What the Hell Does ABC News Have Against Cancer?

I saw a post this morning on a blog called Med Page Today, titled "Good Morning America's Flawed Prostate Cancer Awareness Month Segment." I'm amazed at the criticisms of the blogger (Gary Schwitzer, who writes about how health issues are covered in the media), and how close they came to what I wrote about a few days ago regarding an NHL story on ABC News' website.

The GMA segment features Robin Roberts interviewing former Florida State University football coach Bobby Bowden about his recent revelation that he was treated for prostate cancer in 2007. Bowden says he didn't reveal it then because other teams would use it against him in recruiting ("Don't go to FSU, their coach has cancer. He'll be dead soon.")  That's a perfectly legitimate reason. Roberts, a well-known breast cancer survivor, went public while she was still in treatment. Also a legitimate approach to letting people know. We all need to deal with our cancer in the way that makes the most sense to us.

The blog post, though, criticizes GMA (an ABC News program) for how they dealt with this interview. Bowden came on because September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month (and Lymphoma Awareness Month -- that's OK, we can share. Too many cancers for everyone to get their own month, unfortunately).

Bowden is being compensated (as Roberts pointed out in the interview) for this awareness work, by a group called On the Line. On the Line is sponsored by a couple of prostate cancer drug companies, and by another group that pushes for active treatment for prostate cancer.

The blogger sees this as a conflict of interest: like some lymphomas, some prostate cancers are indolent, and are dealt with by watching and waiting. Many men are diagnosed after 70 with a slow-growing prostate cancer, one that never gets to the point of needing treatment. So the push to get tested and treated means potentially unnecessary pain, time, and cost for these patients.

Here's an example of the blogger's problems with the way this 5 minute segment was handled:

[Bowden says]"So anyway, he was telling me I had cancer in my prostate, and this is what we need to do and what do we want to do? And they decided what to do and did it the next day and then six months later they checked up and everything was gone, so I'm a survivor."



Nothing about what the treatment was like.

Nothing about shared decision-making. (Doesn't sound like much shared decision-making took place: "...and they decided what to do...")

Just snap, crackle, pop: diagnosed one day, treated the next day, apparently a piece of cake. Nothing about side effects of treatment -- a great source of concern to most men.

I find disturbing parallels between all of this and the web piece on NHL that I discussed a few days ago: half truths about the nature of the disease; missing information about how different types behave differently; statistics that alarm and panic, and don't tell the whole story; an opportunity to give hope that gets lost in a quick-hit piece that's meant, apparently, to actually provide hope (?).

Cancer is a complex, complicated disease -- its biology, its treatments, its emotional and psychological effects. Maybe it's just not meant to be dealt with in formats like those put out by ABC News. At the very least, though, if they're going to do this halfway, they need to provide additional information about where people can go for trusted, objective information. Awareness is great -- but keep it balanced, provide some context, and for cryin' out loud, don't take hope away while you're doing it.