News
Internet health searches could lead to dangerous results
16 January 2008
A new report from the US Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI)
says that Google searches for health information may be leading to
dangerous medical decisions by the public(1).
"What we found was not only disturbing, but dangerous to public
health," said Robert Goldberg, Vice President, CMPI.
"For millions of Americans, Google has replaced the family physician.
People trust, and make decisions, based on the information they find
online," said Goldberg. "With few exceptions, the information we found
appeared legitimate but had no medical authority whatsoever. In many
cases, we found lawyers posing as medical experts."
The analysis of search results revealed that online real estate was
dominated by websites paid for and sponsored by either class action law
firms or legal marketing sites searching for plaintiff referrals. Other
sites were sponsored by groups or individuals selling 'alternatives'.
- 65% of the first three pages of search results came from sites
that were biased or contained unverified information;
- nearly half of the first three pages of search results belonged
to lawyers and attorney referral services seeking plaintiffs for
class action law suits; and
- no official regulatory pages or professional medical
organizations appeared in the inventory of results.
"Patients who use Google to find important health information will be
overwhelmed with negative information and will find little, if any,
solid medical information to help them weigh the risks versus the
benefits of using these medications," said Peter Pitts, CMPI President
and former Associate Commissioner for External Affairs for the FDA.
"Much like our email boxes are filled by 'spam' urging us to collect
millions from Nigeria or confirm our banking information from phoney
Ebay or Bank of America security sites, a lot of the medical
'information' on the Web is designed to sell, deceive or frighten,
rather than inform," said Goldberg.
According to CMPI, the two most important questions online medical
information seekers should ask themselves are:
- how do I know this information is accurate?
- where did this information come from?
To determine what patients typically see when searching for
information on prescription medications, CMPI took a snapshot of the
first three pages of Google search results for a commonly-used
cholesterol treatment and a type-2 diabetes drug.
CMPI also looked at the real world consequences of what happens when
decisions are based on incomplete, false or misleading information.
Using SSRIs and vaccines as examples, CMPI found that basing
decisions solely on online hysteria and fear could lead to a public
health crisis or even death.
1. US Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. Insta Americans: The
Empowered (and Imperiled) Healthcare Consumer in the Age of Internet
Medicine. January 2008. The report is available at
www.cmpi.org/
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