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CBS and ABC filed a couple of medical stories concerning the very beginning and the very end of life. ABC's Dan Harris told us about the stinging accusations of fraud uncovered by Brian Deer, an investigative reporter working for the British Medical Journal, into Dr Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield published research that purported to demonstrate causal links between child immunization with the MMR vaccine and the onset of autism. Deer doublechecked Wakefield's data: he found altered records, and a payment of $750,000 to Wakefield by lawyers suing the vaccine manufacturer. Nowadays, almost the entire effort by the nightly newscasts in reporting on child immunization is focused on debunking the false fears arising from Dr Wakefield's apparent fraud.
CBS turned to CNN's in-house physician Sanjay Gupta to publicize the aggressive treatment developed by the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. Moffitt does not shy away from using full-blown chemotherapy on elderly patients, even as late in life as their mid-eighties: "New studies have shown that older patients can do just as well as younger people with aggressive cancer therapy."
No mention from Dr Gupta about how much more expensive Moffitt's approach is, or whether there is a payoff in painfree longevity to warrant such heroic measures. To be sure, talk of death panels and medical rationing is touchy--but it is just irresponsible for Gupta's reporting simply to avoid such issues altogether. Contrast that with ABC's in-house physician Timothy Johnson, who addressed the trauma of heroic end-of-life care forthrightly last week here and here.
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