate Change Conference...Science or Emotion?

 

Why Pharma PR needs some good PR

25 years ago I was a TV reporter in London when HIV/AIDS was the big story.  I interviewed a l professor who said, ‘If you’re diagnosed today with HIV, choose the wood for your coffin.’ If two men aged 35 received a diagnosis today, one with HIV, the other with diabetes, the one with HIV has every chance of living longer than the other.

That change, as well as the development of successful treatments for common cancers, MS, asthma and many other conditions, has been driven by the pharmaceutical industry working with doctors, researchers and patients. It’s absolutely right that we communicate that, clearly and accurately.

This summer I was at a wedding in rural England.  On my table was a serving colonel in the British Army.  When I told him my business advises pharmaceutical companies on communications he said to the group, without fear of contradiction, ‘Of course you know that drug companies could cure cancer tomorrow, but they make more money just by keeping people alive for a little longer and charging a fortune for the drugs.’

I was stunned that somebody so intelligent and educated could hold such a view. His opinions may be extreme, but he’s not alone in his suspicion of the industry. 

Read the rest of this article in the October edition of PM Magazine.

Media role as scaremonger or watchdog?

We now know that 14 year old Natalie Morton did not die of a reaction to Cervarix, but of a previously undiagnosed tumour. Much UK media coverage was balanced, but yet again the Daily Mail led the scaremongering campaign.

Faced with a choice between reassuring the paper’s 6 million (mostly female) readers based on a chorus of experts saying the vaccine is safe, and scaring them with a year-old quote from a previously unknown researcher, the paper came up with a masterpiece of mixed messages and managed to ride both horses at once, while clearly backing the scaremongers.

In the highly charged atmosphere following Natalie’s tragic death, the paper revived a story from a researcher at the University of Missouri-Kansas who claimed the jab’s benefits had been ‘exaggerated’. This gave the impression that she was questioning the vaccine’s safety...quite a claim given the circumstances.

In fact, close reading revealed that she was claiming the benefits might not last as long as claimed, and re-vaccination may be necessary. The researcher, Dr Diane Harper, made the scaremongers’ job easier by claiming the vaccine programme was ‘a public health experiment.’ Ill-advised words, and ill-advised reporting.

Ironically, in an accompanying piece claiming Britain had opted for Cervarix over Gardasil to save money, a claim that there have been 30 deaths following reported adverse reactions to Gardasil in the US was buried in the 5th para.

have no brief for either vaccine, and have worked on behalf of both manufacturers. I am however keen that people are given accurate, valuable information about risks and benefits.

Should Iraq ban smoking?

 

Not fat genes, but fat parents

Last week’s UK story about obese parents’ behaviour being cause of obese offspring of same sex really hits home here in US.

Californians seem to be divided between ‘My body’s a temple’ stick insects and fat-guzzling obese heart-attack-waiting–to-happens. That’s their choice, and the UK is going the same way.  What is noticeable here however is the number of fat kids trailing along behind  fat parents in a parody of a Little Britain sketch.  Some of the kids are only four or five years old.  The Jesuit dictum of ‘Give me the boy of seven and I’ll give you the man’ has its depressing echoes in the obesity epidemic.   Any teacher of 7 year olds can tell you which ones will end up in trouble with the law, and which will fulfil their potential. Now we’re learning more about the causes of  obesity, it’s increasingly easy to tell which seven year olds will end up dangerously obese.  Now we need some proper joined up action to tackle it... starting with the parents.

News is the Space Between the Ads...

...whatever the cost

Big health story in UK today is the WHO announcing that sunbeds are now a recognised carcinogen. This puts tanning up with smoking and asbestos as a cancer risk, say many papers including the Daily Mail in typically forthright style.

No misunderstanding here...sunbeds cause cancer.

But wait! What’s the Google ad beside the Mail story? Ah... it’s for sunbeds!  Click through and you can see how much money you can make by peddling something which can now officially give your customers cancer.  Still, everyone is trying to find a way of monetizing news...whatever the risk. Whatever next? Tobacco ads?

Maths and the Media...a Relationship on the Rocks

Most people are scared of maths, and bad at it as a consequence.  Many even take pride in how bad they are. You hear people say ‘I really can’t do maths’ in a way they would never say, ‘I really never quite mastered reading’ or ‘Remind me again, what’s the name of that big country on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean?’ 

Journalists, with a few notable exceptions, are high in the league table of maths avoiders.   Most are arts and humanities graduates who gave up maths as early as possible.  That means at age 16.   A friend runs a financial PR firm. He says even financial journalists have a look of panic in their eyes when he gets into sophisticated calculations with them.

So reporters’ behaviour is predictable when confronted with a table like this one from the UK Dept of Health about  swine flu planning:

Planning assumptions for first major pandemic wave

Clinical attack rate                           30%
Peak clinical attack rate                  6.5%  (local planning assumption 4.5% - 8%)
Complication rate                            15% of clinical cases
Hospitalisation rate                             2% of clinical cases
Case fatality rate                              0.1 – 0.35% of clinical cases
Peak absence rate                           12% of workforce
Refers to the UK population of about 62,300,000.

 

They go for the scariest word (fatalities) and marry it to the biggest number (0.35%).

Then the news production process systematically removes all the caveats, nuances and  qualifications in the rest of the document.  In this case, the clear statement that these were not predictions, but worst case scenarios for planning purposes.  That produces headlines like these:

Then the government sends out other ministers and officials to clarify what was clear in the first place, until a six page document was reduced to a headline.

Watch this space...it’s going to get worse.

The table comes from the Dept of Health’s official document available here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/blogs/thereporters/ferguswalsh/ext/_auto/-/http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_102892?IdcService=GET_FILE&dID=201082&Rendition=Web

Note to US followers: We say ‘maths’ you say ‘math’...you say ‘tomayto’ I say ‘tomarto’. Let’s not call the whole thing off.

 

 

 

 

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