Press Releases Saturday 17 October 1998
No 7165 Volume 317
Please remember to credit the BMJ as source when publicising
an
article and to tell your readers that they can read its full text on
the
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If your story is posted on a website please include a link back to
the source BMJ article (URLs are given under titles).
(1) THE DANGERS OF ADVERTISING DRUGS ON THE INTERNET
(2) NEED
FOR TREATMENT OF MENTAL ILLNESS IN PRISONERS MUST
BE URGENTLY ADDRESSED
(3) DOCTORS AND NURSES MUST BE MINDFUL OF THEIR JARGON
(4) ETHNICITY INFLUENCES ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE IN CHILDREN
(5) MORE FEMALE CONSULTANTS NEEDED FOR BREAST SURGERY
(1) THE DANGERS OF ADVERTISING DRUGS ON THE INTERNET
(Validity of advertising
claims for multivitamin preparation
Vitacor 20/90 on the
internet)
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/317/7165/1069
In a paper in this week�s
BMJ,
Dr Uwe Tröger and Professor Frank Meyer
from University Hospital
in Magdeburg in Germany write that new electronic
media such as the Internet
are used by dubious companies to distribute
drugs uncontrollably and
that the only effective means of preventing such
activities would be through
an international initiative.
On investigation, the authors
found that some companies misuse the Internet
for uncontrolled distribution
of drugs that have never been tested or have
even been evaluated as ineffective,
unsafe or dangerous, by national authorities
or medical societies. They
found that companies deceive patients with their
advertising messages and
that by using "citations" from serious medical
journals they lead people
to believe that there is no danger in the use of
their "highly effective"
drugs. The authors are also concerned that such
administration of drugs
may discourage patients from going to their doctor
for prescriptions of legitimate
medicines.
In their report Tröger
and Meyer investigate a drug called Vitacor 20/90
marketed by a company called
Health Now in California, which claims that
this multivitamin product
could prevent and even treat cardiovascular
diseases. The authors discovered
that Health Now�s claims were very
weak, and they conclude
that the uncontrolled advertising of drugs and
nutritional supplements
in electronic media such as the Internet is a
potential health hazard.
Contact:
Dr Uwe Tröger,
Resident in Clinical Pharmacology or
Professor Frank Meyer,
Professor of Clinical Pharmacology,
Institute of Clinical Pharmacology,
Otto-von-Guericke University,
University Hospital, Magdeburg,
Germany
email: uwe.troger{at}medizin.uni-magdeburg.de
(2) NEED FOR TREATMENT
OF MENTAL ILLNESS IN PRISONERS
MUST
BE URGENTLY ADDRESSED
(Severe mental illness
in prisoners)
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/317/7165/1025
In an editorial in this week�s
BMJ
Professor Tom Fryers from the
University of Leicester
along with colleagues from Leicester and
Cambridge writes that the
results of a recent national survey of mental
disorders in prisons are
"...still a shocking indication of inappropriate
and inadequate psychiatric
care on a huge scale." The authors call
on all the relevant government
departments in the UK to recognise
their common responsibility
for the rehabilitation and reintegration
of patients into stable
communities.
The study of mental health
in prisons, undertaken by the Office of
National Statistics, found
that seven per cent of sentenced men,
ten per cent of men on remand
and 14 per cent of women in both
categories have suffered
from psychotic illness in the past year, as
compared to 0.4 per cent
of the general adult population.
The authors of this week�s
commentary also note the special problems
encountered when mentally
ill patients also have a diagnosis of substance
abuse.
Fryers et al say there are
"many hundreds of men and women remanded
in prison for long periods
of time, many of whom suffer from longstanding
mental disorder, current
mental illness or both" and that "effective treatment
is an issue of basic human
rights". They say that in the five years since the
Health of the Nation strategy
made mental illness a key area, there is little
evidence that government
policy is effecting the fundamental changes
required.
Contacts:
Professor Tom Fryers
and
Traolach Brugha, University of Leicester,
Dept of Psychiatry, Section
of Social and Epidemiological Psychiatry
email: yanyak{at}compuserve.com
or
tsb{at}le.ac.uk
Adrian Grounds, University of Cambridge, Institute of Criminology
David Melzer,
(Washington)
email: dm214{at}aol.com
(3) DOCTORS AND NURSES
MUST BE MINDFUL OF THEIR
JARGON
(Terminology for early
pregnancy loss must be changed)
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/317/7165/1081
In a letter in this week�s
BMJ
Hutchon and Cooper write that the distress
of suffering a miscarriage
may be exacerbated by the use of the word
"abortion", which has connotations
of "termination of pregnancy" for the
general public.
In their study of research
papers in a number of several medical journals
the authors found that medical
literature still widely uses the term abortion
to describe a spontaneous
pregnancy loss. Hutchon and Cooper recognise
that it is difficult for
medical and nursing professionals to use two
different languages: one
for patients and another for medical notes. They
believe that the word "miscarriage"
should be used to describe all
spontaneous pregnancy loss
when speaking to patients and when
completing medical notes.
They think that medical journals should take
the initiative on this issue.
Contact:
Dr David Hutchon,
Consultant obstetrician and Gynaecologist,
Department of Obs and Gynae,
Memorial Hospital,
Darlington, Durham
email: DJRHutchon{at}Postmaster.co.uk
(4) ETHNICITY INFLUENCES
ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE IN
CHILDREN
(Use of health services
by children and young people
according to
ethnicity and social class: secondary analysis
of a national
survey)
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/317/7165/1047
Contrary to previous studies,
Helen Cooper and colleagues from the
University of Surrey report
in this week�s BMJ that the use of health
services by young people
(0 - 19 years) is not so much related to
socioeconomic status as
ethnicity.
In their analysis of over
20,000 (20, 473) children and young people in
the 1991-1994 General Household
Survey, the authors found that even
though South Asian youngsters
are more likely to consult their GP,
they are less likely than
their white contemporaries to use hospital
services. From this Cooper
et al conclude that children and young
people from minority ethnic
groups may receive a poorer quality of
health care than white children
in the UK, even when taking account
of socioeconomic position
and health status.
Contact:
Helen Cooper,
Research Fellow, Department of Sociology,
University of Surrey, Guildford,
Surrey
email: h.cooper{at}surrey.ac.uk
(5) MORE FEMALE CONSULTANTS
NEEDED FOR BREAST
SURGERY
(Patients� preference
for male or female breast surgeons:
questionnaire study)
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/317/7165/1051
Until recently the small
numbers of female consultant surgeons in Britain
have meant that patients
have not had a choice about being treated by
a male or female surgeon.
However in a short report in this week�s
BMJ, Iona
Reid from the University of Glasgow and Victoria Infirmary,
Glasgow reports that up
to one third of patients attending a specialist
breast clinic would prefer
to be treated by a woman. Patients explained
their preference with phrases
such as "women are easier to talk to"
and "I feel less embarrassed
with a woman".
Reid says that currently
it would be impossible to meet these
preferences given that only
2.3 per cent of consultants in general
surgery and twelve per cent
of registrars training in general
surgery are women.
Contact:
Iona Reid,
Senior Lecturer in Surgery, University of Glasgow
and Victoria Infirmary,
Glasgow
email: imreid{at}msn.com
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London WC1H 9JR
(contact Jill Shepherd;pressoffice{at}bma.org.uk)
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Advancement of Science
(http://www.eurekalert.org)
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