The impact of Fake News on the medical industry
by Natasha Christou Digital Marketing ConsultantWith the increase of internet usage in recent years, you
come across the phrase ‘fake news’ almost every day. From false accusations to
hoax stories, these tales have enough shock value to make people click the
share button and send it on to many more eyes. This is the main problem when
people read headlines they often hit the share button before reading the
article in full. This lack of context can make it incredibly easy to present
fiction as facts.
A recent example of ‘Fake News’ going viral was cited by ShareChecklist which showed a crowd of people fighting. The video claimed
that it showed extremists rioting in Birmingham when it was really Swedish football
fans fighting.
People have fallen into a terrible habit — credibility is
now deemed by the number of shares, and not the person who wrote the piece. A
million shares behind an ‘medical’ article written by someone informed by
hearsay and Google searches is deemed more credible than a professional
reporting from a medical conference with
quotes from experts debunking the issue. People are more concerned with
defending their ‘right’ to believe what they want than they are with seeking
out new information and discourse from an opposing view in order to build a
more informed view.
Consequently, fake news is selected by the user to suit
their current beliefs and feelings — the affirmation comes not from the studies
or sources, but from whether or not it fits the reader’s already-held views on
the topic. If it does, it’s quickly shared. This is dangerous at the best of
times, but for the medical industry, it can be nothing short of catastrophic.
In this article, we will look at the problems caused for
both medical professionals and patients because of the spread of
misinformation.
Misinformation: MMS/chlorine dioxide
While on a gold mining expedition in South America in 1996,
Jim Humble claims to have discovered that a substance he calls MMS ‘eradicates
malaria’. He claims on
his own website that since then, the substance has brought health to
people with a wide range of afflictions, listing off thirty-nine diseases and ailments
ranging from aches and pains, autism, Parkinson’s, HIV/AIDS, and cancer. Humble
goes so far as to say it ‘has the potential to overcome most diseases known to
mankind’, claiming that MMS does not cure disease, but instead, ‘kills
pathogens and destroys poisons’ so that the body can ‘function properly and
thereby heal’.
By his account, MMS, which stands for ‘Miracle Mineral
Supplement’, sounds like the easy fix-it of humanity’s dreams. What’s in this
purported cure-all, you may ask.
Well, the key ingredient in MMS is ClO2, also
known as chlorine dioxide. It’s used in various concentrations for everything
from water purification
to sterilising medical equipment.
But its main alias is bleach. Not surprisingly, bleach has
not been scientifically found to cure any one of the diseases in Humble’s
claim.
More surprisingly is that, in 2017 a
mother was under investigation after using this bleach to ‘treat’
her autistic son, who she believed had autism as a result of a parasite. Once
again, misinterpretation led to misinformation that was shared by people
searching for validation of their beliefs under the guise of evidence-seeking
as people with the same beliefs used bleach on their autistic children and
shared photographs of the ‘parasite’ leaving the body.
The ‘parasite’ leaving the body was, however, burned-away
bowl lining. In one case, a six-year-old child had to have his bowel removed
and a colostomy bag fitted due to bleach damage.
The issue has reared up
again in 2019, with videos promoting this utterly unfounded and
potentially lethal practice found on YouTube. While these videos were removed
by YouTube, they were discovered by people simply searching broad terms such as
‘autism’ and ‘malaria’, thereby spreading this misinformation to a potentially
new audience who had not heard of, nor considered, the idea.
Misinformation: The World Health Organisation
declares bacon is as risky as cigarettes
It’s easy to see why this one was shared so much, so
quickly. Everyone knows bacon is something of a ‘treat’ — it’s certainly not a
health food! Plus, the internet-fuelled, meme-level view of bacon as being the
holy grail of life means the passion is there to share this ‘shocking’ and
‘heart-breaking’ revelation.
According
to an article shared 587,000 times, the fact that the International
Agency for Research on Cancer had classified processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogenic
compound, putting it in the same group as tobacco, this meant the World Health
Organisation was advising the world that eating bacon and processed meats were
as damaging as smoking.
This misinterpretation has since been clarified by the World
Health Organisation — yes, processed meats are classed as a Group 1 compound.
But this classification signals that there is strong evidence to suggest this
compound causes cancer. It does not mean
that every compound in this group is equally dangerous. It simply
means the evidence for processed meat causing cancer is as strong as the
evidence for tobacco causing cancer. The classifications denote the strength of
evidence, not the level of risk, the WHO explains:
‘Processed meat has been
classified in the same category as causes of cancer such as tobacco smoking and
asbestos (IARC Group 1, carcinogenic to humans), but this does NOT mean that
they are all equally dangerous. The IARC classifications describe the strength
of the scientific evidence about an agent being a cause of cancer, rather than
assessing the level of risk.’
According to Healthfeedback.Org, studies show that around 19
per cent of all cancers are caused by tobacco. But only 3 per cent are
estimated to be caused by eating processed meat. Though both factors have
strong evidence to link them to cancer, that doesn’t mean they both present the
same risk: there is strong evidence to suggest processed meats present a risk
of cancer. The equally strong evidence for smoking is that it presents a high
risk of cancer.
All that aside, the article hit a misstep from the start by
suggesting the WHO made this claim, which it did not.
Misinformation: Vaccines cause autism
One of the biggest news stories of 2019 so far has been the
steady rise in the risk of a measles outbreak in the UK and the USA. Figures
show that in an eight-year period within the UK, more
than half a million children remain unvaccinated against measles.
One of the key reasons behind this staggering statistic is cited as the
anti-vaccination movement.
But this movement is, in fact, many years old — the
anti-vaccination movement sparked in the ‘90s thanks to a now-discredited study
by Andrew Wakefield, a former doctor who was struck from the medical register
as a result of his fraudulent study. The evidence that vaccines do not cause
autism is incredibly strong at this point.
Despite this, the uptake of the crucial second dose of the
MMR vaccine is sitting at 88 per cent, with an uptake of 95 per cent
recommended by the WHO in order to maintain herd immunity. Herd immunity is
vital in preventing epidemics and protecting people who physically cannot get
vaccines due to issues such as allergies. So, why does the fear of vaccines
persist, in spite of the severity of consequence in not being vaccinated?
Speaking on the Sunderland
Talks podcast, lecturer in Psychology at the University of
Sunderland Dr Sophie Hodgetts explained the reasoning behind people sharing
such information across social media channels.
Dr Hodgetts suggests that, ‘if you already think vaccines
are bad, chances are you will only search out information that supports that
view […] It’s a very emotional issue and it plays on a lot of people’s
concerns.’ This process of selective evidence gathering is highly problematic,
and leaves doctors in the unfavourable position of having to present their
medical expertise against a reluctant patient’s own research on social media
and the like.
While the original study that sparked these fears has since
been debunked, it has simply been replaced by other articles designed to play
on the echoes of concern the study left behind. For example, the flu
vaccination has recently come under similar scrutiny as the MMR vaccine, with
one utterly fabricated story claiming that the flu shot caused a deadly flu
outbreak. The article claimed to quote a physician from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention who stated the outbreak saw people who got the shot
ending up dead. Despite the fact the article and its quotes were proven to be
made up, the story received
500,000 Facebook engagements in January 2018.
So, once again, it’s thanks to medical misinformation
spreading like wildfire on social media, from both the public and influential
figures. For example, the wife of President Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for
Communications recently posted a
series of tweets full of misleading information on vaccines and,
more worryingly, cancer.
Medical misinformation is not a new phenomenon. But gone are
the days of bizarre tales of women birthing rabbits or cockroach
pills to fight menstrual cramps; with rapid-fire sharing and
information-spreading in everyone’s pockets, the damage that can be done by
medical misinformation is on a truly global scale. Plus, once incorrect
information is out, it is nigh-on impossible to fix it entirely. Even debunked
information will continue to ripple year after year, and it will only begin to
change if people begin to look at the information presented to them by
non-experts of the field with a more critical eye.
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Created on Sep 6th 2019 03:29. Viewed 516 times.