When the ABC’s 7.30 program ran a story about some pretty awful side effects from long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), a number of women immediately cancelled their appointments to have devices implanted in the following days.
In 7.30‘s story, two women described their painful side effects and trouble in getting doctors to remove the devices, while an expert commented on the influence of big pharma on prescribing drugs to patients, with reporter Sophie Scott introducing the idea by saying, “There are concerns the medical fraternity is too eager to prescribe the devices because drug companies are spending up big on promotions.” One comment was included towards the end by Dr Amber Moore from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, who said the devices were safe as a contraceptive, and reversible.
What the experts thought of that story
Associate professor Kirsten Black, University of Sydney joint head of discipline obstetrics, gynaecology and neonatology told Crikey she was “gob-smacked” by the report, which she said had directly prompted at least a handful of women to cancel appointments to have devices implanted last week. “I was really surprised by the lack of integrity in the ABC in their scientific reporting,” she said. “Using case reports to describe all users’ experience is really unscientific.”
Black said the literature supported the devices as safe and effective contraception, and the overall cost and risk of unplanned pregnancies was greater than the risk of side effects. She cited reports from 1995 of a contraceptive pill that had a greater overall risk of deep vein thrombosis, which resulted in a huge drop in women taking the pill in the UK, and a cost of £21 million for maternity care and £46 million for abortion costs to the system.
“There’s no method that is 100% risk-free. There’s no side effect-free option. These methods don’t suit everyone. These women had a really bad experience but that’s not the experience for the majority of women. The experience is mostly positive,” she said.
Children by Choice manager Amanda Bradley said the key issue the women seemed to be raising was that they hadn’t been listened to by their doctors, but the angle presented was to do with the risk the devices posed.
“None of the information presented was particularly inaccurate, but it came from an angle of these kinds of contraceptions are bad for women. The blame was pitched at the devices rather than the way that medical professionals are trained to use them or trained to deal with them and their patients,” she said.
While adverse effects and unusual events are always going to be likely to make the news, Bradley said adding context would help people see the risks as they are, rather than focus on the worst-case scenario. “It’s constant myth-busting for us about the secrecy around female reproductive health. We’re not going to get out of this space of women’s bodies being taboo if we don’t keep having good quality conversations around women’s bodies and reproductive health,” she said.
How news media can affect consumer health choices
University of Sydney professor Lisa Bero, a pharmacologist and researcher in evidence-based health care, said news stories about medicine and health can have an impact on the public health system, as well as individuals’ health decisions. Reports of medical break-throughs can make people overly optimistic (for example, about studies where paraplegic mice learn to walk again), or can cause great anxiety (for example, a story about predicting stillbirth).
“You don’t want everybody rushing to their GP every time they’re worried and it’s too much of a tax on the system, so these sorts of reports have to be accompanied by some sort of guidance,” she said.
In 2013, a widely-criticised Catalyst two-part program on the ABC was dedicated to the over-prescription of heart medication statins. Two years later, researchers estimated that 60,000 Australians had stopped taking the drug, which they said could have resulted in between 1522 and 2900 fatal heart attacks.
Bero also said US studies had shown coverage of medical research break-throughs were overly optimistic, but they didn’t show whether that was because of how journalists were reporting them, or how optimistic the press releases announcing the research were. “Spin is quite prevalent in the literature itself … and then there’s a flow on to the media.”
An ABC spokesperson said the broadcaster had received 17 complaints about the story, including a petition from health professionals and organisations: “They have been referred to our independent complaints handling body. The ABC will respond to complaints when that process has been completed.”
The media frequently get the science wrong. The issue here is that some women have had very bad side effects and that this was not being brought forward. It is the job of the media to highlight this. The ABC and statins is tricky. There is not good evidence in support of the very high level of statin prescription, but undoubtedly there is good reason to take the for many patients. Similarly, the antidepressants known as SSRIs only work better than placebo in 20-25% of cases. They can also have horrendous side effects including suicide, but who knows this? I also remember the fatal results of reliance on COX2 inhibitors. Big pharma is very good at hiding adverse trials, so the media must act. Sometimes however they forget to explain how great the risk really is.
Fear sells newspapers. It is not in the interests of the media to expose scaremongering. Fukushima became a newsman’s festival of malice, with thousands dead from stress while no one died from radiation.
Dodger – still parroting Blot’s B/S but wrong article.
Good on you dodger, with uranium, coal, climate heating, Arctic oil drilling, that should kill off all the people stressing out about it, so you blokes in a few years should have nothing to complain about. Only good times ahead for you blokes. I want to live, so no more leftie BS for me, through the haze that is not there i can see the light at last.
I think that crossed legs is still 100% safe.
When further work is done on female pheromone response, the supposed 24/7 sexual availability of women will be relegated to the depths, full fathom seven.
It’s not just “health” – it’s a manifestation of the malaise affecting much of our navel lint obsessed media?
For me it seems too many patronising supercilious ‘presenters’ (not least ABC) seem to see their role as being one of using their positions to push their personal politics and opinions under the guise of “trying to work out for the public” what things mean – refracted through the prism of their own prejudices.
To start at their eventual destination and work back, collecting facts that support, legitimise and justify their scenario : ignoring that which contradicts it?
When that 14 month old story of Dastyari was rehashed with a couple of extra speculations :- “he’d tipped off Huang that he was being bugged”? Was Dastyari briefed re Huang’s status? Or could he have been making an off-the-cuff remark, after what just he’d been through?
Who in our media was interested in such things as “who leaked, and why, at that particular phase of the Bennelong by-election cycle – so serendipitous to Turnbull’s needs”? While Homer Dutton was not held up to explain his branding someone – not charged by ASIO – a double agent?
Too often “peripheral facets/additional information” about an issue don’t interest them in the narrative they are intent on selling and the agenda they are pushing as they edit our view of a bigger picture?
Take the likes of Sales and Alberici – it doesn’t matter how many experts they get to interview, who contradict the actions of this their doted Limited News Party (eg economics, climate change, science, education, IR) they will indulge the assertions of this government : while taking a cynical view of Labor’s, or the Greens?
[A couple of weeks ago The Business did a comparison in light of the assertions of what Turnbull-Morrison and their donor puppet-masters at the likes of the BCA were spruiking about “Australia’s exorbitantly (in comparison to other countries) restrictive corporate tax rate” of 30% – reporting that many companies don’t pay any tax; and that our 30% is about middle range, less than that of the US 35% : but a couple of nights later Alberici (who on a Lateline “promo” told us that she didn’t watch Tony Jones episodes : as if she knows all she needs/her personal fact portfolio is full?) was peddling the Limited News Party/BCA line on “how high our company tax rates are compared to other countries”?]
In 2013, a widely-criticised Catalyst two-part program on the ABC was dedicated to the over-prescription of heart medication statins. Two years later, researchers estimated that 60,000 Australians had stopped taking the drug, which they said could have resulted in between 1522 and 2900 fatal heart attacks………. There you go “could have resulted” how many earning over half a million a year, are going to tell the truth, any way Klewso explained it very well.
Dennis — An editor’s first responsibility is to “sell newspapers”. This puts pressure on editors to keep popular bogies alive so that we keep buying newspapers. It is our own taste for frisson that keeps an ugly story current and its victims dying. But we need our journos to have gotten their facts right (and pay lip service to any counter argument in balance), so that in thoughtful moments we can read between the lines. That was the problem with the Catalyst story. Not that it lacked passion, but that it was rough with the truth and lacked balance of expert opinion.